Vettel said immediately after the incident that Alonso’s reactions had appeared “strange”, but he corrected the record this week, insisting the crash was not so “dramatic” and that he only saw the final moments of it anyway.

But La Gazzetta claims the footage taken from Vettel’s car depicts the McLaren-Honda suddenly slowing down and then apparently driving inexplicably into the wall. Indeed, Bernie Ecclestone has described the crash as inexplicable.

“It is as though he lost his senses for a moment,” the F1 supremo is quoted as saying. “I don’t know if an electric shock was possible, but I think that if it was that, the engineers and doctors would be able to detect it. Certainly it is a mystery.”

Another unconvinced voice belongs to Joaquin Verdegay, a former FIA official and steward, who told the Spanish daily AS: “It would be easier to believe if we had been told he (Alonso) blacked out or he had a bad breakfast, which can happen to anyone.

“But something happened. The loss of consciousness was the cause, not the effect,” he said.