Speaking in the pre-race press conference, Alonso was asked repeatedly about the circumstances of the accident and his subsequent concussion.

“It was clear there was a problem in the car, but it was not found in the data,” he said. “There is not a clear answer.

“Definitely we had a steering problem in Turn 3, and it locked to the right.

“I approached the wall and braked at the last moment, I downshift from fifth to third. Unfortunately, in the data we still miss some parts. The aquisition data is not there, that area of the car is not at the top.

“There are some new sensors for this race, some changes we do on the steering rack and other parts. Last week we worked on the simulator to try to explain to me these new parts.

“After one month we found nothing in the data. Whatever part was the problem, perhaps we’ll never find out.”

When asked about the violence of the impact, he replied: “No, I don’t know exactly the details.”