I have not for a long time seen Fernando Alonso so smilingly upbeat as he was after his fine resurgent show under the Singapore floodlights when he gave formidable big names Mercedes, Red Bull and Ferrari good cause to keep a wary eye peeled for the advance of McLaren from among the ranks of the backmarkers.

The once-unbeatable UK-based team besieged for too long by woefully pathetic Honda engine power and not the greatest of chassis design schemes suddenly have started to edge out of the shadows of the also-rans into the limelight of distinct possibility with accelerated quality.

Hence the brighter, breezier and rediscovered optimism of the Spanish flyer and his McLaren back-up crew, who can now see themselves advancing and awakening impressively from a stupor that has left their worldwide fan base both bemused and sadly disappointed.

The demonstration of McLaren’s and Alonso’s promising revival saw the double-champion flow from place nine on the startline grid to fifth by the first corner on the Marina Bay circuit, an eye-popping achievement which filled him with anticipation that in the follow-up 56 laps he could break through with a podium placing.

In the end, after a sterling demonstration of his skill in a significantly improved McLaren-Honda, he finished up in an impressive seventh place, a strong reminder to his opponents that given the car to equal his skill and fight he will be a front-runner to be reckoned with.

Not only his latterly absent happy face appeared after Singapore — but a renewed expectation that, at long, long last, his team could be heading for a repeat of their glory days under the guidance of stone-faced, hard-to-please disciplinarian Ron Dennis. Even he, bless him, managed a glimmer of a smile at the confidence heightening charge of his £30m-a-year driver.

Alonso’s contract runs out at the end of next season and he has stressed that even at 35 he wants to continue in Formula One — and with McLaren, but only if their improvement is maintained and he will be sitting in a car with reinvigorated potential.

This is what he said back at McLaren’s UK HQ ahead of next Sunday’s Malaysian Grand Prix, where he has three times been the winner: ”In Singapore we were the best of the rest. And when I was running in P5 I dreamed about a podium place.

“If on lap one you are fifth you know that all sorts of situations can happen ahead of you, so being third at the end is always possible. But nothing did happen ahead of me — and Sebastian Vettel and Max Verstappen arrived very quickly and left me seventh. And that was the maximum I could wish for on the day.

“But I am as happy as can be and I believe now, at long last, we are going places and our car can prove to be a problem for everybody else. What is more, I honestly believe we will win a Grand Prix in the very near future.” A bold forecast…..

The last time Alonso climbed the heights of the podium was way back in his Spanish homeland in 2013: he now stands on 32 wins and 22 pole placings from 268 starts.

“I am now 35 years of age,” he reminds me, and adds: ”but I feel I am still capable of being a winner all over again if I can get the car to match my ambitions. Once you have been a regular first placer, and a world champion, the urge to do it all over again never leaves you.

“I am feeling on good form right now and the ambition to be on podium again, especially the top step, is my driving force.

“Will I stay on at McLaren at the end of my contract? If they can put me in a car with potential and a real prospect — and it is looking that way right now — then, yes, I would be happy. I reckon I can go on for more years yet. But it is all about motivation and willingness. There is an ambition burning inside me to be the champion for a third time.

“After one year and a half without being anywhere near the podium, and too often closer to the back of the field, I am burning with the fire to be first all over again.”

Even so, there is the veiled threat lurking beneath his renewed optimism to top the charts and it amounts to a warning to his McLaren masters: Give me a car in which I can be a winner — or I am out of here.

And who can blame him? There would be a long queue for his services elsewhere.

— The author is an expert on motorsport