Despite his denials, rumours are rife around the Formula One paddock, giving high-octane fuel to the eager gossip-mongers, that Fernando Alonso is ready to pay €30 million to get away from Ferrari.

That is reported to be the opt-out penalty on the Spanish flyer’s contract if he decides to dump the Italian legends and move to McLaren and their incoming Honda partners.

But Alonso, twice the world champion in 2005 and 2006, will not be feeling the pinch over the cash outflow — and not because he is the sport’s wealthiest driver.

Japanese engine giants Honda are desperate to lure the gifted Alonso into their showcase ranks and they would readily fork out the fortune on his behalf — and then increase his €30 million-a-year wages with at least a two-year deal. Maybe longer.

Their long-awaited F1 comeback and repeat of their previous tie-up with UK-based McLaren will roar into action next season and they want a proven front runner to head their multi-million pound challenge to regain the world championship they last won with McLaren and the late, great Brazilian genius Ayrton Senna in 1991.

The team’s overall ringmaster, Ron Dennis, who has seen McLaren slip from being world-beaters to also-rans, has made no secret of his hopes to re-sign the 33-year-old, 32 times a winner but struggling in a lacklustre Ferrari this season.

Frankly Ferrari have been in a mess, upfront and behind the scenes, throughout this current campaign and only Alonso’s skill, resilience and readiness for a challenge against the odds has given them any reason to hope they may earn results they do not really deserve.

Alonso’s fourth place in the championship, with only two visits to the podium, flatters the struggling Prancing Horse outfit. And it is little wonder that a man with such an ache to be a winner, a champion, would want to escape any further embarrassment and disappointment.

Honda’s fine championship pedigree, allied to the ruthless sincerity and ambition of Ron Dennis, so unused to being a loser, could be just the incentive Alonso yearns. Hence the feedback on his unsettled attitude.

Alonso, who has had fall-outs at Ferrari, where sackings and shock promotions have shaken the set-up, has denied he wants to move on. He said, not totally convincingly in the minds of the doubters: “I see Ferrari as my future.”

But, while team new team principal Marco Mattiacci insists his star driver is set to stay, he adds intriguingly and succinctly: “For the moment.”

I wonder, if by chance Alonso, or one of his close confidantes, is likely to bump into any of the Honda hierarchy at the Japanese Grand Prix this weekend. Not that he would plan it. Would he?

Watch this space.

— The writer is a freelance motorsport journalist