Formula One: How much darker is the night going to get for Alonso and McLaren?

The night is darkest before the dawn – words Fernando Alonso must have been clinging to as he walked away from his wrecked McLaren Honda yet again on the opening lap of the Austrian Grand Prix.

He may as well have been grasping at straws as he headed into his fourth consecutive retirement of the season for never in his career had Alonso plumbed such lows. Not even in his debut year with backmarker outfit Minardi in 2001, when failing to finish three-straight races was the longest he had gone without seeing the chequered flag… until now.

Admittedly, it was an accident and not car trouble that forced Alonso’s retirement in Austria. Nevertheless, it has become a familiar sight, the ‘predatory grey’ car coasting to a standstill at the side of the track, Alonso, wearing his trademark blue-and-yellow helmet, unfolding himself from the cockpit and resignedly walking back to the pits.

And yet, if you wanted to, you could almost imagine a sense of relief in Alonso’s bearing as he walked away from his McLaren on Sunday. Starting on the last row of the grid alongside team-mate Jenson Button after being hit with a 25-place penalty on a grid of 20 cars and resigned to serving a further drive-through penalty in the race, his swift exit at least spared the double world champion the ignominy of yet another afternoon spent driving around in circles looking, as he put it in Canada, like an amateur.

Looking like an amateur is not what the double world champion, widely hailed as the best driver currently on the grid, bargained for when he returned to McLaren at the start of the year having left Ferrari after five frustrating years of trying but failing to win that elusive third world title.

Of course, he went into the partnership with his eyes open. He knew he wouldn’t win the title, or even races, this year. He knew there would be some pain in the short term.

“Of course, we’re prepared for a steep learning curve,” Alonso had said at the launch of the MP4-30 back in January. “But it’s clear to see that inside McLaren-Honda there’s total commitment, and a real change in feeling, as we start this new partnership,” he said.

Honda are, after all, only in their first year of running the extremely complex turbo-hybrid engines. Rivals Mercedes, Ferrari and even Renault have had an extra full-season’s worth of running under the new rules.

There would inevitably be those early teething troubles but surely Alonso and McLaren wouldn’t have expected things to be this bad. After all, hadn’t Button expressed optimism of being able to challenge for race wins towards the end of the year during pre-season testing?

Famously impatient for success, Alonso has shown uncharacteristic calm and restraint in dealing with the situation.

As miserable weekend has followed miserable weekend, Alonso has been slavish in his devotion to the official McLaren line – that this is just the painful period before the partnership strikes success, that he remains convinced they will eventually do so, that he is enjoying the challenge of building the team into genuine title-contenders.

“All this process and all the job that the team is doing every week, every race is amazing and I’m enjoying this moment,” Alonso told reporters at April’s Chinese Grand Prix.

“Unfortunately, we are underperforming, we are not at the level as we want and I’m sure we will be very soon.

“But it’s time to be together with the team… we will look at each other in a couple of months and we will feel proud of each other and this is what I’m here about.”

To add to his pain, while Alonso has been mired at the back, former team Ferrari have rebounded to emerge as Mercedes’ closest challengers. But any regrets have been swiftly dismissed.

“I finished second in the world championship three years in the five years with Ferrari. I could continue two more years there and maybe finish in second again two more years but that was not enough. I prefer to risk,” Alonso said in China.

“To keep doing laps after laps, year after year, that was not anymore my motivation. It’s challenging but I’m looking forward, starting a new team with a new project. This makes me happy and makes me full. I was not happy with my mind and my soul anymore.”

Only a slight slip in Canada betrayed the frustration simmering beneath, when, in the heat of the moment, he railed against an instruction to save fuel.

Any suggestion of a rift with McLaren, however, was laid to rest and the perceived cracks filled in post-race with Alonso back on message as he was after his retirement Austria.

“It is easy to understand the expectations of a McLaren-Honda combination were higher than what we are able to deliver right now – but we are definitely moving in the right direction,” Alonso reiterated to Formula One’s official website after the Austrian race.

“Inside the team we know and see the progress – which is probably hard to understand when looking at it from the outside.

“We are very optimistic as things can change very quickly. I don’t know if it will take two more races – or six, or eight – but sure not more than that. Then we should start to have some fun. I am optimistic!”

Fighting words, indeed. But as brave a face as he may be putting on, surely Alonso must be wondering - just how much darker is the night going to get?