Bump on the head or not, Fernando Alonso is the same wily maverick he always was. This most brilliant yet political of drivers, who is apt to spell the word team with the pronoun ‘I’, delivered his disloyal lines here yesterday quietly, courteously and devastatingly. A steering problem, he told a press conference before Sunday’s Malaysian Grand Prix, was the cause of the McLaren driver’s apparently innocuous accident during pre-season testing in Barcelona last month. Just one thing: McLaren repeatedly said there was nothing wrong with their car. Calling on every conceivable bit of tele-metry, they compiled a 37-page report, which they presented to the FIA, substantiating that view. Fernando Alonso stands in front of the world's press as he poses for the cameras ahead of Sunday's race . The Spaniard is back in action this weekend after missing the season-opening Australian Grand Prix . Alonso has claimed his steering wheel locked which caused his pre-season testing crash in Barcelona . ‘The steering problem came in the middle of turn three,’ elaborated Alonso, who missed the opening race in Melbourne as he recovered from the crash that threatened his career. ‘It locked into the right and when I approached the wall I braked at the last moment, I downshifted from fifth to third, and unfortunately we are still missing some data.’ How routine steering data would not be readily available baffled most observers, including a host of former drivers. ‘I’ve listened to Alonso’s very clear explanation of the incident,’ said broadcaster Martin Brundle, who drove in 158 grands prix. ‘Now I’m really confused.’ One of the FIA’s most senior technical officials commended McLaren’s report as honest and robust. Why, then, would the Spaniard blame a steering problem when there is apparently no supporting evidence? Alonso is set for his second McLaren debut after he left the team at the end of the 2007 campaign . The Spaniard was in good spirits as he addressed the media in Sepang after being declared fit to race . The two most obvious reasons are that he was either too proud to admit he made an error, or a possible neurological glitch caused him to black out prior to hitting the wall (even though he was changing gears, he may have been semi-conscious as he did so). It appears he did not mention any steering problem to McLaren until last week - three weeks after the accident. They then smuggled a quotation from him citing this explanation into the middle of a press release on Monday, perhaps to appease him. What they did not expect was Alonso to make such a fuss about the issue when he spoke in the Sepang paddock. That left McLaren snookered. They could not disregard their meticulous data, nor could they publicly argue with their £25million-a-year driver - relations between the team and Alonso still have not entirely recovered from the fractious year he spent at McLaren in 2007. Alonso barely speaks to Ron Dennis, the McLaren chairman. His relationship with the de facto team principal Eric Boullier, who was not at McLaren during Alonso’s first spell there, is somewhat more trusting but he is closer to Andrea Stella, an Italian who moved with him from Ferrari to remain his race engineer. These scenes echoed 2007, when Alonso threatened to report incriminating evidence about Dennis to the FIA during the Spygate scandal. Alonso arrives in the Sepang paddock for the Malaysian Grand Prix; the second round of the championship . The double world champion in the paddock with compatriot Carlos Sainz prior to Thursday's media briefing . Back then, the team were split in two. Alonso and his manager Luis Garcia Abad would brief Spanish journalists in one corner. The same procedure happened at the team’s hospitality area here on Thursday. Alonso was again surrounded by his cabal - Abad and his deputy Alberto Fernandez, and physiotherapist Edoardo Bendinelli - as he ate jacket potatoes as part of the so-called ‘boys’ lunch’ ... the meal provided for the team’s mechanics and engineers. By this point, Alonso, who arrived at the track at 9.45am, had been cleared by the FIA’s doctors to compete on Sunday, a virtual formality after he passed more extensive tests by three Cambridge University doctors at the weekend. Yet still the mystery goes on. Alonso said he was ‘perfectly conscious at the time’ of the accident - a version of events that seems to contradicts with McLaren’s public statements and eyewitness accounts at the scene. Alonso insisted he will have no problems stepping back into the cockpit for first practice on Friday . Alonso smiles in his car in the garage at Sepang, home of this weekend's Malaysian Grand Prix . ‘I lost consciousness in the ambulance or in the clinic at the circuit but the doctors said this is normal because of the medication they gave me for the helicopter transfer and the checks they did in hospital,’ he said. ‘There is a time I don’t remember from two o’clock to six o’clock, but that was normal on the medication.’ Alonso more plausibly denied reports originating in Spain that he woke up believing himself to be a teenage go-karter. He said he could remember everything the following day, but then said it took him ‘three or four days’ to gather his memory. Baffling. But not for his team-mate Jenson Button, who said: ‘I’ve seen every single bit of data many times. Nothing has changed. It all says that the car is OK.’ It was Button’s polite way of saying what we were all thinking about the confused nature of Alonso’s testimony.
Fernando Alonso has spoken out for first time since crash in Barcelona . He sustained concussion and was ruled out of season opener in Australia . But Spaniard has been declared fit for this weekend's race in Malaysia . Alonso claims steering wheel failure caused his pre-season testing crash . And he denied reports in Spanish media he 'woke up in 1995'