Alonso finally recovered after Melbourne crash

Fernando Alonso said he is finally back to "100 per cent" fitness, more than a month after his huge crash in Australia.

The Spaniard missed Bahrain and returned to action in China, but said in Russia for the fourth round of 2016 that only now is he no longer "taking any pills".

"I have no aches and I’m training without any difficulty," the McLaren-Honda driver, who injured his lung and fractured two ribs in Melbourne, told Spanish media.

"After China for a few days I had a strange feeling, but since then everything is fine," Alonso added.

"The recovery process took longer than I expected — after Melbourne it was 42-43 days until I was 100 per cent, but that’s probably the way it should be."

Meanwhile, Alonso’s manager Luis Garcia Abad said on Thursday that the 34-year-old is also happy with progress at McLaren-Honda, after the awful 2015 season.

"I sincerely believe that the path is correct," he told Radio Marca. "Now I see the drivers satisfied when they get out of the car that big progress is being made. We are now less than a year behind."

McLaren-Honda has expressed interest in retaining Alonso beyond the end of his contract next year, but manager Abad said: "We are in a quiet situation from the contractual side.

"We will see as things unfold what the next steps are, but the bottom line is that Fernando Alonso has been in Japan (with Honda) these last days, which is an unequivocal sign of a driver’s commitment," he added.