The Spaniard returned to the cockpit and was given the medical green light for the remainder of the race weekend in between the two practice sessions.

“I feel good and missed the car a lot in the last twenty-six days, I’m really happy to be back” Alonso said.

“There’s still a little bit of pain because my rib has not completely recovered which is normal. But the pain will be manageable in the race.”

Given the prospect of rain in Shanghai, McLaren-Honda, like most of its rivals, compressed its working schedule a bit on Friday in order to run on the tyre compounds it has chosen.

“Today was important to try both compounds because we have a forecast of rain for qualifying so this was the only chance to test the tyres for the race.

“We maximized the program and we’re happy with the results but we need to find more performance in the car.

“We need to concentrate on the dry balance which we were not completely happy with. We’re missing a bit of traction and rear-end grip, so looking at the race we need to change some things if we want to be more competitive.”

Alonso admitted that a damp qualifying session would be a trip into the unknown for the entire field which hasn’t yet experienced a wet qualy session in 2016.

“If qualifying is wet at the end it will be a bit of a question mark as it will be the first wet session for everybody this year. We’ll try to do our best but I think we need to focus on Sunday’s performance.”