Abiteboul: We never considered Alonso for 2019

Despite denials from Red Bull team principal Christian Horner, Alonso insists he was offered a spot with the energy drinks outfit after Daniel Ricciardo defected to Renault.

But apart from Red Bull's alleged offer, Alonso claimed, "I did refuse four or five offers. I don't think that my targets or my challenges for next year were any more in Formula One at this point."

"The offers that I had, including that one, they were not for winning because they are probably all the offers that I had on performance, they are more than one second away from pole position."

If he was referring to Renault, then he was way off the mark.

When asked by Crash if Alonso was ever on their radar, the French team's chief Cyril Abiteboul replied, "Frankly, despite the fact that I have huge respect for Fernando, who is probably one of the best drivers in the world, the answer is no."

“We could feel that he is at the point in his career where he wants a car that is immediately capable of going in for wins. That’s what he’s expecting, or there is going to be more frustration."

“We are not in that position. We need to have drivers who can understand the project, who can buy into a support the project on a long-term basis. I don’t think this is what Fernando was looking for. So the short answer is no.”

“If you look at the three options that we had, I must say, doing more years with Carlos, going with Esteban, or Daniel, all three options were all very valid, and would almost have been equally satisfied with all three options."

“Obviously Daniel has a bit of ‘wow’ effect, because it was not really what people were expecting. But we are not choosing our drivers just to create a wow effect for one day. The wow effect will come if we are capable of winning races together in the next two years," added Abiteboul.