Alonso: I'd love to win the F1 title again but not my top priority

Instead, he is highly motivated and enjoying the challenge of building Aston Martin into the force that it should be considering the fortune being poured into the project by billionaire owner Lawrence Stroll and his associates invested in the team.

Alonso's defection from Alpine is a well-told tale as is his rapid settling in at Aston Martin in the wake of Sebastian Vettel's retirement. The honeymoon with Team Green was typically sweet for the Spaniard as he racked up six podiums early on in the season.

Hence his enthusiasm for the sixth (and perhaps final) team he has raced for in F1 is what keeps him going. He delved into the matter in an interview on the High-Performance podcast, co-hosted by Jake Humphrey.

Two decades into his career in F1 - the forthcoming Dutch Grand Prix will mark his 369th F1 start - Alonso explained where his mindset is at now: “I would love to win the championship once again, but it’s not the highest priority.

"I’m enjoying the process of, especially now with Aston Martin, to become a contender for the future. I’m loving the time with the team, and how we are all growing up in many different areas."

As for venturing back to alternative series, such as the Dakar, Alonso insisted: “I will try, 99%, again, if one day… That’s something that is… It’s not that the third world title is less of a priority, it is a priority, but winning Dakar one day is a high priority for me as well.

"I'll maybe have to attempt that race eight, ten years or whatever, until maybe one day I get lucky and I can fight for the win. But if I win in F1, in endurance racing, and in Dakar, that will feel for me something special as a driver and as a person, so those kinds of challenges are in my head at the moment.”

Asked to name the biggest disappointment in his career, Alonso struggled to pinpoint one moment as such: “It's difficult to really say one... If you go back in time, you change things…

“Winning a championship with Ferrari will be probably the first thing that I choose if I can go back in time. In 2010 and 2012, we were within a few laps of winning a championship, and that probably could have changed a little bit the outcome of many things, and the history behind a few things. That was disappointing, for sure, to miss those."

However, age has made him appreciate the privilege he has of being an F1 driver, a double F1 world champion at that: “What I regret, for sure, was not to enjoy more my time, my career. I know that I’m at the end of it and there is a new life in a few years’ time for me without driving. When I will look back to my career, I will see a lot of good things, good friendships and incredible experiences, but it’s like: I should have enjoyed more.

“If I had the opportunity to live my exact life once more, maybe I don’t change anything on my teams or my choices, or this Ferrari maybe title or whatever, I will just change to live a little bit more all those moments and try to have more memories from those moments.

“I won the F1 championship in Brazil in 2005 and 2006, and I hardly remember anything from those afternoons and nights, which is sad, so these are the kind of things that I will change," declared Alonso.

Stats have not always been kind the Alonso, one that he would dearly love to change is the 32 victories he has had in the top flight, a number that has remained static since he won his last Grand Prix, his home race in Barcelona back in 2013, driving for Ferrari.