Fernando Alonso took to using code in order to tell fans of an imminent announcement.

The Spaniard posted a cryptic message to his 2.8m followers on Twitter on Wednesday.

"BTV vras nduvrg ddwa," it began. "Eno iw giadt gby awa, Q'z xwptbvrg ewqf mn ndlr!!!!"

It was soon discovered that the Alpine driver using the Vigenere cipher, a means of encrypting alphabetic text by using a series of interwoven Caesar ciphers, based on the letters of a keyword, said keyword being his team name.

Consequently the original tweet became: "BIG news coming soon. And to tease you all, I'm tweeting this in code!!!!"

"I mtb lsu pkmecoyt evpl hdzx sue lpnx yzj'zr enydcagiyv agvatvpg ewln," responded teammate, and Hungarian GP winner, Esteban Ocon, whose tweet translated as: "I bet you everyone will work out what you're announcing straight away."

"Lpi'a fie, wtb'f wep. Iprc'vp vwg 24 lofga gs wzgs vx ofi!" - "Let's see, let's see. They've got 24 hours to work it out!" - said Alonso.

The messages are thought to refer to the imminent confirmation that the two-time world champion has been retained for 2022, team boss, Laurent Rossi having admitted that he is extremely impressed with the Spaniard's performance thus far this season.

"He is as fast as ever," he told the BBC. "He is certainly extracting the most out of the car.

"The car is not incredibly fast and he still manages to get some super-hot laps and qualify the car very well. So far, so good."

Alonso is currently 11th in the drivers standings, one place and one point behind his teammate, while Alpine is fifth in the constructors' standings.