Slightly off-topic but a quick word on Fernando Alonso and his Indy 500 attempt this year in his quest to achieve the Triple Crown of Motorsport.
As Alonso completed his lap of honour at (most likely) his final Formula 1 race last November in Abu Dhabi, team boss Zak Brown said over the radio, “You are a champ! Let’s go win the Triple Crown”. But here we are six months later with Alonso and his team embarrassed, having not even qualified for the Indianapolis event.
The lead-up to the qualifying session was fraught with issues. Alonso lost the majority of the first practice day with an electrical issue, before a pretty nasty crash during the second. McLaren struggled to build a new car, having also discovered an engine problem, and the Spaniard did not run at all on the third day, leaving just the final practice day in which to do all their preparations. Alonso narrowly missed the cut-off in qualifying on Saturday, finishing 31st when the top 30 qualify, meaning he had to compete in yesterday’s ‘Bump Day’. This is when the bottom drivers compete for the final three spots available for the race. Alonso finished fourth of the six drivers competing, thus narrowly missing out again. This time by just 0.019mph.
McLaren’s choice to set up their own team from scratch was brave but not totally unheard of for the Indy 500. The project has struggled from the outset, however, with many questioning decisions they have made throughout the process. Namely that they built the car in England, teamed up with Carlin, who have only 2 years of IndyCar experience, and scheduled only one test day before the first official test.
The situation was further complicated by Alonso’s Toyota contract from the World Endurance Championship which meant that Honda were unable to provide him an engine. They had said they were willing to, despite their largely uncomfortable recent history with McLaren in F1, but with that contract in place, their choice of teams to link up with was limited. Penske, the only available larger team, were not interested.
McLaren have given an impression of arrogance through this endeavour and it has ended up in a pretty embarrassing position for their company and brand. You wonder whether Alonso will now seek to move to a more established team for next year. His patience with McLaren in F1 was commendable in recent years but I doubt he will commit another year to this project when he has apparently made a good impression in the Indy paddock and would likely be taken on by the big-hitters – certainly once his Toyota contract has ended next year.
Speculation regarding new Le Mans regulations could even seen Juan Pablo Montoya beat him to the Triple Crown. And Alonso would certainly not enjoy that.
