Alonso’s Indy 500 entry not a one off

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Date: 29th April 2017 at 7:57am
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Last month Fernando Alonso announced that he would be missing the 2017 Monaco Grand Prix in favour of entering the Indianapolis 500.

The 35-year-old wants to win both the Indianapolis 500 and the Le Mans 24 Hour race before his career is over.

If he were to achieve this, along with his previous victories at Monaco, he would follow Graham Hill’s footsteps and become only the second racer in history to claim the Triple Crown.

If he were to win the Indy 500 at the first attempt he would become the 10th rookie to win the event, replicating former Formula One racers Graham Hill, Juan Pablo Montoya and Alexander Rossi.

But whilst Alonso has the machinery in the form of the McLaren-Honda-Andretti car, with a Dallara DW12 chassis [as used by all IndyCar teams], powered by a Honda 2.2-litre twin-turbo V6, anything can happen in the Greatest Spectacle in Racing and as such neither Fernando Alonso or McLaren are ruling out further attempts to race and win at the event.

?Let?s take it day by day and see on May 29th ? the Monday afterward ? what is the situation, how much I enjoyed the experience, how competitive I felt, and if I had fun, which is the priority for me. Alonso told motorsport.com.

?I?m very open. If I want to to be the most complete driver in the world or the best driver in the world, then I want to experience all the different cars and different driving techniques, and I need to adapt and grow up as a driver.

?And if I want to do that, I need to win it and if it?s not this year then we need to plan it for the next event.?

McLaren CEO Zak Brown said: ?I would like to see McLaren-Honda competing at Indianapolis every year. Originally I thought this was an idea we could pursue in 2018 and given the circumstances of how we are running in Formula 1 right now, and Fernando?s desire and our desire, and Honda?s desire, this created a very, very small window of opportunity that we jumped on.

?McLaren is a big fan of IndyCar racing, we think it?s fantastic motorsports and I?ve personally been around it my whole life so I?m very excited on a personal level to be here.

If you are new to Indy Car racing and in the United Kingdom, then the series is shown on BT Sports stable of channels.

BT Sport 1, 2, 3 and BT Sport ESPN are shown on channels 427, 457, 433 and 458 and Sky satellite.

On Virgin Media it’s 527, 528, 529 and 530.

On BT it’s 430, 431, 432 and 433.