McLaren has confirmed Fernando Alonso will not be driving this year's McLaren at any upcoming Pirelli tyre tests.
The Spaniard got behind the wheel of the MCL34 for both days at the post-Bahrain Grand Prix event back in April and, in his role as an ambassador, was expected to help in the development of the 2019 and 2020 cars.
However, on the same week when it was announced that Sergey Sirotkin would be McLaren's official reserve driver, team boss Andreas Seidl made these comments on Saturday.
"We have no plan to put Fernando back in the Formula 1 car at McLaren. We are very happy with Lando and Carlos, they are doing a great job and they're the future for us - and that is also my focus," he was quoted by GPFans.com.
"But [Alonso] is still a member of McLaren, an ambassador for McLaren, and I think there will be a discussion in the future with potentially other racing projects."
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Perhaps the immediate conclusion to draw is this all-but confirms there is no chance of the double world champion returning to F1 with McLaren in the future.
However, after the debacle of Indianapolis, it does perhaps lead to questions of the relationship between Alonso and the team, particularly the decision to sign Sirotkin.
Offering an explanation for that, however, Seidl noted: "It is not possible for Fernando to be here at every race and be reserve driver.
"We work closely together in this partnership with Renault on the powertrain side and Sergey will be at each track until the end of the season.
"So it simply made sense to have this agreement and to share resources with Renault. And in the case of an emergency, straight away we have a reserve driver at the track. So that was the reason for this agreement."
