McLaren CEO Zak Brown hopes Fernando Alonso will stay with the team should he attempt the Indy 500 a third time.
After the Spaniard’s strong first visit to Indianapolis was ended by engine failure, operational problems for McLaren’s standalone entry this year meant he didn’t even make the 33-car grid for Sunday’s race.
With the dream of completing motorsport’s ‘Triple Crown’ still elusive, another run of the ‘Brickyard’ would appear likely, the question is whether Alonso still trusts McLaren to give him a winning car.
“He was disappointed as we all were,” Brown told RaceFans. “We clearly let him down.
“He’s a racer, he understands Indianapolis is unique. He drove brilliantly, he gave it everything he got, he was great with the fans and the media and that’s exactly how he was internally.
“He just wanted to be competitive and I think he wants to go back to Indianapolis.
“I think it would be great if we did it together.”
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As of right now, however, next month’s Le Mans 24 Hours is currently the only event on Alonso’s motorsport schedule going forward.
And the McLaren chief believes a decision on 2020 can wait.
“We haven’t got into that,” he said. “I know Fernando very well and I think one of the reasons we get along as well as we do is I understand how he operates.
“I think when you come off such a low like that you don’t want to have a microphone in your face 24 hours later when we don’t need to make decisions right now.
“We have a great relationship with Fernando. He’s had lots of highs and lows with us. Arguably probably more lows the last three or four seasons.
“He really enjoys McLaren, McLaren enjoys him, he sees what happened, he sees how close we got to making the show and the effort we put in.
“I think we’re all disappointed but it won’t change the relationship between Fernando and McLaren.”
Regardless of Alonso’s participation, Brown did indicate that McLaren would be back at Indy next year.
“As enthusiastic as I am for IndyCar, given what we just went through at Indy, I’d like to see us go back and get that right as a next step, so I think it’s highly unlikely we’re in IndyCar full-time in 2020,” he told Racer.
“Could we do races before Indy next year in preparation? Yeah, that’s something we’ve spoken about. So that will be all part of the thinking.”