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Although it never really went away, Alonso-mania is back. Over this past weekend, Fernando Alonso confirmed what many of us had strongly suspected – that he will return to run in the 103rd Running of the Indianapolis 500 next May. While some had speculated that Alonso would run the entire IndyCar season, I never thought that would be the case. Once Alonso squashed those dreams by some, the experts said that he would not run the “500” next May. Given the fact that I’m not an expert – I predicted that we would see Alonso in a car next May. I don’t mean to pat myself on the back, but…OK, yeah…I really do.

But here’s where my gut feelings stop. How he will do it, I have no idea.

When I wake up each morning, the first thing I do is go to Twitter to see if something happened overnight that I should know about. One morning of early April in 2017 – I saw a tweet saying that two-time former world champion Fernando Alonso would be running the Indianapolis 500 the next month, in a partnership between McLaren and Andretti Autosport. To be honest, I thought it was a rehash of an April Fools joke that was showing up a few days late for whatever reason. But a quick check of my usual racing sites assured me that it was no joke.

As we all now know, the joke was almost on the rest of the field. Based on what I witnessed in the stands that day, I am convinced that Fernando Alonso was going to win the 2017 Indianapolis 500 had it not been for a blown engine twenty-one laps from the finish. The only caveat to that is that Helio Castroneves could have used his experience to hold him off. But why would I think that if the three-time winner couldn’t even hold off Takuma Sato at the end?

Although Alonso finished a disappointing twenty-fourth, Honda had the field covered that day. Helio was the only Chevy driver in the Top-Five. Alonso had led twenty-seven laps and was leading when his Honda engine let go in spectacular fashion on the main straightaway. If you’ll recall, that was the year that Honda experienced a rash of engine failures throughout the Month of May. James Hinchcliffe suffered a blown engine on his brand-new engine on Carb Day, and there were three more Honda engine failures in the race – including Alonso’s.

Alonso received a standing ovation as he climbed from the cockpit of his smoldering car in Turn One. Although he spoke glowingly of his Indianapolis experience, you could hear the overwhelming disappointment in his voice after the race. I thought at the time that we had not seen the last of Fernando Alonso at Indianapolis.

Just a year and a half after that strong showing, we already have confirmation that Alonso will be back next May to have another try at motor racing’s Triple Crown – Monaco, Le Mans and Indianapolis. He won Monaco twice in 2006 and 2007. He won Le Mans this past June. All he needs to become only the second person behind Graham Hill to win that Triple Crown is an Indianapolis 500 victory. Not that it’s an easy feat, no matter how good a driver you are and how strong a car you have – just ask Michael Andretti. But that is the last major goal left on his already impressive resume.

Earlier I mentioned I have no idea how he is going to do it. What we do know is that Alonso will again be aligned with McLaren, which had been one of the questions. We also know of the well-documented squabbles between McLaren and Honda for the Japanese engine manufacturer’s poor performance while powering their Formula One cars from 2015 through 2017. McLaren went public in blaming Honda for their troubles. It is worth noting that McLaren’s performance has improved significantly in 2018 after switching to Renault.

Regardless, Honda took offense for being called out publicly by McLaren. Honda Performance Development (HPD) of Santa Clarita, California designs and builds Honda engines for IndyCar; but the Honda Formula One engine comes from the main parent company in Japan. But Honda owns HPD and they apparently have a huge problem supplying engines through HPD for McLaren’s IndyCar efforts. Had Alonso come to run Indianapolis on his own, running a Honda engine would have been no problem. But coming associated with McLaren throws a wrench into the deal. I could be wrong, but I think there is way too much bad blood between Honda and McLaren to think that they will be running a Honda engine next May.

That leaves two possibilities for Alonso and McLaren – they will either pair up with a Chevy team, or they feel like they learned enough in their association with Andretti two years ago that they feel confident as going alone as their own team.

The existing Chevy teams that we know of are Team Penske, Ed Carpenter Racing (ECR), Foyt, Harding Steinbrenner Racing, Carlin, Juncos and Dreyer and Reinbold. In my opinion, the only two teams that even have a shot at winning the Indianapolis 500 are Penske and ECR. Alonso isn’t coming here to pair with an also-ran – he’s coming to win.

Ed Carpenter usually runs three cars at Indianapolis – one for Ed, his other full-time driver (Spencer Pigot) and one for either his non-oval specialist (who next year will be Ed Jones) or another driver like Danica Patrick this past year. A logical assumption is that Ed Jones would run the “500” next year in a third car. Could Ed Carpenter handle a fourth car, even with financial help from McLaren?

Team Penske will have four entries in next year’s race – Will Power, Josef Newgarden, Simon Pagenaud and Helio Castroneves. I just can’t see Penske adding a fifth car, no matter who it is. If I’m Roger Penske and Tim Cindric, I look at a possible Alonso entry as a distraction that takes away from what I’m trying to do with the four drivers I already have. I think that if approached by Alonso and McLaren, that Team Penske passes.

That leaves the elephant in the room – Harding Steinbrenner Racing (HSR). As it stands right now, HSR is a Chevy team – at least they were this past season. They have already announced they are expanding to a two-car team for 2019. Based on fulltime teams last year and counting ten races for Meyer Shank Racing in 2019, Honda already powers thirteen cars; while Chevy only powered ten fulltime cars – eleven if you count Juncos. If HSR switches to Honda next season, that would be fifteen fulltime entries and only eight for Chevy. I don’t think anyone wants that big of a difference between the two suppliers.

Why would HSR switch to Honda? That’s the kicker. It’s because of their known relationship with Andretti Autosport, which is a Honda team.

On the surface, Andretti Autosport provides technical assistance with shocks, dampers and overall setup. When they did that at Sonoma a couple of months ago, they had absolutely no access to the Chevy engine data. That was an acceptable solution for the final race of the season, but is that really feasible for an entire season going forward? I’m no engineer, but I would think that would be necessary in setting up a car. To not have that kind of information would put your team at a huge disadvantage throughout the season.

Chevy and Honda teams alike are up in arms over this potential arrangement. Most feel like the only fair solution is for HSR to switch to Honda or for Andretti Autosport to switch to Chevy. But if the two teams stay with their respective engine partners from this past season, it could create a scenario for Alonso and McLaren to still partner with Andretti (to some extent) and not drive a Honda.

Then there is the final scenario I mentioned – McLaren going alone as a stand-alone team. If McLaren goes ahead and buys their own equipment, that could help pave the way for them to join the series fulltime as early as 2020. They could get the infrastructure in place now with an Indy-only effort in 2019 and then expand with or without Alonso in 2020.

But how keen would Alonso be to squander a chance at winning the Indianapolis 500 with a brand new team trying to sort things out? Alonso wants to win now. He is thirty-seven and does not want to keep chasing this thing year after year. I think if Alonso were to win next year’s race, we’d never see or hear from him again.

So, as you can see – even though we have confirmation from Fernando Alonso that he will run the 2019 Indianapolis 500, there are more questions than answers. Although I was right in my gut feeling on Alonso’s plans for 2019, I have no idea which way things will go now that we know his plans for May. Stay tuned, and let the speculation begin!

George Phillips

This entry was posted on November 14, 2018 at 4:05 am and is filed under IndyCar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.