Who can forget Fernando Alonso’s stunning debut at the Indy 500? The only rookie to make qualifying’s ‘Fast Nine’ in 2017, he then led the race for 27 glorious laps until mechanical gremlins put a halt to his charge. It was what McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown called: “A hell of a run”. 

Fernando was given a standing ovation as he walked back to the pits and millions of fans around the world jumped on the team’s social channels, which had more than 46 million views. McLaren won over a lot of Indy fans, if not the race itself.

As Fernando prepares for his second crack at the 500 this year, interest is once again high. And why not? If he drinks the milk in Victory Lane on 26 May, he’ll be only the second driver in history to complete motorsport’s unofficial Triple Crown, with victories at Monaco, Le Mans and Indianapolis. 

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It would be an unbelievable story, but Indy is one of the toughest races in the world to win. A legendary driver like Mario Andretti only won it once in 29 attempts because, to quote him, “it’s a long race and so many things can – and usually do – happen.” But there’s an added factor in 2019: McLaren is going it alone. It has its own team and that wasn’t the case a couple of years ago.

In 2017, McLaren’s entry was overseen by Andretti Autosport which had won two of the previous three Indy 500s. They were the in-form team and Alonso effectively became their fourth driver. Only one McLaren employee, veteran engineer Neil Oatley, was involved in the effort, whereas McLaren is doing everything by itself this time around.

“The scale of the challenge this year is enormous,” says Gil de Ferran, McLaren’s sporting director. “We gave ourselves six months to set up an entire race team – and that means getting people and equipment – and we’re taking on some of the best race teams in the world. We know exactly how good they are because we were part of one two years ago!

“But we have a lot of quality and we have a lot of determination, and it’s amazing what you can achieve when you have those two things. We’ve moved mountains to get to this point, but there’s still a lot more work to do.”

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McLaren’s IndyCar programme was launched at the beginning of November 2018 and since then the team has grown exponentially, both in terms of personnel and equipment. Former Formula 1 team boss Bob Fernley has been tasked with overseeing the project.       

The team took delivery of its Dallara IR12 chassis early in the new year, and a skeleton staff installed Chevrolet’s 2.2-litre twin-turbo V6 engine and added Dallara’s oval aero kit at the McLaren Technology Centre in the UK. The complete car was shipped to America at the end of March.

“Given the timescale,” says Fernley, “this is one of the toughest jobs I’ve embarked upon in my career. You can’t overstate what we’ve had to do in such a short time and, in reality, it took until Indy’s open test day at the end of April for us to be operating at 100% of our capacity.”

The one-car team now has a staff of 20, each person hand-picked to do a specific job. No one has been pulled over from the F1 team, in accordance with Zak Brown’s desire for the Indy programme not to compromise the F1 team in any way.

The race car ran in anger for the first time at Indy’s Open Test Day on 24 April, although performance running was limited by rain and the need for Fernando to complete his ‘refresher course’, in which he had to lap consistently above set speeds. When bad light stopped play, he still had to complete 10 more laps above 215 mph, something that IndyCar will allow him to do when practice gets underway on Tuesday of this week.

“With every run we are learning new things,” explains Fernando, “but there’s still a lot to learn because we had a very short time on track.”

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To help fast-track preparations, McLaren has formed a temporary alliance with Carlin. The teams share data and the cars run together on track to give Fernando experience of running in traffic. Since the test ended, the chassis has been on a seven-post rig to fine-tune setup and Fernando has continued to rack up mileage on Chevrolet’s simulator in Charlotte.

“We now have a racing team,” says Fernando. “What we don’t have is on-track experience and that will only come when we do more miles. I’m very proud of the work we’ve done so far, but in a way the work has only just begun. I will use my experience from 2017 to help in every way that I can.”

Although McLaren Indy is new, it contains a lot of experience. Race engineer Andy Brown, for example, has won four Indy 500s during his 30-year career and chief mechanic Anton Julian has a heap of Indy silverware in his front room. Their experience alone will be invaluable during qualifying and the race.

“It’s a unique racetrack,” says Andy Brown. “The conditions can change from lap-to-lap, depending on the sun and the wind, and you’ve got to know how best to react to those changes. We haven’t done much running at the Speedway yet, so there’s a mountain to climb, but it’s one that we’re all looking forward to. And Fernando is a driver that every engineer would like to work with at some point in their career; I’m going to relish every moment.”

There’s not long to wait, with practice for the 103rd Indy 500 beginning on Tuesday 14 May. For McLaren Indy it marks the end of the build phase and the start of the race phase. The excitement is building.

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