McLaren CEO Zak Brown has stressed that the team’s relationship with Fernando Alonso will not change, in spite of its Indianapolis 500 failure.
Alonso re-joined McLaren’s Formula 1 outfit in 2015 and spent four years competing for the squad, though struggled for results amid a lack of performance.
Alonso remained affiliated with McLaren for 2019 after stepping away from a Formula 1 race seat, remaining as a test driver and brand ambassador.
Alonso drove McLaren’s sole entry for the Indianapolis 500 but was unable to qualify after a litany of setbacks and overall lack of pace through the build-up.
“We have a great relationship with Fernando, he’s had lots of highs and lows with us, arguably more lows with us the last three or four seasons,” said Brown.
“He really enjoys McLaren and we really enjoy him, he sees what happens and sees how close we got on Sunday to making the show and the effort we went to put in.
“We’re disappointed but it won’t change the relationship between Alonso and McLaren.
“Of course he was as disappointed as we all were, we let him down and he’s a racer and he understands that Indianapolis is unique.
“He gave it everything he had and was great with the fans and media, and that’s exactly how he was internally he just wanted to be competitive.
“I think he’ll want to go back to Indianapolis, I think it would be great if we did it together but he’s on his way back to Switzerland and I’m sure he wants to unwind after a stressful few weeks.”
When asked whether he felt Alonso would want to enter the event again with McLaren, Brown said: “We haven’t got into that yet.
“I know Fernando very well and I think one of the reasons we get along as well as we do is that we know how he operates and 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.”
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