Fernando Alonso remains in pole position to lead any future McLaren IndyCar project, according to Zak Brown.
McLaren ran their own single-car Indy 500 programme this year and failed to even qualify with Alonso, which Brown admitted was the result of a "lot of mistakes" and that any future programme would be done very differently.
"We learned a lot on what not to do this year in Indy," said Brown. "That was a rude awakening. I made a lot of mistakes in how I put that together.
"The reasons we want to go to Indy remain. That doesn’t change. I think when you have a failure you need to learn from it and grow. I think the easy thing is to not get back on the horse, but you can’t do that in life. I think you’ve got to dust yourself off and get back on the horse. So that too is under active review."
Brown revealed that a full-time entry is now looking more likely, rather than focusing on the Indy 500, though Alonso has expressed no desire in competing full-time but Brown remains hopeful of convincing him otherwise, insisting the Spaniard remains "top of the list" to drive for the team.
"We would do it differently – needless to say – than we did it this year. And if we did it I’d be more inclined to look to do it on a full-time basis than a one-off. I think having tried that, that’s a pretty tall order. Or certainly to go at it by yourself I think is too tall an order.
"I’d love to have him [Alonso] involved in an IndyCar program if we were to do it and he wants to do it. He’s undecided on what he wants to do next year. But if we were to go IndyCar racing and he wanted to do it of course he would be top of our list.
"He’s told me he doesn’t want to do a full season, but let’s see what happens when he’s at home for two weekends consecutively not driving a race car for the first time in 20 years. Personally I think he would enjoy IndyCar racing, but he’s told me at this point he doesn’t want to…
"He knows the commitment it would take. You’ve got to move to America etc, and Fernando’s an all-in or an all-out guy, so I think it’s more of a function of he’s been racing for this long, does he want to take a bit of time off and figure out what he wants to do?"
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