IndyCar: McLaren unlikely to race in 2018 Indianapolis 500

While McLaren made an Indianapolis 500 appearance with Fernando Alonso and the Andretti Autosport IndyCar team this past season, an entry in the race in 2018 is not likely.

In April of this year, McLaren announced that they would be pairing with the Andretti Autosport IndyCar team in this year’s Indianapolis 500 and that two-time Formula One champion Fernando Alonso, 36, would be the driver.

Alonso ended up driving the #29 McLaren-Honda Andretti Autosport Honda during the month of May. He ended up qualifying in 5th place for the 101st running of the race, but he finished back in 24th thanks to the fact that his engine failed with 21 laps to go. He managed to lead 27 of the race’s 200 laps, the third highest total among all drivers in the field.

Andretti Autosport IndyCar team owner Michael Andretti said today that he is hopeful that McLaren will come back to IndyCar next season and once again pair with his team to field an entry in the 2018 race.

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"“There’s still a good chance that McLaren can be at Indy with us next year, so we’ll see. Zak [Brown, McLaren CEO] is trying to get his house in order a little bit, but the plan is to do things together in the future, hopefully at Indy.”“We’re talking. I think we’re just waiting for the dust to settle and getting everything in order in Europe, and in Formula 1, and then hopefully we can talk about still doing something. There’s still a good possibility we could do something together.”"

However, McLaren CEO Zak Brown responded to those comments by saying that the team would likely not be coming to the Indianapolis 500 to field an entry for the 102nd running of the “Greatest Spectacle in Racing”.

"“Never say never but I think it’s less likely than more likely. When we return to Indy – and I think it is ‘when’ rather than ‘if’—we need to go with the same amount of competitiveness and fanfare that we created this year. We set a high bar so that won’t be easy.”“We aren’t interested in going to Indy just to go to Indy. We must go with a shot to win and a very high profile effort. Today, we are so focused on Formula 1 and what Fernando will do next year at Monaco with a very competitive race car.”“Things are moving along in a very positive direction and we hope to have a positive announcement regarding Fernando’s return very soon. Right now, we are laser-focused on getting our Formula 1 team back to its winning ways and we hope to start that process next year. A collaborative Indy 500 effort like we did this year [with Andretti Autosport] is something we continue to evaluate because we can turn pretty quickly.”“Starting our own IndyCar team is a completely different undertaking. We do have a desire for McLaren to race in IndyCar in the future. It’s a great racing series relevant to our brand. North America is an important marketplace for us. But I think that is a couple of years away.”“With all that we have going on right now, spending time on that will detract from our Formula One effort. We are years away from fielding an IndyCar team but it is something we are looking at would like to do. In the short term, we can see an Indy 500 program. It’s less likely in 2018 and more likely in 2019 and beyond.”"

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With McLaren switching from unreliable Honda engines to Renault engines in the 2018 Formula One season, the general assumption is that Fernando Alonso will be staying with the team anyway even though he has not officially signed with the team for next season, so that means a full-time IndyCar ride in 2018 would have to be ruled out.

Given the fact that the main reason for Alonso wanting to drive in this year’s Indianapolis 500 was the fact that his Formula One car was so uncompetitive, this also makes an Indy 500 run unlikely for him next season since Renault engines will likely perform better than the Honda engines that he has had to deal with over the past three seasons.