Formula 1: Sebastien Bourdais makes bold claim about Fernando Alonso

Full-time IndyCar driver Sebastien Bourdais made a bold claim about Fernando Alonso and his Indianapolis 500 debut last season.

Four-time Champ Car champion Sebastien Bourdais, who drove full-time for Scuderia Toro Rosso in the 2008 Formula 1 season, made a bold claim about the experience of two-time Formula 1 champion Fernando Alonso in last year’s Indianapolis 500.

Alonso drove the #29 Honda, which was fielded by Andretti Autosport in a partnership with McLaren, Alonso’s Formula 1 team, in last year’s Indy 500. In partnering with Andretti Autosport to field an entry in the race for Alonso, who had never driven in an IndyCar race nor an oval race before in his career, McLaren ended a 38-year absence from the Indy 500.

Alonso qualified in fifth place for the race, and he made it until the 180th lap of the 200 scheduled laps around the four-turn, 2.5-mile Indianapolis Motor Speedway oval in Speedway, Indiana before his Honda engine failed. He led 27 of the 179 laps that he completed, but he had to settle for a 24th place finish.

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With recent talk about Alonso and McLaren potentially returning to the Indy 500 and even potentially making the move to IndyCar full-time next season, Bourdais made a bold claim about the 36-year-old Spaniard.

Bourdais was unable to race in the 2017 Indy 500 against Alonso due to the fact that he broke both his pelvis and his right hip in a crash that took place during his qualifying run for the race. He ended up being replaced by James Davison in the #18 Dale Coyne Racing Honda, and he ended up being sidelined for eight races in total while he recovered from his injuries.

Here is what Bourdais had to say about Alonso, according to Motorsport.com.

"“I think it is all to [Alonso’s] credit. His attempts here [at Le Mans], as well as at Indy, show that he’s a true motorsport lover and that he gives a special importance to heritage and its meaning. That’s truly noble from him, to my mind. [But at Indy] all Andretti cars are able to win, and he arrived in the perfect year with a product that was extremely well developed and extremely well controlled.“Proof of that is my engineer [Craig Hampson]. He used to work at Andretti and when he arrived, we destroyed it all with what he knew until I destroyed myself too [hitting the wall in the Indy 500 qualifying]! When they saw us coming, they all got worried because we had such a rocket…Fernando knows how to turn a steering wheel; he knows how to stick the foot down, too, so no, I wasn’t surprised at all. His car was so exceptional that honestly, he almost had it too easy!“I think that had he returned this year, he would have seen that ovals can sometimes be quite mighty. We’ve just been through a change in terms of aerokits and loads, and now it’s not flat out anymore at all. Even in quali, it’s complicated.”"

It is true that Andretti Autosport’s cars were all fast in last year’s Indy 500, and that certainly played to Alonso’s advantage. However, Alonso is one of the best race car drivers ever, as evidenced by the success he had in his first career IndyCar race and his first career oval race last year, so with the new UAK18 aero kit, he may have actually done better in this year’s Indy 500 since the whole idea of the new aero kit is to “put the driver back in the car”.

Even if Alonso wouldn’t have done as well as he did in last year’s Indy 500 in this year’s Indy 500 had he driven in it, it is extremely challenging to picture him struggling in a race in which driver skill is by far and away the most crucial factor.

That said, no one will know for sure unless Alonso returns to the Indy 500, which is something that many people believe that he will do next year for the 103rd running of the race. In fact, many people believe that he will leave Formula 1 and drive in IndyCar full-time next season, and they believe that McLaren will be the team for which he drives.

There are certainly a lot of moving parts to this whole situation right now, and there is certainly a lot of information that will likely be revealed in the coming weeks and months.

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If Fernando Alonso does end up returning to the Indianapolis 500 in 2019, do you believe that he will have as much success as he did when he drove in the race in 2017 even though the cars have new aero kits?