The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
McLaren’s return to Indy 500 doomed by lack of preparation
INDIANAPOLIS — The comedy of errors that doomed McLaren’s disastrous return to the Indianapolis 500 began months before Fernando Alonso failed to qualify for the race. How bad was it? A week before Alonso’s first test in the car, the team realized it didn’t even have a steering wheel.
McLaren CEO Zak Brown acknowledged Monday the team was woefully unprepared and small oversights snowballed into the final result. Bob Fernley, the head of the operation, was fired hours after Alonso missed the race and Brown returned to England to digest the embarrassment.
Brown on Monday provided The Associated Press a detailed timeline of the bloopers and blunders that led to Alonso missing the race, the last piece the two-time Formula One champion needs in his quest to win motorsports’ version of the Triple Crown.
“I don’t think we came into this arrogant, I think we were unprepared,” Brown said. “We didn’t deserve to be in the race and it’s our own fault. It’s not like we showed up and gave our best. We defeated ourselves.”
The path to missing the 33-driver field began when the car was not ready the moment Texas Motor Speedway opened for the April test. Brown had personally secured a steering wheel the previous week from Cosworth to use for the test, and the mistakes piled up from there.
“We didn’t get out until midday, our steering wheel was not done on time, that’s just lack of preparation and project management organizational skills,” Brown said. “That’s where this whole thing fell down, in the project management. Zak Brown should not be digging around for steering wheels.”
A cosmetic issue at the Texas test haunted McLaren into last week at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
McLaren purchased a car from technical partner Carlin, and though the car was orange, it was not the proper McLaren “papaya orange.” It had to be repainted after the test, and that still had not been completed when Alonso crashed his McLaren-built car last Wednesday.
The Carlin spare was in a paint shop 30 minutes from the track, more than a month after McLaren complained about the color, and it ultimately cost McLaren almost two full days of track time. The team looked foolish as other teams were able to move into backup cars in mere hours; James Hinchcliffe crashed in Saturday qualifying and was back on track in his spare that afternoon.
Carlin was a two-car team when McLaren made its alliance but expanded to three for the Indy 500. Once Carlin took on the extra work, Brown said, the team had few resources to give McLaren.
“It was clear they weren’t capable of running three cars and serving us,” he said. Carlin entrants Max Chilton and Patricio O’Ward were the two other drivers who failed to qualify.
“I should have been closer to Indy but I could never compromise Formula One,” Brown said. “I am angry at myself because I was uncomfortable all the way up to the first test and I should have followed my instinct to get more involved.”