McLaren F1 boss labels Fernando Alonso fiasco as 'biggest mistake'

McLaren CEO Zak Brown has stated that the team’s failure to qualify for the 2019 Indianapolis 500 with Fernando Alonso stands as the biggest mistake of his career.

Alonso made a second attempt at the Indy 500 seven years ago, two years after his debut at the event.

With only 33 entry spots available, three cars were set to be bumped from the field at the end of qualifying. Alonso sat on the brink of elimination after his run before shockingly being displaced by the Juncos entry driven by Kyle Kaiser, a team that had a significantly lower budget than McLaren.

It was later revealed that a variety of errors, including the team’s response to a crash involving Alonso in practice, contributed to the disastrous outcome.

Brown described the episode as the most glaring public mistake of his career in team management.

“Especially in the early days, [there were] big obstacles. I made a lot of mistakes along the way, and I'm fine with that,” Brown told media including RacingNews365.

“I was saying to the team, 'mistakes are okay, just don't make the same one twice' because you learn from mistakes. 

“Probably my biggest, most public one - there have been a lot - but the most public one was not qualifying for the Indianapolis 500 with Fernando Alonso which, at the time, was the worst experience of my life.

“But I'm very proud of it. It sounds strange, but it's because of how we leaned in. 

“We learned from it. I owned it, it was my fault because I didn't get the right pieces in place, the right people in place. I didn't trust my instinct. All the things that I preach, I let myself down on.”

McLaren has since developed into a consistent front-running team in the IndyCar field.

While the setback was a major blip for Brown, he insisted the incident only made him stronger as a leader.

“I'm kind of glad it happened, because I won't let that mistake happen again,” he said. 

“Since then, we've finished second twice at the Indy 500, we've crashed going into the lead.  

“I remember when we didn't qualify, some people said 'Are you done now?'

“In racing, when you crash, you repair the car, you understand why you crashed, and you get right back in. That's what you do in racing. So that was certainly a big bump.”