Brown: I wouldn’t rule out Alonso testing our 2019 car

Asked if Alonso would drive the MCL34 during testing, Brown confirmed, “Yeah I wouldn’t rule that out. We’re still working through [the plan]. We know we’re doing Indianapolis together."

“We’d like him to be part of our racing programme because we’re also reviewing other forms of motorsport which has been widely noted, World Endurance, full season of IndyCar, and he’s certainly not done driving. So yeah we’re working through what a longer term relationship could look like.”

Alonso decided to quit Formula 1 at the end of this season so that he could focus on alternative challenges after a number of seasons with woeful cars which rendered one of the best drivers of his generation to back-of-the-grid anguish and frustration.

For next year, Brown and his team have swept the driver roster clean with Alonso and Stoffel Vandoorne out the F1 garage and bringing in Carlos Sainz and Lando Norris to spearhead yet another 'new era' for the Woking outfit.

While there is a theory that Alonso is actually to blame for much of the state of McLaren, Brown remains enthralled (or is it infatuated?) with the two times F1 World Champion.

But facts are facts, in 2017, Alonso in cahoots with his team management boasted the McLaren of that year was the best chassis on the grid and a decent engine would have him winning races.

Brown et al gobbled up the feedback, ditched free Honda engines and hundreds of millions, bought Renault PUs for tens of millions, bolted them on to their cars for 2018 and brazenly predicted they could match Red Bull and a win a race or two in the process.

As we all know, that fairytale script backfired grimly for them, and there lies the question: why bank on the veteran driver who must have been wrong in his assertion that the MCL32 chassis was the best on the grid?

Adding insult to injury was that its successor, the MCL33, was by Brown's admission "an extremely poor racecar."

But it was more than that, arguably the worst F1 car ever built by the team, and only Alonso's mighty talent gave their season a semblance of decency. Without them, they would have been ninth without a doubt. And that's what he does so well: drive the legs off anything you give him.

It would be fair to say that Alonso is more of a feisty Ayrton Senna than a cerebral Alain Prost.

Meanwhile, from within McLaren, word is that there is growing disenchantment in the trenches with the "Zak and Fernando" bromance, the general sentiment is that the team should allow the man from Oviedo to go on his adventures and leave him out of the Formula 1 team.

But Brown is keen to keep him in the fold, “Fernando’s extremely intelligent, very experienced, loves Formula 1, loves race tracks. If he’s not at a WEC race or not at a Formula 1 race he’s at an IndyCar race or is on go-kart tracks so I think we’ll have a hard time keeping him away from the race track."

“He likes the engineering development side, he’s not one of these drivers: just give me the steering wheel and I’ll drive. He likes the whole group."

“Indianapolis together was an example. He wants to know what’s going on, not just tell me where I need to be at the race track."

“I think you’ll see him around McLaren, he remains part of the family, so I think where his influence comes in is helping our two drivers, he knows Carlos pretty well, he’s got to know Lando very well."

“I think there’ll be a big benefit of his experience there, and then with the engineers just helping us all work together and understand what’s next year’s car is doing, and the feedback from the drivers, what would Fernando do in a certain situation, I think that experience will be very valuable to us.”

While Brown wants Alonso involved in testing there appears to be no place for him as a driver with the team for the foreseeable future, “We’ve got two race car drivers... So until we’re allowed to enter a third car I think it would be difficult to put him in a race team."

“We’ve got Carlos and Lando who are both very excited and under contract, so there are no race seats available. If he wants to test the car we’re certainly open-minded to get his feedback on the car and you kind of cross that bridge if he makes that phone call. But there’s not a seat,” explained the McLaren team chief.

The young guns stepping into the orange cockpits are also keen to tap into Alonso's expertise.

Norris said on the matter, "I think [his input] will be very valuable. He's got the best idea how the car's changed over the years, the best experience of what's good and what's bad, a lot more than I do," added the 19-year-old rookie.

Sainz echoed his new teammate, "It's something that for sure is in McLaren's interests, or also Fernando's interests to keep himself active. I would see it as a good thing to have a driver like Fernando comparing cars."

Alonso needs to take victory at the Indianapolis 500, to add to his F1 wins in Monaco (2006 and 2007) and the Le Mans 24 Hours last year to be the second driver to win the Triple Crown of Motorsport - to date, Graham Hill is the only driver in history to have achieved the feat.

https://www.grandprix247.com/2018/01/13/brown-i-like-to-think-we-have-a-winning-chance/