Fernando Alonso said no to Zak Brown’s suggestion of buying him an Indy 500 seat as he felt that would not be fair on a driver who had qualified for the race.
Alonso’s attempts at wrapping up motor racing’s Triple Crown ended last Sunday when he failed to qualify for the 2019 Indianapolis 500.
The double World Champion, who has already won the Monaco F1 Grand Prix and the 24 Hours of Le Mans, fell short on Sunday’s Last Row Bump Day.
Alonso was fourth fastest with only the top three qualifying for the race.
Arguably one of the more humiliating days of his and McLaren’s racing careers, Brown offered to buy Alonso a seat, reportedly targeting Oriol Servia’s Arrow Schmidt Peterson Motorsports drive.
He said no.
McLaren CEO Brown told The Associated Press: “Fernando has done nothing wrong, he needs to be in the race and should be in the race and we do have a lot of partners who would like to be in the race.
“Do we buy him a seat?
“Well, he said ‘I know what it takes to get into this race, it doesn’t feel right to me to take another driver out that has earned it because my team has bought the seat.’
“There is a lot of pride within Fernando and McLaren.”
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