McLaren CEO Zak Brown has stressed that the organisation must approach its venture at the Indianapolis 500 with humility, rather than rest on its Formula 1 laurels.
The operation announced last November that it will be tackling this year’s Indianapolis 500 with Fernando Alonso, as the Spaniard goes in search of the final piece of motorsport’s unofficial Triple Crown.
Alonso and McLaren most recently competed at the event in 2017, running competitively, though this was undertaken in conjunction with Andretti and Honda.
This time McLaren is creating its own operation which will be headed by ex-Force India chief Bob Fernley, while Gil de Ferran – having joined the Formula 1 squad in 2018 – is likely to be involved.
Brown, though, has emphasised that McLaren must adopt a humble approach to its new challenge, given the competition it will face.
"Those teams there in IndyCar are tough, they know exactly what they're doing," said Brown at the Autosport International Show.
"I think you can't come in thinking we're the Formula 1 team that knows all, that would be a dangerous way to approach the speedway.
"People like Roger Penske and Michael Andretti have won this race a lot and Fernando is very prepared, I'm talking to him quite often.
"Indianapolis is a difficult place that bites if you get it wrong.
“We've seen Rahal not qualify there before, Penske not qualify there before, Schmidt Peterson last year with [James] Hinchcliffe, you got to get your baseline right.
"So we're trying to think about winning the race as opposed to not qualifying for it, but those are the two different extremes.”
Brown nonetheless expressed confidence in the structure of the nascent outfit, outlining that several “very experienced” people will hold important positions.
“Bon has been back to Indy in the good ol' days, but he was brought in because he's a really good operator and knows his way around Indy, not necessarily the setup because obviously he's not been there in a while,” said Brown.
“He's in charge of making sure we hire the right people. We've yet to announce the individuals, but I can tell an engineer is one who's won the Indy 500 four times in about the last 15 years, so he's very current.
"We've got a crew chief that was on that was on Fernando's car in 2017, Michael [Andretti] was kind enough to let him join us.
"So we're building up a very experienced team using some of the hands that we have at McLaren, we've got people who put their hand up and said 'I'd like to be involved in IndyCar or have been involved in IndyCar in the past.
"And now I think we need to find Fernando a team-mate within another team so we can into some data-sharing.
"So I'm very confident it'll be difficult, but I'm also very confident we're going about it in a way that'll give Fernando a chance to win the Indy 500.”
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