F1’s Fernando Alonso qualifies fifth for first Indy 500

It wasn’t entirely without drama, but Fernando Alonso has likely exceeded all expectations leading up to his first Indianapolis 500 with the Spaniard qualifying fifth on Sunday for the Greatest Spectacle in Racing.

The two-time Formula 1 champion has been on the provisional pole for a short time and believes he could have made a potential pole run if not for a turbo-booster issue during his four-lap effort.

The overboost occurred coming out of turn 4 during his first lap and caused the No. 29 to hit its rev limiter. That cost Alonso time on both his first and second timed laps and eroded his overall average.

“Well, yeah, the car was on the limit, but I don’t know if it was possible to be on pole position, but definitely very close,” Alonso said. “I had an overboost problem in lap 2 out of the last corner, and it was like hitting the brakes. I went one gear down and started again picking up the speed, and I crossed the line and it was 30.7 or something like that. When I thought it was 225 or something, I nearly came to the pit lane because this qualifying run is over with this problem. Still running, still putting the laps together, and then I was happily surprised with the total time.

“I think today the car performed better than yesterday already on the practice, it was very, very competitive, so yeah, probably we were close to pole position today.”

It was still a good recovery considering that his Andretti-McLaren team was forced to change engines between the warm-up practice session and qualifying. That engine had not turned a lap until the 35-year-old’s qualifying run.

“At one point in the morning we didn’t know if we were able to run in qualifying because we had to change the whole engine,” Alonso said. “But the team was amazing. They were guys from all six teams working on car 29 just to make it possible, so thanks to all that teamwork, I was able to go for qualifying.”