MOTORSPORT: No Bathurst for Alonso
World champ’s triple-crown bid won’t be topped off by Mount Panorama bidFernando Alonso will not be strapping into a Supercars racer any time soon.
It’s also highly likely that he will finish his career without ever racing in the Bathurst 1000.
There has been considerable speculation about a Bathurst wildcard start for the two-time world champion, fuelled by his former McLaren boss Zak Brown, who is one of the co-owners of the Walkinshaw-Andretti-United team.
“He wants to go and win all the big races, and he considers Bathurst to be one of those,” Brown said in March at the Australian Grand Prix.
“He remains very interested in Bathurst.”
But Alonso, face-to-face during the lead-up to this weekend’s 24 Hours of Le Mans race in France with Toyota, had a different view.
“No,” was his blunt reply when carsales asked him about a potential start at Mount Panorama.
With his grand prix career seemingly behind him, Alonso has been doing a lot of different things.
He has already won with Toyota at Le Mans and is hoping to add the World Endurance Championship to his list of successes, potentially with back-to-back victories in France with the Japanese company’s TS050 hybrid sports car.
Earlier his year Alonso won the Daytona 24-Hour race in the USA driving a Cadillac for Wayne Taylor Racing and, more recently, he had a test session in a Toyota HiLux racer from the Dakar rally in a potential pointer to a race start in the future.
The Spaniard is also committed to chasing victory in the Indianapolis 500, after a solid rookie year including 27 laps in the lead in 2018, before his disastrous non-qualifying effort with McLaren this year.
A win in the US classic would complete the ’Triple Crown’ success of World F1 championship, Le Mans and Indianapolis that his only previously been achieved by Graham Hill.
But his face-to-face reaction to the Supercars question was more surprise than excitement.
He was clearly blind-sided when asked about Australia, Supercars and Bathurst, during a brief encounter in the Toyota team base at Le Mans.
Given a moment to think, he was just tiny bit more open. Even so, he still gave no indication that he had even considered anything with Supercars.
“Maybe in the future. Not short term,” Alonso said.
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