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Villeneuve: McLaren's Indy 500 failure an important lesson for the team

Villeneuve: McLaren's Indy 500 failure an important lesson for the team

05-06-2019 12:07
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Jake Williams-Smith

Jacques Villeneuve believes that McLaren's failure to qualify for the 2019 Indy 500 is a huge lesson for the team.

Fernando Alonso's wait for motorsports 'Triple Crown' will have to wait for next year after McLaren was knocked out of this year's Indy 500 having failed to record a speed fast enough to qualify.

The team was knocked out by comparative minnows Juncos Racing at the hands of Kyle Kaiser, a team operating on a fraction of the budget McLaren had.

Villeneuve believes that the team's experience at Indianapolis will have provided an important lesson going forward as they look to try once again in 2020.

"I am sure this will be a lesson for everyone," he told Spain's Marca.

"This is probably the most difficult competition and they wanted to do it alone.

"You have to do it properly, and it's difficult to prepare for something like that with one race per year."

The 1997 F1 world champion also gave his support for Alonso in his efforts of becoming just the second man after Graham Hill to achieve the Triple Crown of a Le Mans 24 hours race victory, F1 world title and Indy 500 win.

"He knows he cannot beat all the records in Formula 1, so he can try to win a little bit of everything instead," the Canadian added.

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