Alonso makes Indy car oval test return in Texas

Fernando Alonso hit the track for his first Indy car oval running since May 2017 on Tuesday at Texas Motor Speedway, kick-starting preparations for his second entry to the Indianapolis 500 later this year.

Alonso’s last Indy car running came in a private test at Barber Motorsports Park with Andretti Autosport last September, but the Spaniard has not completed any running on an oval since his impressive Indy 500 debut two years ago.

Alonso racked up a total of 106 laps on the 1.5-mile Texas Motor Speedway oval in Tuesday’s private test as McLaren made its first appearance with its in-house IndyCar team, having previously partnered with Andretti.

“It was definitely quite special,” Alonso told IndyCar.com after the test. “The oval is very different, so you feel really the banking and you feel the compression on the body. It's definitely physically different, the feeling you get, so that was interesting.

“It's a little bit more of an unknown situation for all of us. We believe in different philosophies in terms of setup and ways to prepare the cars. So we are experimenting those.

“We started with a baseline setup that we know has been used in the past, but slowly we tried to test different things. Today was the first day and in Indianapolis, it's going to be a little bit more deep into that.

“A lot of work on the simulator [has been done] as well to explore these different roads, and let's see what we can find.”

Alonso will get his next running in the #66 McLaren Chevrolet in the open test at Indianapolis Motor Speedway on April 24, with practice for the Indy 500 starting on May 14.