Gil de Ferran is one of the smartest men to step inside an IndyCar cockpit over the past quarter-century. Some feel that his deep-thinking approach occasionally counted against him – the guy had enough mental capacity to weigh up his chances while driving flat out, and probably missed out on wins while taking this calculated approach. Even in retrospect, while de Ferran is respected by all, connecting his brain to his heart and balls has created a disconnect with a sector of IndyCar faithful who want their heroes to be knife-between-the-teeth warriors, along the lines of a Bobby Unser, Tom Sneva or Paul Tracy.

De Ferran, instead, would use his knife to surgically dissect the art of being a racing driver, learn every aspect in the minutest detail, and then put what he learned into practice. He took the Mark Donohue or Al Unser approach… which can hardly be construed as a criticism.

Gil’s two years with Hall Racing and three years with Walker Racing, almost always as a solo entrant, inevitably taught him self-reliance. The Walker years, running on the highly unfashionable Goodyear tires, also taught him to study, study, study how to make the most of a package that was at a constant disadvantage compared with the Firestone-shod frontrunners.

So by the time Gil reached Team Penske in 2000, complete with the “Renske”– a Penske-modified Reynard – and Firestone tires, he had his arms around the subject of Indy car racing like few others before him. Yes, he was encountering a quite different chassis and a very different rubber compound, but he was armed with knowledge, and to fill the gaps in his data bank, he knew the right questions to ask, the right areas to probe.

If de Ferran therefore fully exploited the bountiful facilities on offer at The Captain’s raceshop, so too Penske, also coming off the back of several bad years on Goodyears, was able to take full advantage of the brainiac in the cockpit. Together they won the 2000 and ’01 CART IndyCar titles. Two years later, following Penske’s switch from CART to the Indy Racing League, de Ferran won the Indianapolis 500 and at season’s end, as runner-up in the championship, he quit open-wheel racing at the age of 35.

While that Indy triumph came using Toyota power, everything else in De Ferran’s life for the past 20 years – including trying to steady the wallowing BAR F1 ship and starting a new career as team owner/driver of Acura sportscars in the American Le Mans Series – has been Honda-centric. The one “anti-Honda” move he made was trying to ensure his protégé and former Acura teammate Simon Pagenaud ended up racing for Team Penske-Chevrolet.

That job done, it’s now de Ferran’s duty to try and help Fernando Alonso beat that combo, and 31 more, on Memorial Day Weekend at IMS. A couple of days after The Announcement that Shook the Motorsport World – but before GdF was confirmed as FA’s temporary driver coach – I had to call the France-born Brazilian for a totally different story. However, you can guess how the conversation started… and before I asked Mister Insightful about the enormity of Alonso’s task ahead, he first needed to revel in the enormity of the happening itself.

“I think it’s great, man!” he exclaimed. “This kind of initiative is really the kind of thing that moves the needle, and brings the Indy 500 closer to its rightful place in the history of the sport. It’s a shame for so long there have been clashes with the Monaco Grand Prix.

“You look at the ’60s and you see that the Indy 500 was where the greatest talents in racing came together once a year in a very challenging environment, which was very alien to some. And it was a significant factor in making the 500 as legendary as it is today. So to see that happen in the modern day is satisfying, very satisfying. A whole set of circumstances have conspired to allow it to happen; let’s be thankful that it has actually happened, and it isn’t one of those what-could-have-been stories.”

Indeed. But once Alonso straps in to that #29 Andretti Autosport-Honda, he’s going to be over the excitement – even if we onlookers remain transfixed – and he’s going to be soaking up intelligence from every source he can find. Can he do enough in the time available to have a genuine prospect of taking that second step toward achieving motorsport’s Triple Crown?

“Let’s start by saying that we’re talking about one of the greatest drivers ever in the sport,” de Ferran said without hesitation or qualification. “To be at that level, and from what I’ve observed, I think he has tremendous emotional control and also extremely acute feel for a racecar, and those two things are going to be very important factors and will serve him well. All those preparation days for the Indy 500 will require of him a great deal of patience, but also give him a chance to tune into the changes being made to the car, the changes happening to the track, the tires, and so on.

“So am I concerned that he maybe can’t do that? Not in the slightest.”

While several experts, including team owner Michael Andretti, have commented that IMS’s eight days of track action – nine if you include the hour on Carb Day – makes it the best event in which to make your IndyCar oval debut, de Ferran believes it’s the nature of the track that should play into Alonso’s hands.

“Indianapolis Motor Speedway, out of all the ovals, is a bit more of a super-quick road course than the shorter ones with higher banking and long radius corners,” he observed. “Of course it’s daunting to be lapping at 225-230mph between walls, but once you get used to that visual – which is definitely… quite extreme at first! – and you get control your self-preservation sensibilities, you then tend to forget the walls are there.

“You just drive to the limit of the car which is what every good racing driver does, and a guy of Fernando’s caliber will adapt, I have no doubts; if anyone can do it, he can. He’s going into a situation with a group of people who can support him very well; Andretti Autosport’s basic setup for Indy has proven to be very competitive; the Honda engine is frankly very good at superspeedways… So he has a lot of things going for him as well as his talent and work ethic.”

Every driver will tell you that the first encounter with dirty air from following cars into a turn at 220mph is an instinct-reliant, sphincter-pulsing moment at IMS, and most of Alonso’s rivals on May 28 have been quick to suggest that may be Alonso’s biggest challenge. Sure, he’s encountered aerowake-induced understeer trying to closely track a Lewis Hamilton or Sebastian Vettel through the Parabolica at Monza or 130R at Suzuka. But feeling the car almost hydroplaning in the dry while having his helmet buffeted by the wake of maybe five or six cars as he gently eases into Turn 1 is going to be a phenomenal headrush, even for a driver who has encountered most extremes in the sport.

De Ferran said the decision regarding when Alonso can first be allowed to play in traffic is something to play by ear and can’t be scheduled this far in advance.

“It’s a personal situation, really,” he said. “Entirely down to Fernando and the team. There’s no black and white, right way and wrong way.

“Each year, I liked to acclimatize myself to the Speedway by running quite a bit on my own to get a feel for the car and the track before adding another major factor like traffic. But I’ve seen other teams and drivers tackle it in a totally different manner. They presumably are thinking – quite accurately, I might say – that how the car handles in traffic will be one of the most important aspects of raceday, so they get right out there and work on that. They maybe only start to practice trimming out for qualifying the day before.

“So like I say, it’s all down to personal feel and observation.”

Although de Ferran understands that so many major and minor stars have to align to give a driver a chance of drinking the milk after 500 miles around IMS, he has no doubts about Alonso’s prospects and confirms that yes, everyone's excitement about this project is fully justified.

“Without question Fernando will be a winning contender,” he says. “Sometimes the race comes down to fuel mileage, sometimes outright pace, but he is a winning contender regardless. The team, the engine, and the fact that he’s one of the best drivers – not just present day, but ever – means that even though he’s a rookie, there’s no way you can discount him.”

I won’t. De Ferran may be a philosopher king, but his reasoning has always been grounded and fully thought through. He’s not going to make a prediction for the sake of fanfare, headlines and self-promotion. If he says Alonso can win, Alonso can win.

And if it does come to pass that the two-time Formula 1 World Champion and IndyCar super-rookie clinches the 101st Indianapolis 500, Mr. De Ferran will be among those – along with Zak Brown, Michael Andretti, Honda (Japan and US) and Mark Miles – who deserve a whole lot of credit.