Chevrolet officials have told Autoweek the company is working closely with McLaren to help the team get up to speed for the 103rd Indianapolis 500.

When McLaren competed in the 101st Indy 500 in 2017, it was aligned with Honda’s Andretti Autosport providing engineering and crew support.

This time, however, McLaren is prepared to do it on its own, without aligning with an existing Chevrolet team that participates in the full NTT IndyCar Series. Chevy teams include Team Penske, Ed Carpenter Racing, Carlin and Juncos.

“We’re excited about adding Fernando Alonso for the Indianapolis 500,” Chevrolet director of motorsports competition Mark Kent told Autoweek. “We’ve been quite involved with McLaren behind the scenes. As with any sport, starting up a new team is a challenge. We’ve been working closely with them, assisting them, guiding them as to what we believe they need to do to be ready for the Indy 500.

“We look forward to the month of May and hopefully a good showing from them.”

A quick tour of the IndyCar paddock during the recent “spring training” test at Circuit of the Americas earlier this month revealed little crew movement involving McLaren. Last fall, when the team announced it would return to the Indianapolis 500 with two-time Formula 1 world champion Fernando Alonso in a one-race-only effort, Bob Fernley was named president of the Indy 500 operation. Since then, the only other name crewmember that has joined McLaren is Anton Julian, formerly with Andretti Autosport.

Julian’s brother is longtime Chip Ganassi Racing chief mechanic Blair Julian, who has been on Scott Dixon’s crew for all five of his IndyCar Series championships. Anton Julian was on Alonso’s McLaren crew in the 2017 Indy 500.

That leaves it up to Chevrolet to help support McLaren’s effort, but Kent indicated most of the work will have to come from McLaren.

“Our approach in IndyCar as well as NASCAR and everywhere else we race is we try to treat all of our teams equally,” Kent said. “There is no benefit to having ‘A’ teams or ‘B’ teams. That’s just a drain on resources.

“We are helping McLaren as much as we help all of the other teams and they, themselves, bring quite a depth of talent on the engineering side as well. I think we will see a strong effort from them.

“McLaren is still working on how they are trying to get to the 500. They are working with us and consulting with the other IndyCar teams to get as much knowledge and information as they can get.”

Kent said McLaren needs to have everything in order by early April to be ready for a run at the Indy 500 in May.

Team owner Roger Penske will not be providing direct support to McLaren but indicated that much of his team’s information is available to Chevrolet.

“Any advice that would flow to another team would go through Chevrolet,” Penske told Autoweek. “They have access to our data, so I would expect they will make that available to them.”

Honda officials in Japan had no interest in helping to support McLaren in its 2019 Indy 500 effort, and that prohibited Honda Performance Development from aligning with McLaren. That left Chevrolet as the manufacturer that McLaren would have to use to return to the Indianapolis 500.

With so few Chevrolet teams in IndyCar, it appeared Ed Carpenter Racing would be the team that would provide support to McLaren. Team owner Ed Carpenter, however, said the team will offer advice if asked but will not have an official alliance with McLaren.

“That’s not a part of our plan,” Carpenter told Autoweek. “I represent myself. All I know is I’m running the 20 car at Indy, Spencer Pigot is running the 21 and Ed Jones is running the 64 car at the Indy 500, and that is what we are getting prepared for and focused on.

“I don’t know what McLaren’s plans are and what they are doing, I know a couple of people involved but at this point, there is no connection to Ed Carpenter Racing.”

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