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I don't think it's a coincidence that F1 runs Monaco and Nascar runs Charlotte on the same weekend of Indy. It prevents any of their drivers heading to Indy and supporting a rival series. Which is a great shame. I bet if F1 and Nascar in particular left it a clear weekend we'd have a lot more crossovers happening. Although, Nascar it's not so important to run every race anymore, just a race win allows you into the playoffs.
Maybe Alonso's entrance will make other F1 drivers sit up and say, "hey what is this Indy 500, maybe I should give it a go"
There's so many practise sessions pre-race that Alonso will have done the full race many times over. If he's going to crash big time, it'll be before race day. Kurt did alright for his first time in a single seater. Honda have a great chance this year as well. I think this decision would not have been made until after the first 2 races of the Indycar season where Honda has shown strong pace for once. I bet he wouldn't be doing Indy if Penske were sitting 1-2-3-4 in qualifying like they were a couple of seasons ago in the first races.
He's going to have some strong competition from Penske, Dixon, RHR and the other Andretti boys, even Hinch. Ganassi's entire switch to Honda was about the Indy 500 and Dixon was dominant there in 2015 and came up short so you know they're hungry. Helio and Kanaan might be in there final 500's, Montoya has something to prove after being fired for Newgarden. Hinch and RHR were really strong last year and Munoz was fastest at the end but just ran out of time to catch Rossi.
Can't wait!
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