Cheesy sayings might get annoying over time, but that doesn’t make them any less true. Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched, after all, would’ve been great advice for those in charge of booking ’s hospitality—now an extravagant monument to .
McLaren decided to run the Indianapolis 500 with Formula One star Fernando Alonso at the wheel, as an idea of what a full-time IndyCar team under the company’s banner could look like if it joins the series. Alonso ran the race in 2017, but came to this one with all of his faith in McLaren. (He should know, by now, .)
Sports Business Journal’s Adam Stern on Tuesday that McLaren also tacked a 150-guest hospitality program and a $50,000 rental onto its race attempt, despite the fact that and . After all, what could go wrong with a prestigious carmaker and global racing star’s attempt to qualify for a race he ?
As it turns out, everything can go wrong, . Alonso wound up at No. 34 in qualifying, after McLaren monumentally to stay above the cut line. If McLaren’s saga of errors, like its mistake in converting inches to the metric system while making car changes, was part of a racing-oriented sitcom, viewers would think the writers got carried away.
The hospitality must go on, though, since Stern said McLaren already paid for it. But rather than a celebration of McLaren’s success on the IndyCar grid, it’ll now be a reminder of how ambition means nothing without thorough preparation.
If anyone asks which team or driver the guests are cheering for now that there is no McLaren, though, they can always stuff some lobster in their mouths and wait until the subject changes.