Alonso's team mixes F1, IndyCar strategies

Fernando Alonso insists he is preparing for the Indy 500 like he would any grand prix but is using McLaren's "sophistication" to help fill in gaps in his knowledge.

While the entry is a McLaren-Honda-Andretti, it is Andretti taking the lead with six cars entered into this year's race. Racing for the team that won last year's 100th running provides Alonso with a competitive car, having failed to score a point in F1 so far this year.

• Exclusive Fernando Alonso interview: 'I will finish Indy as a better driver

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In a RACER exclusive, when asked how it feels to prepare for a race with machinery that offers him a realistic chance of victory, Alonso replied: "Well I think it's no different.

"It's not that you prepared differently for a race in Formula 1 knowing that you are not able to win that race, so you are [always] preparing that race in a perfect way just in case.

"Here I don't feel also that sense that I can win the race. I just prepare for the race as much as I can but knowing that I have a lower chance than some of the guys out there because when the moment of truth arrives I will be new and all those maneuvers and all those little tricks that they will use I will not be able to use, probably.

"So I try to prepare myself and try to prepare another way with some of the guys that we also brought here from the McLaren F1 team. They are now doing a lot of analysis, a lot of sector times and bringing some sophistication that we have there, some mathematics that we have there into the game.

"They try to talk to me even if we cannot apply those in the race because we need to follow the instinct of Andretti and how the races are here because we have zero experience. But it helps in my mind at least to have the theoretical way to go faster to the end and try to use that."

And Alonso explains his thirst for knowledge is to ensure he is as calm as possible in the race as scenarios unfold with which he's had no previous experience.

"The things we brought here are more background things that could help the set-up of the car, could help my understanding of the rules, understanding of what it's best to do if you're in the middle of the pack in the first quarter of the race, saving fuel, going to the front, falling to the back," he said.

"There are different things that seem to keep repeating over the years that have a benefit at the end of the race and that's pure mathematics. That's not for useful for the team, not very useful for the strategists, not very useful for anything. It's more for myself to have in my mind and be cool and relaxed at certain parts of the race if something is going in the direction that here is normal but maybe for me looks wrong. I need to understand that things are like this here."