Zak Brown is spelled without the C. I blame this Zach guy who has all the images credited in the video. Also contains community submitted images!

McLaren’s sheer hubris, public humiliation, and their response to go full time instead of running away is an amazing and respectable story

People bash ovals, but fail to realize the razor thin margins of adjustments and driver input that needs to be made to make the difference. A 10th of a mph is everything at Indy.

Curious thing about Indy. The vast majority of fans were rooting for Fernando. I can't think of another sporting event where an interloper shows up and the fans root for them. No them vs. us. The general feeling seems to be "If you're going to go 240mph and turn left without lifting your right foot then....God's Speed Fernando."

My biggest complaint with Indycar is that the marketing and coverage suck. I remember TV cutting away from an Indycar race with a handful of laps left because they had to show live golf.

Fun fact: Both of the Indy 500's Alonso qualified for were won by Takuma Sato.

Being born and raised in Indianapolis is the reason I’m a huge fan of Motorsport. I remember as a kid my most favorite day of the year was the day my dad took me to the track for practice. I remember Christmas 1990 one of my presents was a race day ticket for the 1991 500. From about 1993 on I became more aware of F1 and started watching every so often. Because I was a Villeneuve fan I started watching every race religiously starting in 1996. I won’t say any one racing series is better than the other. Each series has its positives and negatives.

Apparently these newer generations have never heard of being able to complement somebody without s******* on somebody else

I think what is massively overlooked about this bump day qualifying of Alonso and McLaren. What many fans who are dismissive about Indycar spec nature is that the failure here wasn't about whether Fernando Alonso an extremely talented and exalted driver was good enough. No, what people really need to understand is that despite Indycar's spec nature, there is significant amount of engineering to get the car to run at peak qualifying, let alone avoiding bump day. The problem is Indycar series doesn't talk about the engineering of individual teams. The media generally talks about engineering as league when it's a safety or performance of a track. So nobody hears about the individual engineering differences between the teams and assumes that all the cars are the same. Not the case at all. Besides the choice of engines there's huge differences in dampers, which heavily effects the performance of the car. The top teams are more invested in the quality of their dampers, as well as the setups. It's not obvious to fans like it is with F1 where you can literally see the aero body and suspension stance changes. However as much as I've expressed about the significance of Indycar's engineering, the driver skill, talent and experience plays a bigger role in Indycar than F1. You can't put Verstappen in a Williams car and expect him to make podium, But you can put Palou in a DCR (Dale Coyne Racing) car and have a better chance of making podium. In a lot of ways the disparities between teams is actually very similar for both F1 and Indycar, both leagues have their podium teams and perennial backmarkers. The difference is that drivers have a better chance of overcoming whatever engineering deficiencies there are in Indycar. Still engineering matters, even if it's spec racing.

Alonso is the perfect candidate to be the second only to hill to win the triple crown

Yyooooo Aidan finally figured out how to pronounce Gil de Ferrans name

0:49 Surely Formula E is for F1 rejects these days! 😅

I remember how crazy this was, I almost couldn't have believed this the moment

Tribalism. The lowest form of conflict resolution. None more so obvious than seeing proverbial "fans" of motorsports up in arms over quite literally nothing but their egos. The best part is the fact that they are typically engaging in an argument that would remain completely unaffected with or without their opinions.

On the opening point. F1 to the majority of people represents motorsport as a whole. So when F1 sucks, they think motorsport sucks too. That's my reason for wanting to bring up different series' to people. It's a shame the series that arguably sucks the most for parity and actual racing, is the one that represents motorsport as a whole to the majority of people, at least outside of the United States. The general perception of motorsport would be a lot better in the alternate universe where e.g. WEC, Indycar, SRO GT3 etc were in that position, or at least were more mainstream. That's why fans of those get annoyed at how things are. Gatekeeping however I agree is counterproductive to trying to grow interest in a series.

The 500 miles of turning left is so accurate but also so wrong, I'm sure you have tried it in a sim and it's not as easy as they make it look, and doing that speed and keeping your foot in while others are crashjng takes some serious balls

Sebastien Bourdais was asked about the possibility of McLaren buying their way into the 500, and he said they shouldn’t bother; they’ll still have a slow car and will be miserable running at the back of the field all day.

I have always thought that Bump Day was as exciting as Race Day, with drivers often shedding tears of joy just to be in the last starting position of the Indianapolis 500. It still amazes me that some of the best drivers (Unser, Fittipaldi, Hinchcliffe, Alonzo, etc.) can be knocked out of the race, but no matter who you are, you still have to earn your spot on the grid.

I hope Alonso takes another crack at Indy. It would be great to see more F1 Champions race at Indy and fill in the extra cars if they can qualify.

It was very nice to see European motorsport elitists get served a fat slice of humble pie that day. Thankfully a lot of Euro fans aren't like this, but a large amount have this notion that IndyCar is some cute little series that requires no skill to succeed in, and that any F1 driver can just rock up and win immediately.

I was there for that Bump Day in 2019. You could feel the tension in the McLaren/Carlin garage that day. It was just one thing after another...the Texas test, Honda and Chevy hedging on an engine, having the car painted wrong, etc. Just a bad week altogether. One of my best moments, though, was getting Fernando's autograph in the garage area that day. I still got in my collection.

Yay.!!!More discussion of Indycar. Can't wait for the season opener at St. Pete

This will always be one of my favorite underdog stories in auto racing. Juncos Racing had no sponsors and have to turn a road course car to an oval car after it got wrecked during practice. After Kyle Kaiser and Juncos Racing bumped McLaren out one of their original sponsors came back onboard after getting free advertisement because the team was cash strapped on replacing pit uniforms. McLaren came to Indy and got humbled horribly bad.

Hey, it happens. Back in 1993 (Mansell's rookie year at Indy) Bobby Rahal was not only a past winner of the race but the series defending champion and he missed, which, though not an international story, is a lot more unlikely than a guy coming from another series with a new team and missing, even if the guy was an F1 champ. If I remember correctly, the Rahal-Hogan team made an attempt at building their own chassis that year and it just wasn't good enough. They ended up getting bumped and time ran out before he got another chance to get back in. It's a long time ago so I'm a little fuzzy on the exact details. I think the only reason there was a lot of fun in Alonso missing was nothing against Alonso. I think even IndyCar fans would have been disappointed to see Alonso miss because who doesn't want to see how an F1 champ would do at Indy, just out of curiosity, but F1 fans are so insufferable that it made Alonso's miss a cause of satisfaction.

Im literally the most open minded person if we talk about motorsports, I literally watch every single one of them, Indy, NASCAR, IMSA, F1, WEC, WRC, World of Outlaws, but if Alonso had a Honda he would have won without a doubt.

I remember watching the live timing of 2019 Bump Day while listening to the radio feed. As a recall, nobody gave Kaiser a chance in hell of making it with 4 laps to do in a thrown together ex-road course car. *I* didn't think Kaiser would do it until I saw the live timing at turn 4, lap 4. "Bloody hell," I thought "this is gonna be something once the fans get hold of it." Sadly, it was KK's best ever achievement in racing. He was overlooked when Juncos went full time in IndyCar and the seats went to Callum Ilott, and later Agustin Canapino. Kyle Kaiser gave up racing and now works as a financial analyst.

The other teams were watching them make these mistakes from the beggining, and offered help, but their Euro-elite crew didnt listen to anyone. They were running their garage like an F1 or euro feeder series garage. Here in the USA, its different on ovals. The entire operation from where and what parts you keep readily available and handy, changes on an oval as opposed to a street or road course. Things like where you keep equipment, what you have on hand, and the biggest, the backup car needs to be instanly available. Any change you make to your primary car should be immediately made to the backup. They didn't give a shit and their backup was down the street being painted while their primary car was a total mess. Afterall, they had to looks shiny and pretty on raceday. My dad works in the series and saw a lot of guys in orange realize that oval racing is 100x harder than they ever imagined. My comment isnt here to bash europeans, its bashing the errogance that team had, and their lack of respect for oval racing. Plenty from others people from other countries have come here, learned, and succeeded at ovals. Its very very technical, and difficult.

Brown has grown on me over the years. At first he seemed to be the typical loud boisterous yank. Now seems a very competent and sensible CEO/Team Principal/Mouthpiece for McLaren.

I will say while I couldn't have predicted McLaren 2019 effort to be the disaster it was, it was predictable that they would struggle. Zak Brown handled it well though and he earned alot of respect for that. I don't think most F1 bosses would have done the same.

Great video mate keep it up, always gives me smile when i come home from highschool and see aiden new video, and i always check it out, of not that day, than in the near future

Love the Indycar Content, especially enjoy hearing a europeans stance on the event.

In 2017, Fernando managed to get a high position because he entered with Andretti, a juggernaut, and had drivers and engineers who were extemely experienced at the Brickyard. One thing that many F1 fans don't understand about oval racing is how setup can be more important in order to go fast--you can't "carry" a bad car around an oval the same way you can on a road course, so Fernando benefitted massively with having 3 teammates who knew what he was doing. And one of his teammates ended up winning, former F1 star Takuma Sato, who won it again in 2020. His two other teammates, Ryan Hunter-Reay and Alexander Rossi, were 500 champions, too, though Rossi's win the year before in large part due to an extremely bold strategy by Bryan Herta ("clutch and coast"). Still, a lot of data and experience to draw from. So, Alonso's car was capable of winning. The engine failure was a luck of the draw and HPD had a string of failures since the beginning of the 2017 season. Otherwise, he did everything right. Speaking of 2017, I always like to show Scott Dixon's crash--where his car literally split in half--as a demonstration of how safe modern motorsport is, even during the pre-halo/aeroscreen era. Dixon "only" suffered a broken ankle. Then, after the 500, Lewis Hamilton had the nerve to use Alonso's strong performance as "proof" that Indycar isn't as good as F1, never mind that Fernando spent so much time learning and preparing for the race. The reason FA is one of the greatest of his generation is because he works extremely hard to understand how to extract the best performance from the car and how to drive the track. I remember how much Zak Brown and Alonso himself talked about watching an onboard of the previous year's race to see how things were done. I somehow knew that 2019 won't be his year. Drama with the engines was one thing (even though HPD and American Honda don't have beef with him but they had to still answer to the big bosses in Japan) so going back with Andretti was not an option. Without the comedy of errors, they could have made it, because FA was due to drive with a number 66, the car number that was on a McLaren chassis that won the race back in 1972. And yes, it was because of the arms race with aero that Indycar pulled the plug of the manufacturer aero kits. That had drama early on, too, with Honda going to Indycar to intervene so that they could catch up in development (the Indycar rulebook contains provisions for that). The IR-18 aero kit were actually improved in 2019 because the superspeedway package of 2018 was such that it created bad racing, mainly because it took out too much downforce and the drivers crank the bias the cars so far forwards that a lot of the crashes were to the rear end coming loose.

I'm an F1 and Indy fan. F1 cars are superior however Indycar is better racing. Best pure driving is probably in the WRC.

Wait Kyle Larson is going to try the Indy-Charlotte double. As a former nascar fan that’ll be fun to watch.

Hearing Gil de Ferran's name hurts right now. Crazy to think him and Fontana gone within in the same year.

This is why Indy 500 qualifying is my favorite qualifying session every year. It doesn't care about your reputation, success, etc. You have to qualify on merit to be one of the Fastest 33. Bump Day creates many great stories of success and failure Watching Graham Rahal get bumped 30 years after his father did was astromically mental

I don’t get motorsports elitism, I feel like this is a niche enough thing already and we don’t need to be bashing each other for our preferences. I have an older coworker who’s into NASCAR, and I grew up an Indycar/F1/rally fan. We might not understand each others sports, but every NASCAR race I ask how he’s doing in his fantasy draft and he tells me when he hears about something in my world (example, even NASCAR fans heard when Max got 10 in a row.)

I remember attending that race after qualifying; there was so much Alonso items at clearance prices while all the regular team items were at your regular prices.

The best part about the Kaiser wreck was some of the team was watching from the shop. They saw it happen and immediately started throwing spares in their pickup trucks. They rolled in with all these IndyCar body pieces in the bed of a truck and a guy in the back holding them making sure they don't fall out.

I will never understand knocking an oval track race car set-up for only turning left. In an oval track set-up every corner of the car is different, it has to be in order to maximize cornering speed. If you lose speed in the turns, you can't get it back on the straights easily. I can take an oval track car, give it 50/50 side bias. 50/50 front to rear. Some negative camber all the way around. Caster in the front, with some toe out. Equal tire pressure across the front, then on the rear. A touch rear brake bias. A little downforce and I'm on my way. It may not be the fastest right off, but I can go out and push the car enough to learn the next adjustments without knocking a wall down and hurting myself. I'll have a better feel of the car for those pesky right hand turns. Oval track racing the word we use that I rarely hear with road racers is split. As in "What kind of split you running in your front springs." And 'split' meaning the difference of the left and right or any particular adjustment. Again because EVERY corner of the car is different.

Excelent video. One opf the most interesting moments in the last few years in terms of motorsport. I agrre with you about the eliteesim and snobbery problem.

Not even F1 has run as long as The Indy 500 has

Great work, more than just a repaint of the car caused them to miss the race. You also nailed how many fans talk of their series in comparison to others. They all have pros and cons but fan is shot for fanatic and if we didn't have them what would we do with all the blank comment boxes?

I remember in the old days on Bump Day there'd be a guy who'd hang out of a window and shoot a starter's pistol signifying it was 5pm and the track was closed, except for the 1 car out qualifying. Bump Day used to equal riveting drama.

David land covered the saga from beginning to end and he was the first to predict it…

I watched the Indy 500 for the first time last year. It was FUCKING NUTS! Definitely going to watch it again.

Another wonderful one, Aidan. Definitely Alonzo was welcomed by all the Indycar fans and I know there's a hope he'll come back someday. BTW, small point. I think capacity at Indy is 400,000 including the infield. They may have only the second sellout ever this year. Ticket sales are running only a tad behind the sellout of 2016. I think that's close to 300,000 seats (not sure about that. Maybe closer to 250).

Aidan is always a touch of class and sanity! Thanks bud!.also endurance sports car racing is relevant to us mere mortals..

Man, open cockpit racing was cool and all, and we were all collectively weirded out by the halo, but god damn. Dixon was incredibly lucky but I'm super glad the halo is now a thing that exists.

While i dont agree with the idea that F1 drivers can just show up to another series and win immediately. The fact that the scenario has occured multiple times within a short timeframe only added to that belief for the f1 elitists. Hulkenberg winning Lemans on his first try in 2015 Jenson Button winning the 2018 Super GT Championship on his first try Alonso winning Lemans twice along with the Daytona 24H with another former F1 driver Kamui Kobayashi in 2018-19 And Pastor Maldonado (yes, really...) also winning the Daytona 24H in the LMP2 class in 2019

Great video! I enjoy both open wheel series equally. I did a video once explaining how much toll is taken on the human body comparing Indy to F1. Both are hard on the drivers and the car. F1 drivers get punished with up to 6’s under heavy braking. Most of the G Forces are lateral (side to side & front to back). In oval racing an Indycar driver can experience up tp 5.5 positive G’s on the banked ovals.Think of a fighter jet pulling 5.5 G’s in a turn. Or Think of it like driving through Eau Rouge and into Radion 4 times ever 40 seconds or so for 500 miles. They are both brutal.

i know f1 being embarassed is more a bait title, but for real more than that is the legendary effort of Juncos Racing, imo the biggest sports moment of 2019 in any sports, and its even crazier that it didn't turned into a movie... but the fact that he never returned neither no one in f1 tried again makes an excellent joke :D :D and they want to end the bump day as we know in favor of locked grid!!!

If I'm not mistaken Kaiser's car that bumped Alonso was later sold to Meyer Shank Racing and in 2021 Castroneves took that car to victory lane for his 4th win

Great job! The eye-opener for me as a Formula 1 fan vs. NASCAR drivers, was the old IROC series. I was astounded to see those oval track "guys who could only turn left (or right)" winning as often as not on road courses against endurance race drivers and other road course drivers. That was almost 5 decades ago now, but I have never doubted the abilities of any professional racing driver, regardless of venue. Driving a car fast in a controlled, high traffic setting requires monster skills regardless of whether it's open wheeled or closed wheeled, stock car, LMP, or F1.

I remember hearing about this but not really knowing what it was about. For what it’s worth I never thought the “wrong colour” thing cost Alonso a place on the grid, more it was symptomatic of a balls-up of an attempt.

Being a F1 follower since I was a kid (TIfosi, of course)... now i'm 36 and from time to time I watch the races because the passion for a team is soemthing that never fades away. But I fell in love with Indy due to Fernando's first run at Indy. Loved the race, the dynamic, the strategy, the colors of the cars. Everything was new for me. Last year, thanks to Canapino participation, I followed a complete Indy season for the first time. Followed the whole Month Of May for the Indy 500 and man... those guys made me remember why I love racing. The liveries, the celebration of a historical race like the 500... it's another championship insde the Indy championship. I have several friends who LOVED the race and are counting the days to watch the one this year. Canapino described Oval racing perfectly... it's another type of racing. Very subtle, very precise, it's totally different. For sure, Indy needs to improve in a lot of topics. But I really love the racing series and i think F1 should learn a thing or two about it.

Kaiser knocking out Alonso was a David vs Goliath moment and my favorite Indy 500 story ever

Crashing a car at jndy is an especially big deal. Teams spend all year getting as much friction out of the wheels and transmission, plus perfecti g the body work to eliminate as much drag as possible. As tight as the margins are, binning your race car is going to cost you no matter the team.

Jack Brabham's first attempt at the Indianapolis 500 came as the reigning World Drivers' Champion in 1961 when he and Cooper turned up with a rear engine car that started a revolution in a racing world then dominated by front engine roadsters. He qualified 17th and finished a credible 9th completing the full 200 laps in a car that only lacked for straight line speed.

I like Alonso but yeah being beaten by kaiser was certainly a story. I think it was briefly in the front page of the sports bit of the bbc website, which only ever covers Indycar when something bad happens. Unfortunately Lauda died shortly afterwards and that overshadowed everything.

I was there, in the media center / paddock that year. This is not a "comedy of errors" but rather massive McLaren screwups with consequences. 1) From the start, the consensus in Gasoline Alley that year was that McLaren was doomed. The Indy500 crowd might not be cool F1 folks, but they do know Indy 500. 2) Late start? Hell, no one in their garage until after the road course race??? 3) It was obvious to me that McLaren was trying to do this effort with pocket change -- using Carlin for tech support, for starters. They didn't hire people who even knew where to find orange paint or a steering wheel. This caused me to take a look at McLaren's finances, and yeah, that year, they were probably grim. Perhaps McLaren only had a Juncos budget??? 4) Gil told the presser (in response to my question!) that they would NOT buy their way in -- but at exactly that moment my editor told me that Zak was walking around with his checkbook trying to buy a ride.

And Mario Andretti became F1 camp after winning The 500

Funny thing to add to the Metric vs Imperial, as a veteran the US Army basically works exclusively in metric for distances. Mostly due to the Army needing to be able to function with allied militaries and not look like twats. In addition, I worked at Ford for repairs for a while and shocker there was a lot of Metric on those American cars.

The 2000 USGP had 200k but there were seating areas not open.

Turns out going 240 mph is hard lol

F1 fans ovals are too easy, also f1 fans parabolica is the most difficult single corner to get perfect

Attended my first Indy 500 in 2017. What a bonus to have Alonso competing. What an amazing experience! Watching them race at average speeds F1 never achieves even for seconds is quite something, and more appreciated seeing in person. Had a ring side seat for Dixon's unbelievable flight. Put it on your bucket list. You'll be glad you did.

I have a piece of Alonso's crashed sidepod that I picked up at a McLaren event.

According to the photo, he was going the WRONG DIRECTION.😅

There's people that have seen what the Indy 500 looks like on tv and then there's what it is really like being there. The cars loud and the speeds are violent. You can't get it watching it on tv and being stuck on f1 and how quiet and boring it is.

I mean, from the way the story is told I would almost say it's a case of the Indi-car being more about the bureaucratic exercise than about the race.... *(which is not actually true) in this case, Alonso's failure to qualify had nothing to do with him being a good or bad driver... the team, yes, could have prepared better, but not on the driver/mechanical side!

lol I like how you just described that crazy crash, but didn’t care enough to edit in a clip 😂

They actually lost the series the game after the Buckner incident.

The ball nutmegging Buckner is a wild and hilarious sentence. Cheers

I remember watching it and pissing myself laughing and that is coming from a life long F1 fan

So many mistakes from McLaren. I mean how hard is it to convert from freedom units to millimeters?

i watched last years indy 500. was my first one and my god you can just feel how important that race is and what prestige it holds. the daytona 500 doesnt even come close to it nor does monaco or any f1 race. i would even go as far as saying that the indy 500 is miles above the 24 hours of le mans

In my lifetime I’ve watched cars that were cobbled together from a parts bin, rule Indy “Buick V6”, never to win! Porsche bring an amazing program and fail miserably! Expectations high for this new stud who thought he was better than Mears, and Tracy was absolutely not good enough to carry Ricks lunch! This race has the need of highly skilled drivers with support from very specifically trained crews and enormous amounts of luck! I’ve seen guys I admired die in practice while holding pole position. Guys I despised win. Lost friends in the traffic mayhem of the post race evacuation from Speedway Indiana. I loved Indy, rule makers have ruined racing with rules, and bringing F1 drivers and designers just puts more Mario lifetimes onto a single win. This race belongs to AJ, Rick, Big Al. And no name will appear more on the trophy than Unser. This is the place for crushed dreams of F1 drivers it’s never easy, always hard and only a win for the very best and luckiest on that given day in May! All hail the king for a day, pack it up do it again, it is a love of racing here in Indy.

You can accuse the F1 guys of a lot of things - but since I'm Canadian and maybe I'm not seeing it but they have always been quite complimentary of Indycar or it's predecessor, CART. They also generally praise Super Formula. Some modern Indycar fans, particularly the "Oval Mafia", are incredibly dismissive of not only F1 but they continually deride Super Formula as a series of "bad road racing pay drivers". I recent years I've seen more of this than elitism from F1 fans. Sportscar fans also need to put a lid on the current elitism - not only has Sportscar racing been revived and collapsing since the end of the Group C era in 1992/1993 (how many reg changes are we at now? I lost count.), but their current prototypes are actually slower than Boy Racer Silhouette Super GT GT500 cars.

Thank you!

On the note of F1 drivers in Indy, there were also Villeneuve and Montoya who both won the Indy 500 before even becoming F1 drivers - I also just wanted an excuse to mention the legend that is JPM. 🤩👏

Thanks, I never knew the extent of the issues. BTW a Mars lander augered into the ground due to failure to convert inches to CM in the landing code.

What a great day this was…especially watching live.

Truly a moment indeed! Alright, F1 Elitists, do you have any excuses about this?

Same here, Aiden-all Canadians are bi-numeral; metric and imperial. Cheers from the Pacific West Coast of Canada.

This sheds a ton of light on what was going on in the background. McLaren showing up that unprepared is a joke.. I used to think it had alot more to do with Alonso, but I guess not.

Minor nitpick: we use the "US Customary System" in the US, not Imperial measurements. It's actually closer to the OLD Imperial system, before England changed it. That's why there are "long tons" (Imperial) and "short tons" (US), which are both different from metric "tonnes." We also use the Metric system pretty commonly as well in the US. Customary is more common for everyday measurements (weather forecast, cooking, etc.), while Metric is more common for science and industry. There are a few exceptions, like IndyCar setups, apparently. I don't know of anywhere that uses audio jacks that don't originally come from inch measurements though.

*Kyle Is Faster Than You*

I found that totally ridiculous that they were in upheaval about the tint of the orange instead of getting the damn car on the grid

It was hilarious these elites thought alonso was gonna come in and lap the entire field several times over😂 wah-wah

I love both F1 and Indycar.

You weren't kidding about that wreck, Jesus he was 20ft in the air.

I bought this diecast. Because even though it didn't qualify it is still historic. It was actually on sale which was kind of funny really.

Hilarious that Honda is now working with Fernando. Time and performance heals all as McLaren, Dennis and Fernando will tell you. Credit to Alonso for even being willing to do 500. Oval is terrifying.

Aidan, love your content. Knowing that you try and be as accurate as possible, he is some relevant information. The "Non sponsored Juncos car was in the teams standard Livery, they used in for at least one car in every open wheel series they run in. The Dallara is a metric car. I'm guessing that Zak was using some track notes that were not in metric. Converting them is standard for most teams. Zak's Cosworth comment, was he confused about Chevy or Honda, or just wishing that Chevy/Honda provided engines like Cosworth did, you know, like in the 1970's? If so, his arrogance bit him. I have a library of IMSA, (2013-2023) and INDY (2000-2022) photos available with no fees if they would be of use. Contact me with requests, I might just have what you need.

LOL - dpnt feel bad, as a "home mechanic" [ie, "Honey, can you fix this? We cant afford another one."] and I have to have two sets of tools [Metric and imperial] handy if I hope to get any projects done!

We use both in the USA too

A few of the more famous European Pre - war Championship and F1 Championship drivers that failed to qualify at Indy: Rudolf Caracciola, Chris Amon, Lucien Bianchi, Richie Ginther, Giuseppi Farina, Juan Manuel Fangio, Rene Dreyfus, Achille Varzi, Pedro Rodriguez, Tazio Nuvolari, Alberto Ascari. Just for fun.

The tl;dr of this is - British team turns up to turn left, Carry On film ensues.

Anyone who has watched the Indy 500 knows the last 20, 10 and 5 laps the field ramps up the aggressiveness to the point where they are absolutely willing to risk crashing to win. He never got to see those laps in 2017. I still wonder how Alonso would have coped with that... While I like to think he'd have ramped up with it, we'll seemingly never know. :(