Fernando Alonso's Indy 500 debut could be the start of McLaren returning to the iconic event with regularity and even possibly a "full-works" IndyCar operation, according to major shareholder Mansour Ojjeh.
Double world champion Alonso will miss this year's Monaco GP to compete at the Brickyard in a McLaren entry powered by Andretti Autosport and Honda. McLaren won the event three times in the 1970s -- with Mark Donahue winning with a Penske-built chassis in 1972 before Johnny Rutherford's wins in 1974 and 1976 -- but has not returned since the end of that decade.
Ojjeh is open to the idea of McLaren returning Stateside in a non-F1 capacity with regularity after Alonso's Indy 500 debut.
"I've attended the Indy 500, and I came away hugely impressed by the scope and scale of this enormous and well-organised event, and the sheer enthusiasm of the hundreds of thousands of fans in attendance," Ojjeh said. "More than 30 years [after McLaren's Indy 500 wins], I'm pleased and proud that we're about to embark on a new IndyCar era for McLaren, this time with Andretti Autosport and Honda.
"The Indy 500 is the only IndyCar race we'll be entering this year, but we may possibly repeat that in years to come and it's just possible that we may even run a full-works McLaren IndyCar operation at some point in the future. We'll see."
Though the Le Mans 24 Hours is one event on Ojjeh and McLaren's radar for the future, he was quick to play down the likelihood of that being in the near future.
"Equally, we may potentially enter the Le Mans 24 Hours again some time - we won it outright in 1995 with our iconic McLaren F1 GTR - but to be clear we have absolutely no definite plans to do so at this stage."