Fernando Alonso will be participating in all the races of World Endurance Championship for Toyota this year. One of the races was in clash to his Formula 1 commitments with McLaren, which was reschedule to accommodate the two-time Formula 1 world champion.
Formula 1 US Grand Prix race for season 2018 was in clash with WEC scheduled race at Fuji Speedway on October 14th.
Alonso was able to pull the schedule a week earlier so that he could race for both parties, Toyota and McLaren.
Being one of the biggest celebrity of the motorsport, Alonso had the appeal to influence FIA World Championship to get the race on his availability. This has never been done by FIA to move the schedule just to ensure the presence of one driver.
Alonso called it “awesome news”, as it will allow him to compete for two titles, WEC and Le Mans, simultaneously. He will be racing 27 races this year, 21 Grands Prix and six WEC, in 2018.
Toyota said: “Fantastic for our Japanese fans that Alonso can also race in Fuji due to WEC date changes.”
He will be competing for Toyota in 2019 for WEC races as long as the schedules doesn’t land in a conflict. He will be racing for three WEC races next year.
Zak Brown, McLaren Executive Director, he is optimistic about Alonso abilities and his commitments with McLaren won’t be affected by his new workload.
“Fernando is very well prepared, knows what it takes to be successful and he wouldn’t have taken on the additional commitment if he didn’t think he could do both at the highest level,” Brown said.
“It is no other agenda than he wants to race and he wants to win Le Mans.
“What would he be doing those weekends otherwise? He wouldn’t be testing an F1 car or on the simulator.
“We have everything we need out of him on the F1 front so these are weekends he’d either be in a go-kart or golfing or whatever he wants to do. He’ll just be in a WEC car. He wants to spend his spare time in race cars.”
But he insisted that F1 is Alonso’s top priority.
“While he is going to go there and try to win the championship, because that’s what he does, when you think of Fernando you think of him as a McLaren Formula 1 driver first and foremost.”
