‘You feel the fear much more than F1’ - Brit Max Chilton on why he fears for Indy 500 rookie Fernando Alonso

Lap after lap last year, Max Chilton was metronomically pounding around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway oval, his foot to the floor throughout at an average lap speed of 230mph.

Fine-tuning his car in practice for the Indy 500, a short pit-stop resulted in a miniscule tweak to his Chip Ganassi car which affected the balance, causing him to misjudge turn two and plough into a concrete wall.

“It felt like being tackled by the entire England rugby squad all at the same time,” Chilton recalls. “I couldn’t feel my knees to start with.”

It is a snapshot of what awaits, an Indy 500 rookie a year ago, and this year’s most notable Brickyard debutant, Fernando Alonso, with whom the Briton once shared the grid in Formula One.

Alonso has opted to forego Sunday’s Monaco Grand Prix to tackle the United States’ most prestigious car race and, despite the Spaniard’s public protestations, Chilton insists he will be feeling the fear.

It is hard not to in a sport which has experienced, in recent years, the tragic deaths of two British drivers: two-time race winner Dan Wheldon in 2011 and Justin Wilson two years ago. “You feel the fear much more than in Formula One,” admits Chilton. “I think the quickest point in F1 is about 239 mph in Mexico, but there you slow down to 80mph at the next corner.

“At the Indy 500, the average lap is 230mph in qualifying, while it’s 225-230mph in the race - and that’s for 500 miles, with cars six inches apart and sometimes three or four wide. At the same time, you’re trying to keep your foot flat on the floor the entire time with a quarter of the downforce of an F1 car. It scares me and it scares everyone else. You don’t know when things will go wrong. You just hope for the best and try not to think about it.”

The 26-year-old, from Surrey, admits the transition from F1 to oval racing was not easy, although he remembers watching and thinking: “How hard can it be?” - only to get something of a wake-up call on the track. He had a season in IndyLights - IndyCar’s lower tier - to prepare himself, as well as full series races in 2016 to prepare for the main event.

Alonso, in contrast, is coming in cold. Having said that, the Spaniard has shown good form. He qualified fifth for Sunday’s race, in which Chilton - one of five Britons in the field - will start 12th.

“I’m a big Fernando Alonso fan: he’s the best driver there is,” says Chilton. “And he won’t struggle with the racing side of things... but it’s just different, the whole event, mentally, it’s just different and it takes time to get your head around it.”

Chilton has raced at motorsport’s other two jewels in the crown: the Monaco Grand Prix and the Le Mans 24-hours, but says there is a different level of intensity to the Indy 500.

“I remember doing the parade lap last year, three abreast with 11 rows of cars, and looking at the packed grandstands... and beyond that was the golf course in the background and it was just a sea of people as far as you could see. It’s such a big thing. If you win it, you’re never introduced in the US as anything other than Indy 500 winner. It just means that much. Then there’s the whole month-of-May thing and the build-up to it for weeks on end. I didn’t expect that, and that will take Fernando some getting used to.”

Chilton is of the opinion that in the McLaren Honda Andretti Motorsport car, Alonso has every chance of winning the race. But nothing can be taken for granted.

“One of my team-mates, Tony Kanaan, won it at his 14th attempt. He said, ‘You don’t pick the Indy 500, it picks you’ and I genuinely believe that to be true’,” says the Briton. “When it’s your time, it’s your time.

“Sure, Fernando could win it. He’s in the best car and he’s a great driver, but it’s about the strategy, about a lot of things - plus, I know there’s one British driver that would like to win it, too!”