Fernando Alonso grew up in the 1990s in Spain, which then loved soccer and motorcycle racing above all other sports. So he did not see his first Indianapolis 500 until 2000, when he sat in his motor home at a Formula 3000 event in Monaco and watched Juan Pablo Montoya win at Indy.
“I didn’t get it,” Alonso, smiling, said this week in an interview in New York.
Alonso, then 18, had so many questions: What was it like to race on an oval instead of a road course? What skills did it take? How could the driver possibly make a difference?