Parente's late change of plans
Alvaro Parente expected to race in Spain last weekend, but in a McLaren GT car, not a single-seater. As Glenn Freeman explains, however, his plans took a very unexpected twist
Around lunchtime last Thursday Alvaro Parente was at the Algarve circuit, working with his day job of developing McLaren's MP4-12C GT racer. The next morning, he was out on track again, but this time it was at Barcelona, and he was strapped into a GP2 car. As you can imagine, making that happen was a bit of a rush.
The former British F3 and World Series by Renault champion only heard of a potential mad Iberian dash on the previous evening, when he received a phone call from Racing Engineering GP2 boss Alfonso de Orleans Borbon offering him the seat vacated by the injured Christian Vietoris.
Share Or Save This Story
More from Glenn Freeman
F1 2019 game includes official driver transfers for first time
F1 testing: Toro Rosso's Albon on top, Mercedes starts to show pace
F1 testing: Raikkonen sets fastest lap so far, tops third morning
F1 testing: Leclerc ensures Ferrari fastest again on second morning
F1 testing: Ferrari and Sebastian Vettel dominate first morning
Michael Schumacher's top 10 F1 victories
F1 offers hints at grid penalty alternatives in new survey to fans
Autosport readers' final F1 2018 driver ratings ranking revealed
Latest news
How MotoGP’s new star is snatching the show from lengthy title duel
JA on F1 Podcast: What next for Daniel Ricciardo?
Szafnauer: Renault management cared about own careers more than Alpine F1 success
Alonso has a theory over F1’s safety car drought
Autosport Plus
Why Alpine’s rigorous training camp yields telling insights into its juniors
Can F2's relaxed title favourite prove a point to Alpine?
Why F1's junior logjam isn't entirely a product of current issues
Inside the racing university moulding F1 drivers and engineers alike
Subscribe and access Autosport.com with your ad-blocker.
From Formula 1 to MotoGP we report straight from the paddock because we love our sport, just like you. In order to keep delivering our expert journalism, our website uses advertising. Still, we want to give you the opportunity to enjoy an ad-free and tracker-free website and to continue using your adblocker.
You have 2 options:
- Become a subscriber.
- Disable your adblocker.