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Webber 'turned down Alonso suggestion to race in Indy'

Former Red Bull driver Mark Webber has said he was never tempted by suggestions that he should compete in the Indianapolis 500.

And he revealed that one of those suggestions had come from Fernando Alonso, who is himself bidding to make the Indy 500 this month.

"Fernando still asked me to maybe try to do Indy, in Bahrain, yeah," Webber told Crash.net this week.

"I think I would do well in oval racing," he mused. "Rocky [Guillaume Rocquelin], who was Sebastian Vettel's engineer at Red Bull, said 'You would go really well on ovals'.

"He did a lot of work with Sebastien Bourdais at Newman/Haas, and he said 'Look Mark, you would be perfect for ovals'. I said 'Thanks, but I'm probably not going to try'."

Asked why he hadn't given it a go, Weber said that the idea simply hadn't appealed to him.

Webber hints Alonso could be about to quit McLaren

"I wasn't overly interested to go there. I have absolute respect, my heroes like Rick Mears and Mario and Al Unser. These guys, Roger Penske, Dario's a good friend of mine, Scott Dixon, Will Power.

I have maximum respect for those guys but it's something I didn't want, I never really wanted to go and see."

But Webber said he could understand the appeal to Alonso given the state of McLaren-Honda at the moment.

"Really hats off to him to give it a go," he said.

"[It's] born out of the frustration of his current situation clearly in Formula 1," Webber added. "He would not be doing it if he was winning races in Formula 1, we know that.

"Never a driver has had so much press with no results in Formula 1 this year," he said. "It's been a disaster campaign for him. I just wish him all the best and hope he has a good run over there."

GALLERY: Alonso's Indy 500 challenger

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.