Alex Palou Reveals Final Call on Zak Brown’s Lucrative F1 Offer Amid Ongoing $20,000,000 Legal Slugfest

The McLaren F1 team is doing wonders on the racetrack in comparison to the slow start that they had to the 2023 season. However, this is offset by the problems troubling their IndyCar team–Arrow McLaren. The Alex Palou fiasco is still going on in a full-blown manner with a $20 million lawsuit filed by McLaren CEO Zak Brown against the Spanish racer. Amid all this, Palou has given a final verdict on his side of the matter, which involves his possible F1 move.

Brown had offered the 26-year-old, 2-time IndyCar champion the role of a reserve driver for the McLaren F1 team. His duties would have begun by September 17, around the Singapore GP, and lasted for the rest of the season. But that has now taken an ugly turn as well. With the $20 million case in the background and Palou having unexpectedly increased commitments owing to his championship win this year with Chip Ganassi Racing, he has shut the door on a Formula 1 career.

Palou told The Race, “Yeah. First of all, it’s because I can’t, just because of the championship [win] and we’re going to LA now [for the end of season prizegiving next Sunday] and then we have some testing for the ’24 car [in IndyCar]. Yeah, the plan’s changed. I’m not going to go to any F1 races.”

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Though these disagreements and drama might seem very recent, Brown believes that all of it began sometime in May. And it was his fault for ignoring the red flags.

Zak Brown rues ignoring “cold feet” indications from Alex Palou

Zak Brown has been in the racing business for a long time. Before getting into the behind-the-scenes aspect of it, he was a professional racer. So he knows things in and out. With this experience, he is bound to have developed a very good sense of interpersonal interactions and dynamics. As per him, he has. Despite doing so, he ignored indications from Palou, who showed a volatile commitment.

“I had my suspicions; I’m pretty good at reading body language,” Brown told NBC at the Arrow McLaren hospitality. “I started having questions around the month of May in my own mind. Just body language. Conversations. It wasn’t really until Nashville that it confirmed my suspicions.”

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If Brown comes out on top in this legal battle, Palou and Chip Ganassi Racing are going to lose big, not just in terms of money but also reputation.