Auto Motor und Sport reported today that Porsche came extremely close to signing Fernando Alonso to run their third car at Le Mans, but Honda blocked the pick at the last minute.
While McLaren isn't competing in the World Endurance Championship, Honda is—albeit in privateer LMP2s instead. The Porsche 919 runs in the LMP1-H class, but this was apparently close enough for Honda to say no to their driver running the Porsche.
Some speculate that Alonso's Formula One contract is with Honda, not McLaren. I suppose it would be like any other factory driver situation, then, where representatives of a company are generally not supposed to race other companies' cars.
So far, Nico Hulkenberg is the only driver officially on board for Porsche's third car, which will only run the 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps and the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
Because Alonso is out of the picture for Porsche, I'm assuming Button probably can't have a go, either. Former Sauber driver Adrian Sutil has been linked to the car, but was not picked for the seat, either. Porsche is sticking to their story that they'll pull from their GTE team instead for the third car, but they disproved that the second they hired Hulkenberg.
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