Insider: Are Pato O'Ward and Arrow McLaren ready to end Penske and Ganassi's title run?
The last time Pato O’Ward held the IndyCar points lead, he’d just finished 2nd to Josef Newgarden on an oval, snatching control of the championship from a Ganassi driver who had stumbled a bit. The young Mexican driver was headed west, hoping for the best.
Sound familiar?
What followed were a series of weekends O’Ward described at the time as Arrow McLaren not ‘rolling off the truck’ with the pace and precision necessary to begin IndyCar’s increasingly condensed weekends to keep its first championship within reach.
Eighteen months later, with back-to-back runner-up finishes to kickoff his 2023 campaign, O’Ward finds himself wondering if the team’s consistency concerns are gone. Even with 15 podiums across his young IndyCar career, O’Ward’s near-miss on a win at Texas marks his first back-to-back podium performances across different weekends.
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More than half his podiums have come from double-dipping on doubleheader weekends – 2020 WWT Raceway, 2021 Texas, 2021 Detroit and 2022 Iowa – no surprise to Arrow McLaren fans who love how thoroughly dominant this team has proven it can be when it’s on.
It’s the times it’s not – 17 finishes for O’Ward outside the top-10 in that same span – that have kept the 23-year-old from hoisting the Astor Cup.
“It comes down to the mentality everybody’s got and the approach to every single weekend. We know we’re all fighting for a championship. Everyone wants to win it and is focused on maximizing the points, but it’s important not to forget the hunger you need everyone (to have) to make sure you maximize what you’ve got,” he told IndyStar this weekend ahead of Sunday’s Grand Prix of Long Beach. “Sometimes, that’s going to be a win. Sometimes, that’s going to be 3rd. Sometimes, it’s going to be 5th, and sometimes, it’s going to be 8th. You really don’t know where you’re going to stack up until you get into that first practice.”
Arrow McLaren’s 2023 pace at St. Pete and Texas has been easy to find, O'Ward said – somewhat of a surprise, given its rocky performance at The Thermal Club open test. There, Arrow McLaren was onboarding more than 40 new employees across a race team that had yet to iron out numerous role redundancies. Little things – like lost gloves and misplaced helmets – were falling through the cracks, as a team with a new driver (Alexander Rossi), a new team boss (Gavin Ward) and an entire new full-time program were just trying to find their collective footing.
Full-time entry growth, in a racing series where a single second can blanket most of the field in road or street course qualifying, can be painful in Year 1. For a team that has been searching how to do more than just give O’Ward a title-contending car since 2020, there were reasons to wonder if a jump up to three full-time cars had come too soon.
Instead, Arrow McLaren appears to have bucked the trend.
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“The level of pre-event work we’ve done even before the weekends have ultimately allowed us to run a bit smoother and allowed me to attack, extract and drive the car how I want and find what I need in qualifying in order to do well,” said O’Ward, who’s qualified 3rd (St. Pete) and 5th (Texas) thus far this year. “When you don’t roll off strong, you’re just automatically on the back foot, and that’s where things get really tough.”
O’Ward arrives at a track he's had a curious history with during his short career. In 2021, he was two races removed from that late-season championship lead that slipped away after finishes of 14th and 5th at Portland and Laguna Seca. A 45-point swing from Alex Palou had O’Ward in desperation mode. By Lap 2, having been rear-ended in the Turn 11 hairpin, his day – and season – were done. Last year, O’Ward found himself in somewhat contentious contract negotiations with McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown, who he ultimately hopes will hand him the keys to an F1 ride. Though he managed to finish 5th, on-track performance was by no means front of mind.
This year, should frustration mount, O’Ward says he has “the best guy I’ve ever had” on his radio in new strategist Will Anderson – a surprise, given the success, performance and results O’Ward saw in three years with the calm voice of ex-team boss Taylor Kiel, who left this offseason for a similar role at Chip Ganassi Racing.
“The change didn’t light a bulb in my head like, ‘Oh, this feels different,’” O’Ward said. “He’s the best guy I’ve ever had, and it feels like he’s been doing it for 60 years. I told him, and he feels super awkward about it, like, ‘Really? Are you sure?’ He’s been plug-and-play, perfect.”
Gavin Ward, who spent four years as Josef Newgarden’s race engineer winning a title and two runner-up finishes, after more than a decade with the Red Bull Formula 1 team, receives similar praise. The race director joined the team just months before Kiel’s unexpected exit and was promoted from Arrow McLaren’s director of trackside engineering. O’Ward sees someone willing to wear many hats and a boss with an emphasis on the human side of racing.
“This is more than just Gavin’s understanding on what it’s like to be in the shoes of an engineer. The guy has his foot in every department,” O’Ward said. “And where he’s been a massive help is just the support he gives us drivers when we need it. It might not be racecar-related, but schedule-related, mental-related, or maybe we just need a friend to talk to."
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With that support system in place, you can hear in O’Ward’s voice – even over the phone – how loose he feels and just how much has changed over the last 12 months. We’ll never know how the final lap-plus of Texas might’ve played out had Romain Grosjean not crashed, causing a race-ending yellow that prevented O’Ward from throwing down what he believes would’ve been a race-winning move. Looking at the lap chart, you’ll see the Arrow McLaren driver was credited with leading the final two green flag laps by a matter of inches, having seemingly perfected the draft and necessary run it would’ve taken to edge out Newgarden – who famously won on a final-corner move on Scott McLaughlin at Texas in 2022.
With his confidence and comfort rising, O'Ward's now checked the first box of someone capable of becoming the first non-Penske or Ganassi driver to win an IndyCar championship since 2012 (Andretti’s Ryan Hunter-Reay). Step 2, he says, is producing more of the same.
“We’ve just got to score more points than them week-in and week-out, bro,” O’Ward said. “It’s important not to get too lost in the championship and the points because there’s only so much you can control, and you’re wasting your time wanting to predict it. It’s not going to be what you think.
“But we want to win every weekend, and we’ve been freaking close the last two. We’ll take that same approach each weekend, and we’ll see where we stack up. As many resources as we’re putting into this team, it’s one thing to say it, but it’s another entirely to go out, perform and see those results.”
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: IndyCar: Pato O'Ward, Arrow McLaren ready to end Penske, Ganassi title run?
