In everything that matters outside points – team morale, confidence, swagger and momentum among them – Sunday’s on-track victory for Pato O’Ward and Arrow McLaren at Mid-Ohio represent a success two years in the making

If not more.

The hard work, though, may have only just begun.

Ultimately, Sunday’s 0.4993-second victory over championship leader and polesitter Alex Palou needs to become a repeatable feat, instead of a one-off novelty.

Sitting 70 points out of the championship lead with eight races left – six of them ovals, where O'Ward has won twice since 2021, compared to zero combined by those ahead of him (Palou and Will Power) – is plenty manageable ... if Arrow McLaren is now capable of flawless on-track performances more than once every year or two.

“As soon as we were done with Practice No. 2, I told the guys, ‘This is the best car that you’ve given me all year. Like, I have something to battle with, challenge with and to execute with in qualifying without feeling like a have a knife up to my throat,’” O’Ward said Sunday after his first on-track victory since Race 2 at Iowa Speedway in late-July 2022. “We showed that.

“We were 0.0024 (seconds) off of pole, and then in the race, we maximized where our car was stronger, and that’s how we got it done.”

How he did it: O’Ward edged Palou for first on-track win in nearly two years at Mid-Ohio

The ups and downs of Pato O'Ward

There was a time a couple years ago where what O’Ward and company did this weekend wasn’t common like it is at Penske and Ganassi, but it wasn't a surprise to see the team take a race by the horns. After a pole during his first full season in 2020, a year in which he didn’t win a race but finished 4^th in the championship, O’Ward followed it up in 2021 with a three-pole, two-win season where he was mathematically in the hunt for the Astor Cup at the green flag of the season finale.

In early-2022, O’Ward won again, his third in 17 starts, and coupled with a runner-up finish at the Indy 500 and a fifth career pole at Mid-Ohio at just 23 years old, it seemed greatness was just a matter of time. Over the two years since, in the midst of leadership changes, adding a third full-time car, more driver contract squabbles and the team becoming the flashiest, most well-funded, unmistakably brand-centric and fan-friendly team on the grid, that on-track luster was lost.

O’Ward even admitted post-race Sunday that his win later that season at Iowa wasn’t so much earned as it was a product of Josef Newgarden’s late-race mechanical failure after leading 148 of the first 235 laps. And between now and then, the only credited win for he or the team came in this year’s St. Pete season opener, granted six weeks after the fact when IndyCar officials ruled Team Penske cars had been equipped with software coding that gave them illegal access to overtake during starts and restarts of a race Newgarden dominated.

Between that Iowa victory nearly two years ago and Sunday, O’Ward had finished runner-up on-track six times (2023: St. Pete, Texas, IMS road course and Gateway; 2024: St. Pete and the Indy 500) and had done so two times (2022: Iowa Race 1 and the 500) since what feels like he and the team’s last truly earned victory at Barber in 2022.

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Eight times the team had taken the checkered flag second since being able to feel like they truly earned a victory on full merit – culminating in the images of O’Ward folded over his aeroscreen, tears bubbling to the surface underneath his helmet as the rest of his crew stood almost dumbfounded after Newgarden passed them for this year’s 500 victory with two corners to go.

Kanaan's heart to hearts with Pato O'Ward

Kanaan, the team’s sporting director, suffered through a pair of two-plus year winless droughts during his IndyCar career and said that in the six weeks since that painful 2^nd-place at IMS, he’d spent a considerable amount of time talking O’Ward off the ledge.

“You question yourself. The biggest part of my job isn’t to teach anyone how to drive. It’s to ensure (Pato) knows he hasn’t lost anything,” Kanaan told IndyStar Sunday post-race after celebrating with the team on IndyCar’s revamped Victory Podium. “The biggest part of my job after Indy was to not have him defeated for the rest of the year, and the only way you can convince a driver that is to tell them your experiences.

“I go, ‘Maybe I’m the best guy to be around you right now, because I tried (to win the 500) 12 times, and do you know how many of those I was close in? Six or seven, and he goes, ‘Wow. Okay.’ It doesn’t cure it, but it made it clear to him, ‘I can’t give up.’ We’ve got to keep putting ourselves in position.”

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Part of what Kanaan has added to the team’s chemistry since he was promoted in October of last year has been a frankness and a modern-day connection to the team’s drivers. As made clear by his role in recent team decisions -- the hiring and dismissals of David Malukas and Theo Pourchaire, along with rolling the dice on the young talents of Nolan Siegel and refusing to budge in negotiations with Alexander Rossi – Kanaan’s prepared to engage in tough conversations, draw the ire of the paddock and become the butt of some jokes, as long as it means the long-term improvement of Arrow McLaren.

Kanaan said he’s also shared those heart-to-hearts with O’Ward in recent weeks and months with the aim of holding everyone on the team accountable – including the team’s star driver making upwards of $4 million a year through 2027.

“It’s a fine line, and a very difficult one, because there has to be a level of trust between us two, because he can’t wonder if I’m something just to make him feel good or feel bad or put pressure on him,” Kanaan said of his growing relationship with Palou. “We got to that point where we’re pretty frank with each other, and it hasn’t always been easy.

“It’s not easy to call someone out when they can’t see what happened. You try and show them, because sometimes it is on you, even when that’s hard to accept. But other times, he’s done a good job, and we’ve let him down. It’s all been to keep him sane.”

‘I got his ass'

Sparked by a second practice of the weekend on Saturday where O’Ward and the team showed improvements in pace and balance by topping the charts – a noticeable overnight leap we haven’t often seen in 2024 – the now six-time race-winner flashed his trademark relaxed confidence in a press conference later that day, cracking jokes and showing a wry smile when talking about his pace.

That positivity was clear on-track the next day, when after Palou and Ganassi built a six-plus-second lead before the first round of pitstops, the driver of the No. 5 Chevy was undeterred.

“I was pushing so hard. Watching Palou kind of trying to run away with it in the first stint, I said, ‘No way, no way,’” O’Ward said post-race. “For some reason, they’re so quick on the primary tires. They’re in a different stratosphere, but I knew as soon as we got the reds on, that was my chance to close the gap and ultimately beat him.”

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Though Palou has seven runner-up finishes during his relatively short IndyCar career, not one of them comes to mind as a race he let slip away, let alone was overtaken completely on merit. And yet, that’s what we saw during that second stint, as Palou gingerly nursed his alternates that were showing blisters by the end. A cushion that stood at 5.5 seconds on Lap 32, with both on the same tire strategy, shrunk to 4.3 on Lap 39, 3.3 on Lap 48 and just 1.1 on Lap 52. Two laps later, O’Ward dove in for his second and final pitstop, and as he tore around the circuit on his out-lap and came around the final corner, he glanced to the left and could see Palou burning rubber out of his own pit box.

“I’ll tell you exactly what I was saying: ‘I got his ass,’” O’Ward said with a hearty laugh in his post-race presser. “The hard part is to get by the guy. After that, it turns more into a battle within yourself, just hitting your marks all the time and not making any mistakes.”

And toe-to-toe with the best the series has seen since 2021, O’Ward was every bit as strong, speedy, precise and tactical in the closing laps Sunday.

“You build this skill to turn cold whenever things don’t go your way. You always move forward, move forward, turn the page, turn the page,” O’Ward said. “But at some point, it will weigh you down because there’s so much sacrifice and energy and money that goes into this, so it made me so happy seeing (the team’s) faces at the podium.

“I could really tell that they know I drove my ass off, because they can tell in the telemetry, and honestly, that’s what they should expect from me because that’s what I expect from myself. Ultimately, there’s nothing like having a team of people behind you that truly trusts you 100% who know that when you have a chance, you’ll make it happen for them. That’s always been what I strive for, but sometimes, we need to look at our realities and sometimes bring that bar down a little bit to get to our objectives, and then bring it back up.”

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Kanaan, as he gave a full-body exhale and was simultaneously mobbed from behind by Brian Barnhart just outside the team’s transporters, seconded those stark realities of a team that has been through the ringer over the last year-plus but may be starting to come out the other side a legitimate title contender as the oval-heavy slate begins.

“You can talk about how we’ve been doing things right, and we can see that, but we’re in a sport where the results matter, so no matter how much you think you’re doing the right things, if you don’t win, you need that validation,” he said. “Although we don’t think we do, we always do, and we always will.

“You always question why you’re not winning. We’ve been through the fire the last few weeks, so I think things like this lift the whole spirit of the team and will take some weight off Gavin (Ward), myself and others who are trying to do the right things. It’s not easy competing against Ganassi and Penske. I think sometimes people take for granted how long they’ve been doing this and how young this team really is. Not that I needed some confirmation, but I kinda did, and this is another step in the right direction. We’ve got to keep digging.”

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: We'll find out if Pato O'Ward is again an IndyCar title contender