Arrow McLaren’s Pato O’Ward continues to be consistent, but has yet to find enough pace to fight for wins or even stand on the podium.
The 27-year-old Mexican has quietly delivered six top fives in eight races this season to slot fifth in the IndyCar Series championship standings, which is pretty close to the maximum all things considered. He’s six points behind teammate Christian Lundgaard (226-220), who has one win and three podiums on the season.
Not only has Chip Ganassi Racing’s Alex Palou continued to rattle off wins, with four thus far, the likes of Andretti Global have taken a significant step forward, and David Malukas has been the best driver for Team Penske despite also being its newest. Additionally, though, there have been little issues hindering O’Ward, from new personnel on his pit crew, to other things such as brake drag that “felt like a parachute” in the Indianapolis 500. Another was Chevrolet’s engine debacle that put every bowtie-powered team on the backfoot in Detroit last weekend; Honda swept the podium and O’Ward was the highest-finishing Chevy driver in fourth.
“Obviously Honda is a great competitor of ours,” O’Ward said. “Team Chevy has been so helpful to us in honestly everything that we’ve asked from them.
“I know the weekend was a bit stressful from their side as well with having to change the engines and stuff like that, with some supplier issue. They obviously are working hard to give us what we want and what we need. We’ve had a lot of these meetings that we’ve expressed, not just us at Arrow McLaren, but with the Penske and the ECR guys, of exactly with where we need to keep push and extracting.
“I think right now Honda’s got the upper hand, but doesn’t mean that we can’t catch up. It’s always been a pretty good rivalry, and you never know what to expect from every year. I think right now we’re still kind of trying to play catch-up, especially in these street courses where Honda always has been the lead.”
Arrow McLaren currently in a “transformation” stage
Pato O’Ward, Arrow McLaren
Photo by: Jake Galstad / Lumen via Getty Images
Arrow McLaren are also playing from behind after an off-season move into their new headquarters, which has allowed the Tony Kanaan-led team the opportunity to build various items in-house as opposed to outsourcing them.
“With transformation you can expect some other areas to be maybe a little bit more trouble for a short-term of time,” O’Ward said. “I think right now we are in that transformation, which is why maybe sometimes it can feel a little bit kind of like, ‘Hey, you know, I feel like we’ve gone backwards.’
“Sometimes you got to go backwards in order to go forwards, take a bigger step forward. I think that’s the best way I can explain it.
“It’s not a lack of effort at all. I know everyone here is working so hard. I know T.K. [Tony Kanaan] is pushing so hard along with Zak (Brown, CEO of McLaren Racing), and everybody that’s leading this team is working extremely, extremely hard and to give ourselves those opportunities.
“But we’re also realists, and we understand that some things do take time.”
There will be a good measuring stick for improvement this weekend, though, with the Bommarito 500 at World Wide Technology Raceway, a track O’Ward has five podiums, including four runner-ups, in seven career starts.
And sitting 107-points behind leader Palou, the reigning and four-time series champion, in the overall standings, O’Ward knows the time to push for silverware on race weekends is now if there’s any hope of a title push.
“We’ve just got to maximize every weekend, man,” O’Ward said. “They’ve obviously done a way better job than we have pretty much everywhere almost. That obviously isn’t going to cut it if we want to have a shot at the championship.
“So we need to raise our game, we need to stay focused, and we need to make sure that we not only are maximizing weekends, but when those are maximized weekends, they’ve got to be wins and podiums, because otherwise, I really do think we have no shot.”
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