The Grand Prix of Portland was yet another head-scratching event for one of the NTT IndyCar Series four biggest teams, as Arrow McLaren was absent when it mattered while setting the grid on Saturday and missing again in the final results for Sunday’s 110-lap race. Alexander Rossi qualified 17th and finished 12th. Pato O’Ward qualified 22nd and finished 15th. Nolan Siegel started 23rd and placed 21st.
The Chevy-powered squad is expected to be in the mix for poles, podiums and wins every weekend, but its recent form and fortunes have been puzzling as its last three races have been all over the proverbial map. The potential for quality outcomes has been within their grasp, but everything from powertrain issues to driver injury to spins and crashes and errant setups have blighted Arrow McLaren’s end-of-year results.
Throw in the team’s encouraging pace in practice at Portland — Rossi and O’Ward were in the top six just prior to qualifying — and its curious nosedive thereafter, and finding the metronomic consistency that make rivals like Chip Ganassi Racing and Team Penske a threat to win every pole and every race has been the team’s biggest challenge. Andretti Global, which fell behind Arrow McLaren in 2023, has also overtaken the team in the standings.
As an exasperated O’Ward — whose slim chances of fighting for the championship were lost with the 15th-place finish — shared after the Portland race, something’s either been missing or gone missing, and he isn’t sure which direction Arrow McLaren needs to go to find the answer.
“We can forget about the championship,” O’Ward told RACER. “Miserable, all three cars. The fact of the matter is, right now, we suck. Not because of effort. But because with this new tire, we didn’t seem to get it to engage, and then in the race, it was the opposite of qualifying. We couldn’t get the [primaries] to work, but we could get the [alternates] to work. So it’s just very confusing. It’s really frustrating. I’m glad we’re getting our asses kicked.”
The 25-year-old hopes the team-wide struggles at Portland lead to a thorough evaluation of what the outfit needs to do differently moving forward.
“I feel like in the past, it hasn’t been this aggressive or this bad, but this will force everyone to look deep at things,” O’Ward said. “If this doesn’t give us motivation, I don’t know what will. And the reality is, maybe in the years past, we weren’t at as big of a deficit — I just feel like the deficit seems to be bigger and bigger. We keep raising our bar, but sometimes we need to bring it back down to scoring points instead of always going big for wins.
“A top five almost feels like a win sometimes, and it’s just been a really tough battle. It’s been obviously frustrating in every way for the engineers; I know they feel the same way that I do. I know the mechanics feel the same way I do. Because it’s not a missing factor of effort. They all bust their asses. But we’re obviously missing something and quite frankly, we shouldn’t be. We shouldn’t be racing our asses off to be 15th.”
O’Ward’s frustration was presented with care and compassion for his team. Few drivers are loved more by their team than the Mexican, which also makes speaking the truth about the program’s deficits an important act in order to find the necessary improvements.
“I just want to get us out of the drowning feeling that we’re in right now,” he said. “I mean, Rossi and I were quite close; Nolan was close behind to me, and we made our way forward a little bit, but that was all strategy. I didn’t really pass one car. It really does suck. You know, we go into these championships always being in the conversation, ‘Ah, they’re a championship contender,’ but our reality is we’re not there. We’re not there.
“And I don’t think we’ve made a stride forward, at least in qualifying. My average position in qualifying last year was probably around fifth or sixth (6.29), and this year I know it’s worse (9.14). I made nine Fast Sixes last year. I’ve made three this year, and you obviously just make your life a lot harder starting at the back. But that really is our pace.
“At Toronto, we were very lucky that other people were making mistakes and we made our way forward, but our true pace was 15th to 18th. At Gateway, I felt like I had a rocket but we had a mechanical issue which put us out. And I’ve made my mistakes this year that have set us back. So we don’t deserve to be in the championship conversation.”
With the program’s lack of consistency, it’s entirely possible for the dreadful weekend in Portland to be met with front-running pace on Saturday and Sunday at the Milwaukee doubleheader. It’s hard to know which fate awaits O’Ward, Rossi and Siegel on the one-mile oval, but with his July win on Iowa’s 0.875-mile oval, O’Ward could be in the hunt for another victory if Arrow McLaren gets back to business.
More than anything, O’Ward does not want Portland and the other events where the team has missed the mark to be written off as anomalies. If it means they’re able to give Ganassi, Penske, and Andretti a proper championship challenge in 2025, O’Ward is willing to deal with more rough weekends to close the season if it leads to a brighter future.
“Something has to be found if we really want to be where we want to be, because we’re not going to go forward by staying at the at the same level,” he emphasized. “And not because we want to, but just because it seems like other people have made bigger gains than we have, or maybe we’ve had some losses with the changes in the evolution of the tires with the new hybrid and all that stuff.
“The changes force you to be agile and flexible with things, and I feel like that’s been a bit of a missing piece in our side, collectively. Myself included. To be fairly honest with you, this ass-beating that we’re getting is a must, because something has to change.”