Next week’s two-day test for the entire 27-car NTT IndyCar Series field at Sebring will feature a revised run plan for Arrow McLaren’s drivers and entries.
In light of the injury and sidelining of David Malukas with the No. 6 Chevy through at least the opening race of the season, Arrow McLaren will head to the Monday-Tuesday test with three cars and two drivers.
Although the team procured free agent Callum Ilott to handle hybrid testing duties on Wednesday to fill the spot reserved for Malukas, the former Juncos Hollinger Racing driver is unable to test for Arrow McLaren at Sebring due to conflicts with his FIA World Endurance Championship responsibilities with Hertz Team Jota in Qatar.
As such, the team has elected to send the Nos. 5, 6, and 7 Chevys to Sebring and put Pato O’Ward to work shaking down his No. 5 car and then switch over to the No. 6 which will be raced by whomever Arrow McLaren nominates for the March 8-10 event at St. Petersburg.
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The full-field test is an important one for all of IndyCar’s 10 season-long teams as it will represent the first outing for many drivers in cars that are outfitted with all of the 2024 hybrid-specification components, which include a number of lightweight drive train items, but not the energy recovery system itself.
Minus the ERS package—the motor generator unit and the supercapacitor energy storage system—the early-season chassis configuration weighs approximately 30 pounds less than the cars which contested the final race of 2023. Although the 10 teams were allowed to run one car in 2024 specifications at a Homestead-Miami test in January, and most teams cycled their drivers through those single cars over the three-day test, the Sebring test will give plenty of drivers the first opportunity to pilot their own car and with their full-season crew in charge of the vehicle.
“I’m looking forward to getting the season started, and this is the last chance we have to kind of get back in the groove – drivers, engineers, mechanics,” O’Ward said. “Getting the team flowing again is the most important thing. We get to test out a few more of the bits and pieces we’ve developed over the offseason to see what works and what doesn’t. Then we’ll try to arrive to St. Pete with the best package possible and roll off strong. I haven’t been to Sebring in a bit, but I’m excited to go back.”
Unrelated to Arrow McLaren, the identities of 25 of the 27 drivers who will run at Sebring are known, leaving only Dale Coyne Racing, which is participating in the test, to name its drivers for the last pre-season test of the year and for the following week’s curtain raiser in St. Petersburg.