How O’Ward and Lundgaard turned McLaren into Ganassi’s biggest threat

On Oct 3, 2025

Soon after the 2022 NTT IndyCar Series finale at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca, I fell into conversation with a team manager about the season just gone. A little further down the row of haulers, the confetti-covered No. 10 Chip Ganassi Racing-Honda was being loaded up, an hour or so after its occupant Alex Palou had wiped the floor with everyone in perhaps the most dominant performance of the season.

He was the outgoing champion – this Laguna throwdown had been his sole victory of the year and he had lacked the race-to-race consistency seen in his glorious sophomore season – but the majority of us largely put that down to two factors: Team Penske-Chevrolet was slightly better than Ganassi-Honda in ’22, and Palou had distracted himself with the farce surrounding his contractual obligations.

That spring/summer (depends on who you believe), you’ll recall Palou had come to an agreement with Zak Brown, CEO of McLaren, to switch from Ganassi to a papaya-’n’-black car. Chip Ganassi had then pointed out his latest champion had no right to be making such an agreement, but then had forgiven his driver, convinced him to stay on, and left Brown to go whistle. This new display of supremacy by Palou had completed the healing of a briefly fractured relationship.

“I guess days like today are why Chip fought so hard for Palou,” said this rival team manager. “He was incredible. You don’t want talent like that going to one of your rivals, especially not someone you don’t like! [The Brown/Ganassi mutual antipathy is no secret].

“But note this down, OK?… but don’t say it came from me, in case it pisses off my drivers and their people! Palou is not the only golden kid in his 20s available to McLaren. I’d say the next guy who’s going to join Palou, Pato [O’Ward] and [Colton] Herta in that bunch of young IndyCar stars is [Christian] Lundgaard. If I were Zak, I’d be going after him. If Lundgaard figures out ovals, he could be another Palou.”

My prescient companion pulled a wincing face. “Having O’Ward and Lundgaard on the same team – that would be fantastic. Finally that team would be able to justify the money being poured into it and start giving Chip and Roger [Penske] something to worry about on a regular basis, not just grabbing wins here and there.”

Well, 2025 suggests that process has started. Three years ago, it seemed a slightly early call on Lundgaard. Sure, he had been brilliant in the season’s second race on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course and had delivered a runner-up finish at the venue where he’d made a startling IndyCar debut one year earlier. And he had just capped the season with a fifth place at Laguna Seca… But those had been his only top five finishes of in ’22 (although he’d fully deserved his Rookie of the Year accolade), and anyway, his team Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing, has frequently excelled on the IMS road course.

The case for Lundgaard gained pace in his second season, with a first pole at, yes, you guessed it, Indy road course, and pole and first victory at Toronto. But RLL was only going to take him so far, and some would argue Lundgaard’s talent often flattered his equipment for three years. Someone who evidently agreed was Brown, who signed up the young Dane for 2025.

Lundgaard is RLL’s most recent winner courtesy of his Toronto win in 2023. It was those sort of performances that put him on Zak Brown’s radar, and the Dane moved to Arrow McLaren this year. Joe Skibinski/Penske Entertainment

And it appears my unnamed pal’s foresight hasn’t failed him: the combination of O’Ward, Lundgaard and Arrow McLaren-Chevrolet was hugely impressive this season past. O’Ward and Lundgaard finished second and fifth in the championship respectively, accumulated six podiums each, and two of O’Ward’s podiums were victories (Iowa 1 and Toronto). The result was that McLaren deposed Penske as Chevrolet’s top team across a 17-race season, and vaulted Andretti Global to grab P2 behind the Palou/Ganassi leviathan. So were McLaren’s lead drivers the dream combo? Race engineers Will Anderson and Chris Lawrence provide insight.

“It was a good year,” agrees Anderson, who has engineered O’Ward since the Mexican ace arrived in the team in 2020. “We always want more, and would like to be where the No. 10 car was. But yes, we made progress. In previous years, we’d had reliability issues but this year they were largely out of our control – the Nashville tire problem, for one. Performance-wise, I think we made a big step forward in consistency at tracks where we’d previously struggled to put it all together.

“So it was a promising step, but we need to continue making them. We’re trying to be a pain to the Ganassi group and the Penske group. Becoming the best Chevy team was notable because you couldn’t really say that in years past, but we all feel the need to be P1. We went to the championship banquet this year because Pato and Christian were both top-five, and it was cool to be a part of, because I think it made our desire even stronger: we want to be the team that’s celebrating all the wins and the Indy 500.”

Anderson’s point about improving at tracks where McLaren had previously struggled is well made, and the contrast was most stark at Portland International Raceway. In 2024, cars No. 7 (then driven by Alexander Rossi) and No. 5 (O’Ward) qualified 17th and 22nd respectively: in ’25, they would have locked out the front row, had it not been for Lundgaard taking a six-place grid penalty for an early engine change. O’Ward then led until an electrical issue, while Lundgaard finished a feisty runner-up, having held off a charging Palou.

“Yeah, Portland was fun – if we ignore Pato’s issue – and Toronto was another one where we improved a lot and won,” says Anderson. “OK, we probably didn’t have the Andretti cars’ street course pace in Toronto, but we improved a lot year on year, and had the pace whereby, when things went our way, we won. It’s fun to be part of a team that can make those improvements.”

Anderson (pictured with O’Ward) says that improved performances at what had previously been weaker tracks played a big part in Arrow McLaren’s step forward. Photo by Arrow McLaren

After six seasons together, Anderson derives a lot of satisfaction from witnessing firsthand the evolution of O’Ward to become one of the complete elite in IndyCar. He says: “It’s funny to look back and reflect on our first year working together compared with now. Both of us have matured and grown up in different aspects of our jobs. I think you really see it in Pato: he’s grown a lot more mentally strong, particularly in the races. Back then, if we weren’t a P1 car, he would still try to get us to P1 and sometimes mistakes would come with that, whereas this year and last, I’d say he’s taken a more [Scott] Dixon-esque approach, where if we’re only a P7 car, he’ll make sure we get at least that, but maybe try for a little bit better. If we’re not going to win, we’re still going to maximize our points each day. That’s where he’s matured the most… but actually, it’s where we’ve matured as a team, too, over the past five or six years.”

O’Ward has had strong teammates in that time, including someone who became a close friend, Felix Rosenqvist (“FRO”), as well as Rossi and now Lundgaard. Anderson describes his driver’s relationship with Lundgaard as “cool, because they have different upbringings and very different personalities. But they push each other in different ways, and each makes the other better. Pato learns from them all. He and FRO are obviously huge buddies, and he and Rossi also surprisingly became friends in the end. I didn’t see that one coming!

“Lundgaard and Pato… I couldn’t tell you if they’re friends, but I can say they work really well together and push each other, and they push the team to keep getting better.”

From the outside, it appeared that part of the team’s progress in 2025 was a result of its aces’ disparate driving techniques, requiring quite different setups on certain tracks. It became clear more rapidly when one car worked and the other didn’t, so whoever was slower gravitated toward his teammate over the course of practice and qualifying.

Anderson clarifies: “There are definitely road courses where Pato and Christian drive similar cars and other tracks where they didn’t like each other’s car and had to figure out the other one’s style. I think in years past, when Pato had an off-week, it looked like the whole team had an off-week, whereas this year if he didn’t quite have the pace in first practice and Lundgaard did – or vice versa – it was kinda like, ‘OK, that didn’t work but our teammate’s setup did.’ And yes, we could split test plans across the two cars, more so than we could in the past, and therefore maximize development and see which path worked.”

Lundgaard’s arrival has allowed the team to split test plans between its two main cars more than it could in years past. Joe Skibinski/Penske Entertainment

Another part of McLaren’s improved consistency this year was a result of the cars more frequently rolling off the trucks in a good setup window, so there were fewer occasions when radically different test plans between cars No. 5 and 7 were required.

“There’s been a lot of hard work by car-build and the engineers at the shop to provide better cars from the start of practice,” says Anderson, “and working with Pato as long as we have, we’re definitely getting more and more used to what he’s wanting from a car.

“Going back to Portland as an example of how the team works together, I think in first practice, Pato was ninth and he really wasn’t happy with how his car felt. But with Christian fastest, we were able to work the car in that direction and after qualifying, we were 1-2. So there I’d say it was a combination of the quality of the work by the guys putting the car together at the shop, and then familiarity with what Pato wants and how to adjust for his taste, and then the drivers working really well together.”

Chris Lawrence concurs. An IUPUI [Indiana University-Purdue University, Indiana] graduate, Lawrence switched from his role as the team’s simulation engineer to become race engineer for Rosenqvist in 2023, Rossi in ’24 and now Lundgaard. He says his drivers “couldn’t be more different,” and all have strengths and weaknesses.

“All three gave very good feedback,” he says, “but with each driver you need to understand their personality, and sometimes that involves interpreting what they’re saying into what they’re meaning! It’s not like they’re describing something that’s in ones and zeros, it’s about feel, and every person has a different way of explaining it. So although they’re all top level guys, it takes a while for the chemistry between race engineer and driver to turn the driver’s feel into a squiggly line on data, and then into a question like, ‘Am I going to change a rear spring for the next run?’ Each driver speaks a different language, just like their personalities are different.

“Felix was someone I could have gone to high school with – we reached that friendly personal level where we even thought the same things were funny. Alex was more of a professional in terms of he shows up, gives you what you need and then goes home: he needs his space. And then Christian is younger, still figuring out how he’s going to attack this sport, who he’s gonna be, and I think you saw that on the racetrack this past year. He really came out swinging and when we gave him the right racecar – like at Thermal – the way he took it to Palou was a standout statement.

“It’s been interesting to see him develop, learn what he’s going to be stubborn on, what he’s going to take feedback on.”

Lawrence says that Lundgaard operates very differently to drivers he’s worked with previously, but he’s enjoying watching the Dane mature as a driver. Photo by Arrow McLaren

That stubbornness, blended with a dose of mea culpa, produced one of his finest drives of 2025. A mistake in Turn 9 at Long Beach during the second round of qualifying saw him not only smash his car through the tire wall into concrete, but also bring out the red flag before O’Ward and their teammate Nolan Siegel could complete their final runs. Thus the three McLarens would line up ninth, 11th and 12th. Yet on race day, in his rebuilt No. 7, Lundgaard carved through the field, nursed his soft tires, preserved his push-to-pass boost, and emerged with a third place.

“Yeah, that was a fun one,” says Lawrence. “To execute both strategically and in his driving, it was very satisfying following a setback. And the same with Portland: taking pole but then having to start seventh was disappointing, but he still finished second.”

What was seen as a weakness back in 2022, his performance on ovals, has also notably improved. It may be still the softest part of Lundgaard’s game, but in the final three oval rounds – the second race at Iowa, Milwaukee and Nashville – it’s as if something clicked. He came from 22

nd on the grid to finish second at Iowa, at the Mile he climbed from 17th to sixth, while in the finale he qualified third, although a mechanical failure put him out early.

“I’d definitely say we had a breakthrough,” agrees Lawrence. “We had to look inward: was the car not giving Christian what he needed? We sat and discussed it, reviewing race footage with him. I’d ask him, ‘What were you thinking at this point of the race? What are you afraid of? Where are we oriented mentally?’ And I think the issue was that Christian had a backlog of oval experience in a team that had struggled, and as a really smart guy, he was drawing on the past. It’s hard to forget those three years, especially when they’re your first three years in this series, so they’re your only previous experience on ovals. How do you get over that and just trust that this year, this car is going to be able to do it? That was our breakthrough.”

Still, Lawrence feels the differences between Lundgaard and O’Ward varies greatly between track type, but doesn’t believe that alone is what pushed the team up the rankings in 2025. He feels it’s all about joint effort.

“Yes, I’d say on ovals, Christian and Pato are still wanting very different things,” he observes, “and that’s true of street courses, too. That’s a challenge we’ve had to navigate, whereas on road courses, they’re pretty well aligned. But this is a team sport and a better team result is never down to just one thing: it’s not just a new driver coming in, not just a new engineer, it’s about the collaboration.

Lawrence believes Arrow McLaren’s strong 2025 reflects the extent to which all parts of the team are pulling in the same direction. Chris Owens/Penske Entertainment

“So I’d say our improvement is not just because Christian’s here; it’s that Christian and Pato are working well together, Will and I are working well together, the team is investing a lot in our resources like the new building, and putting a focus on what we need technically. It’s all coming together, and I think hiring a guy like Christian is a symptom of us tackling the series in a holistic way. We can’t do this relying on one driver or one engineer.

“So our team’s strength has been learning how to evaluate our data in every session. Are we close, and we just need a small change? If not, if we’re really outside the window, we can leap to a teammate’s setup, or at least, setup philosophy. You have to put ego aside and realize that you didn’t nail it at the start of the weekend but we’re going to turn it around and lean on our teammates.”

Although Lundgaard didn’t earn a victory this year, Lawrence says he’s happier to have been competitive at a large number of tracks than having one of those seasons where a driver has a couple of peaks and then vast valleys of mediocre results. He remarks: “Although it’s great to win, from the engineering side I’m much more into processes so I don’t think a two-win season where your overall points finish is 12th or whatever is symptom of a good process or a mature championship-contending team. I’d much rather come to the track each weekend knowing I have a shot.”

One track where McLaren has appeared to have a shot every year since 2000 is Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and O’Ward has clocked five top-six finishes in the Indy 500, including two as runner-up. But as of now, the McLaren marque’s most recent win at IMS remains Johnny Rutherford’s 1976 triumph in the legendary M16. Anderson admits that the No. 5 squad’s nearly-but-not-quite results have been difficult to handle.