January is nearly over, and the 2025 IndyCar season is a smidge more than a month away. Thirty-two days are all that separate this moment from the first green flag of the season in St. Petersburg. We still have over half the grid to preview.
We end January looking at a race-winning team who is hoping to achieve so much more. Arrow McLaren stepped up in 2024 after having a disappointing 2023 season. Patricio O'Ward showed he is still a brilliant talent and got McLaren back on the top step after a lengthy drought. O’Ward cemented himself as one of IndyCar's best personalities as well. Unfortunately, the team's woes were not completely cured. McLaren had one car working but struggled to have multiple contenders at one time.
There has been one driver change and a part-timer will be a full-timer. However, this team is still one man.
At First Glance... It is Patricio O'Ward and friends
For all the work McLaren has done in IndyCar, no one has had more success with the team than O'Ward. Arguably, O'Ward is the only driver to have success in the McLaren era of this organization.
Since 2020, O'Ward has finished in the top five of the championship in four of five seasons and his worst championship finish has been seventh. The Mexican driver has seven victories, 26 podium finishes and 38 top five finishes. He has done all this in 78 starts.
Over that same time period, all the other McLaren drivers have combined for zero victories, six podium finishes and 17 top five finishes. The best championship finish for a McLaren driver not named O'Ward is eighth.
McLaren goes as far as O'Ward goes, and that shouldn't be the case for a team that believes it should be considered one of IndyCar's "Big Four" and be a perennial championship contender.
For all that McLaren has put into its IndyCar program, it is still too top heavy. It has not helped that the tea has not been able to find a suitable teammate to form a 1-2 punch. O'Ward has had effectively four different regular teammates in five seasons. That is not considering the likes of Callum Ilott and Théo Pourchaire, who rotated through the #6 Chevrolet last season before the team settled on Nolan Siegel, nor is it considering the Indianapolis 500 one-offs in Fernando Alonso, Juan Pablo Montoya, Tony Kanaan and Kyle Larson, nor is it accounting for the time Hélio Castroneves ran the Harvest Grand Prix doubleheader in place of Oliver Askew in 2020.
You would think in five seasons McLaren would have found a solid driver to form a partnership with one of the best young talents to come out of the Road to Indy system in the last 25 years. That has remained elusive as has the greatest results.
Enter Christian Lundgaard, a driver who once took Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing to eighth in the championship and won a race when the team was not at its strongest. Lundgaard lifted RLLR to a higher level. He could not cure all the team's woes but he made them competitive.
McLaren is a step up from RLLR, but we have seen plenty of promising drivers enter McLaren and quickly be out the door. Askew didn't get a second season despite finishing on the podium in his fifth career race. Felix Rosenqvist had three seasons, but very well could have been done after two if the Álex Palou contract fiasco had not played out. Alexander Rossi was done after two seasons and he finished in the top ten in the championship in both.
There is a short leash, and Lundgaard is not going to get any additional slack. The Dane could be the missing piece. We have already seen him do more with less. But we thought Rosenqvist was the missing pieces and we thought Rossi was the missing piece. It is difficult to believe the third time will be the charm.
There is no reason to believe O'Ward will be threatened within this organization. This is his team. Lundgaard must be spectacular to come close. Siegel's inclusion in this trio remains a bit of a mystery. For all the good we saw in Indy Lights, there was nothing suggesting Siegel was a can't-miss talent that required the rush to IndyCar.
For Lundgaard, he must be on O'Ward's heels. For Siegel, he must at least look competent. No matter what, all eyes are on O'Ward to set the mark for McLaren. If he gets any support, it will be an added bonus.
2024 Arrow McLaren Review
Wins: 3 (St. Petersburg, Mid-Ohio, Milwaukee I)
Poles: 0
Best Start: 2nd (Mid-Ohio)
Championship Finishes: 5th (Patricio O'Ward), 10th (Alexander Rossi), 23rd (Nolan Siegel), 28th (Théo Pourchaire), 33rd (Callum Ilott), 36th (Kyle Larson)
Patricio O'Ward - #5 Arrow Chevrolet
Numbers to Remember:
6: Finishes of first or second in 2024
0: Finishes of third, fourth or fifth in 2024
178.8: Average number of laps led in a season since 2020
What does a championship season look like for him?
O'Ward doing his very best on a regular basis and the off days being non-existent. It is a season where O'Ward wins early, wins in the middle of the season, and he wins late as well. Every weekend, his name is being mentioned, but for good.
There are next to no weekends where O'Ward is mentioned for something going wrong, whether that be an accident, a pit lane issue or a mechanical issue. A bad day would be a 12th-place finish.
The season would start with at least a podium finish but victory would come in one of the first three races and that would put O'Ward in the championship lead early. Every race weekend, we would be checking to see if anyone could overtake O'Ward, but he keeps finishing in the top five. Some might pull some points back, but nobody would be taking big chunks out of the deficit.
The defining moment would be an Indianapolis 500 victory. After years of close calls, this is O'Ward's year and it leads him to be the clear man to beat in the championship. He follows it up with a victory in Detroit, doing something that had not been done in 25 years, and another victory in Gateway makes the championship appear to be a forgone conclusion.
O'Ward settles down over summer, but is never far off the front. He wins another pair of races before we get to Nashville and the championship trophy is either already his or firmly in his grasp.
What does a realistic season look like for him?
The dream season is realistic for O'Ward. It only requires something we have yet to see from him and the organization. Until the two parties can put together a full 17-race season, it is hard to imagine how they can clinically take a championship and make the rest of the competition look amateur.
You can pencil in a victory or two or maybe even three, but when it comes to O'Ward, there are at least two or three results outside the top 18 that are not too far away. Some are his fault, others are inexplicable. They aren't going away overnight.
It could work out where O'Ward can pull off four victories, eight podium finishes and 14 top ten finishes and those cancel out those two or three bad days while the rest of the competition take victories and podiums off one another and it allows to O'Ward to sneak through as champion. That is unlikely to happen.
He is going to win a race. He is going to be at the front. He will be in the top five of the championship. If O'Ward is at his very best, he can achieve greatness. If is slightly off, it will be another good but unfulfilled season.
Nolan Siegel - #6 Arrow Chevrolet
Numbers to Remember:
4: Lead lap finishes in 12 starts last season
0: Lead laps finishes in his final six starts
4: Times finishing as the top rookie in a race
What does a championship season look like for him?
McLaren being the best team in IndyCar and all three cars are at the front. If Siegel is champion, the entire McLaren team is at the front, and he is likely ahead of O'Ward because O'Ward missed some races. Filling the vacuum is the American few believe in, but after opening the season as the third of the three McLaren drivers, when O'Ward goes down, Siegel raises his game.
An unthinkable victory comes in the first race sans O'Ward. Siegel keeps it up with another podium finish and then another top five. A second victory makes it four consecutive top five results. Each race, Siegel is moving up the championship. He wins a pair of races in July, including at his home race of Laguna Seca, and he is on the edge of the playoff picture entering August.
Siegel ends his season with finishes of second, first and first and takes an improbable championship with O'Ward running at wingman down the stretch to clinch the Astor Cup for the organization.
What does a realistic season look like for him?
Unfortunately for McLaren drivers, underwhelming results are common place in the organization.
In his 12 starts last season across three different organizations, Siegel's average points per start was 12.833. Extrapolated over 17 races and he was on pace for 218 points, good enough for only 19th in the championship and more than 30 points off 18th.
With more time in the car and with the team, Siegel should do better than that, but expectations will not be for him living in O'Ward or Lundgaard's shadow. There will be daylight between those two and Siegel. His average finish in ten races with McLaren was 16.4. That should improve, but being somewhere between 12th and 15th isn't what McLaren is aiming for.
He will get his top ten finishes. If things fall right, Siegel could get a top five result, but for most of 2025 Siegel will be somewhere in the middle of the pack and have us wondering if he is really in the plans for 2026.
Christian Lundgaard - #7 Arrow Chevrolet
Numbers to Remember:
4: Finishes outside the top twenty in 52 career starts
16.882: Average finish in 17 career oval starts
9.9714: Average finish in 35 road/street course starts
What does a championship season look like for him?
Lundgaard transitioning to McLaren and it being the change that complements his driving style and pace. He is in lockstep with O'Ward from the start of the season. They are constantly within a position of one another in qualifying and the races. Everyone is impressed but they aren't taking Lundgaard too seriously as a threat.
Then he wins Long Beach and catches everyone’s attention. Lundgaard goes on a run where he is the best McLaren driver over the next two races leading into the Indianapolis 500. O'Ward wins the “500” and gets all the glory, but Lundgaard quietly finishes seventh, a respectable showing considering his past "500" runs. While O'Ward is hungover, Lundgaard wins in Detroit, finishes in the top five in Gateway and wins at Road America, putting him in the championship lead.
Another podium finish follows at Mid-Ohio, but O'Ward sweeps the Iowa weekend while Lundgaard has his roughest days of the season. In Toronto, Lundgaard is back on the podium and then he wins at Laguna Seca. A top five follows at Portland and he goes into the final two oval races in control but knowing he must be on point.
A podium in Milwaukee sets Lundgaard up to only need a the top fourteen finish in the finale to clinch the title. He has a car good enough for eighth at Nashville and he keeps it planted there for the entire race to seal the deal.
What does a realistic season look like for him?
If Lundgaard can finish eighth in the championship with RLLR, he can finish eighth in the championship with McLaren. He could also finish a little better than that.
We have seen at enough road and street course events that when the setup is dialed in Lundgaard can run for victories, and one victory is not a crazy thought in 2025, though no other McLaren driver has been able to win other than O'Ward. Lundgaard should provide a greater challenge on road and street courses. There should be a few weekends where Lundgaard is clearly the fastest McLaren driver.
Ovals will still be acstruggle, but not to the extent we saw at RLLR. Speed was completely absent at RLLR and Lundgaard couldn't crack the top twenty even with everything in his favor. Faster cars will put him further toward the front, but with a lack of experience battling for those competitive positions, he will have a few results not go his way.
A victory with four podium finishes, six top five results and 11 top ten finishes should be enough to earn him the best season of his career.
The 2025 NTT IndyCar Series season opens on Sunday March 2 with the Grand Prix of St. Petersburg. Fox's coverage of the season opener will begin at noon Eastern Time.
