Pato O’Ward’s Transformative 2023: Arrow McLaren Boss Reflects on a Year of Personal Growth

Gavin Ward, the team principal for Arrow McLaren in the Indycar series, recently reflected on the fact that how their talented yongstar driver Pato O’Ward brought out more maturity out of himself althoughout the entire 2023 IndyCar season.

Even though Ward failed to put his no
 5 marked Chevrolet McLaren in victory lane, he managed to get on the podium 7 times this season, the most ever in his career. He had also finished inside the top 10 for 14 times this season, which culminated into  his no.4 position on the Championship standings of last season.

Gavin ward joined Arrow team after the four years that Ward spent at Penske, where he helped engineer Josef Newgarden to the 2019 championship, ended in July 2022. Ward discussed what he observed in O’Ward during the previous season.

According to him, Pato has really had a very strong and wonderful year. He also said that for Pato, it was a year of personal growth and commitments for him as well.

The main things that Ward loved about Pato was his consistency, his love for hard work and his eagerness and love in working with the team.

With the acquisition of Alexander Rossi, who is starting his second season with Arrow McLaren, and O’Ward, David Malukas, who takes Felix Rosenqvist’s spot after the last two years with Dale Coyne Racing, has Ward excited.

With the entire lineup for next year, Ward expressed excitement. “In terms of what we needed, I would say that our race day performance was lacking a little bit. We’ve been putting in a lot of effort on our end and with Chevy—a fantastic partner—to identify the next step that will put us on the top step the following year.

A little portion of the race day performance is shown. On race day, we’ll be there, and I believe that we execute a little bit better.