Why Pato O’Ward Confuses His Competitors

DETROIT – Less than a year ago, he received a lot of praise from the paddock. Pato O’Ward, the 21-year-old Mexican driver who drove wheel to wheel with Josef Newgarden out of the pits for the team that was “just on the threshold” for almost five years, duel with Ganassi cars to the wire and Eventually finished fourth in the championship during his first full IndyCar campaign.

At the time, these reflections felt like the loving words LeBron James could say to the parents of a child at a youth basketball camp. “Boy, he really has what it takes. What a great shot. Go on!”

That praise is easy, as real as it is. Because you know LeBron James won’t scratch his head trying to find out how Little Johnny beat him in a 1v1 game 10 months later.

Pato O’Ward is different. He’s sure to let everyone in the paddock talk again, but he’s no longer that cute younger cousin or even that pesky younger brother.

He did something in the 2021 IndyCar season that no other driver did: be twice better than the rest. Under a field that most drivers will say is at least 15 times low every weekend and on Set a record with seven separate wins in seven races on Saturday, being the only one to beat the rest twice in what is perhaps the most competitive race in series history is no small matter.

“I think one (win) is relieving and two is confirmed,” said Taylor Kiel, President of Arrow McLaren SP on Sunday. “It shows you that what you do is sustainable.

“Our goal is to always be up front and win championships, and for that you have to win three or four races per season. And besides, you have to end up in the top 5, as always. That is our goal and we have shown that we can. “

He’s right. With victory on Sunday in the second race of the IndyCars Detroit Grand Prix double race, O’Ward achieved his sixth Top 4 result in eight races this year, best in the paddock. Alex Palou, who is one point behind the AMSP driver at the head of the points race, is five behind him.

But the way they got to this point in the season, both now more than 30 points ahead of Scott Dixon and 50 or more ahead of Josef Newgarden – winners of the last four series championships and five of the last six – feels different.

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Palou wowed the paddock – and even his own team owner, Chip Ganassi – with his very first IndyCar win at the season opener in April at Barber Motorsports Park. He was in the lead, aided in part by the scores that made up the grid for both Texas races, where he finished 4th and 7th on a track where overtaking was an ultra premium.

The Spaniard then put together the most impressive performance of May in the field and after paying a fine on Saturday – an unapproved engine change penalty since the 500 penalty – he last landed in race 1 on Saturday where Palou finished 15th – he started on On Sunday at the front and regained his podium position in third place.

O’Wards start is different as it feels like he’s in a down to earth battle with someone in the last stint of a race, he could very well be the favorite. Palou’s victory came from proper strategy and fuel economy. O’Ward has won at the end of the race at an absolutely hard pace this year – twice.

And it confuses its fiercest competitors. Indirectly, Colton Herta (4th) complained about the performance of his car on re-starts, having driven second for most of the day and dropping to fourth on the last seven laps. But from O’Wards performance in the late race, Graham Rahal (5th) came right out and said it: “It’s just a huge difference as everyone can see.”

Are we starting to see some of that McLaren F1 magic come into play?

“I think it’s basically what we’ve seen all year that they could change tires in one lap,” Palou said of O’Wards restarting skills after the race. “So they had to make an extra stop at (IMS Street Course) and St. Pete, so there is a compromise, right? But it worked really well this weekend and we have to find that compromise.

“We think we now know what it is. Not before, but now, so we’re going to try and if we get this right it will be really fun. “

But before we saw what O’Ward with a crooked smile attributed to “fast hands” on Sunday, he was sixth with 16 laps to go. Not an impossible position, but on a street circuit that only offers two prime overtaking opportunities per lap, it would be fair to call it “far from ideal”.

“I remember after the last pit stop Taylor said, ‘Okay, that’s the order. Everyone has a stop, ‘so I thought we’d stay here unless we have a yellow one and I can ship it, “said O’Ward. “When the yellow came out, I have great confidence in myself, even if the car wobbles. I know I’m very strong on cold tires, so I took advantage of that. “

While watching the TV show, Kiel is as calm as a cucumber on the timing booth, enumerating those who stand in front of O’Ward as they prepare for the first of two late reboots. We see and hear the AMSP president, who is also O’Wards strategist on race day, reading the cars in front of him. He gave O’Ward all the information he needed and then made himself comfortable to watch the final straight.

“We had come as far as possible with the strategy,” said Kiel about O’Wards position before the last restart with seven laps to go. “We are (6th) and got the yellow we needed. After that, everything was up to the driver. “

Rahal complained about his car on the radio, said Kiel. Herta had had their chances but was unable to circumvent Newgarden, the leader of the first 67 laps. And the Team Penske rider had been forced to drive it home on rapidly deteriorating Firestone red tires with far more wear than he had hoped and strategist Tim Cindric had planned ahead of the race. But the interaction of the race had forced them to make a first pit stop earlier than they wanted, which meant his only stint on red tires wore out more.

“We made our bed when we started this race,” said Cindric during the race on the broadcast.

Dixon finished first on corner one of the first restart for O’Ward, and a few laps later O’Ward plucked Rahal on the same corner on lap 64, followed by Palou on turn 3. It was all the more impressive to the untrained eye to end a reboot, but O’Ward said that this may have been his only chance if he was going to win.

“I knew I had only one chance to get every single guy. I couldn’t take three chances for Dixon, ”he said. “It had to be one, so every time I pulled out or did something, I had to take the risk of shifting the braking zone or getting a mega-exit to get ahead of them.

“People know I’m not here to finish 5th or 6th. You know that I am here to win. I am pretty sure that this is the message that we have presented today. “

But that’s always true, regardless of the track, series, team or car for O’Ward. However, this year he’s balancing something a lot awesome, and it was in the foreground as he continued on the hunt for Herta a lap later and then set his sights on a four-lap climb on Newgarden.

“Taylor says, ‘If you have a chance, take it, but if you don’t keep the championship in mind,'” said O’Ward. “But in my head the two guys I’m fighting for the championship are in front of me. I wouldn’t be happy if we ended up behind them, especially when we had a fresh start and we were all together.

“So if we had the chance to strike, I just had to make sure that not every strike was like, ‘Oh, will I get it?'”

O’Ward pauses for a moment in mid-thought and puts his right arm back as the emotions build – then karate chops the air as he sits on the podium after the race.

“No, it had to be ‘BOOM’, definitely,” he continued. “Once inside, it’s yours.”

The win came from the most daring pass of all, on the back straight, which isn’t exactly straight, equipped with a little kink that makes wheel-to-wheel drag races like O’Ward and Newgarden even wilder on lap 68. Two cars cannot go straight from A to B there, because of the smallest S-curve, which first falls to the right and then very slightly to the left again.

A year ago, when Newgarden took his second win of the year and O’Ward took his second podium of the weekend after driving out of the pits and through the home straight into Turn 3 at WWT Raceway a year ago, the team’s driver poured out Penske to the public praise for one of the series’ Young Guns.

“Pato was a real talent,” he said at the time. “I’ve always believed he was a strong driver and would do well in IndyCar or wherever he ended up. He drove me well, drove me flawlessly, definitely deserved to be at the top and had a chance of victory. “

According to O’Ward on Sunday, what was once a pit lane race almost 10 months ago has now turned into a far smarter, narrower, drier race for the lead in Race 2, with O’Wards right behind and Newgardens left behind Have peeked away from each other for a split second. Newgarden later said he knew that O’Ward’s “freight train” would come in hot.

“He got me upset,” said O’Ward with a laugh. “He knew where to put me so I couldn’t get him.

“But I didn’t move.”

It’s an aggression that the paddock has known from O’Ward for a long time. But now it’s clear that there is relentless aggression with just a tiny bit of cunning, confidence, and bravery. Next, the series returns to the track where O’Ward himself crumbled down the track in Race 2 at Road America last July. Don’t think for a second that this isn’t that important while he views his bottlenecks as a head start.

“I think (Patos) is really aggressive but a really good ‘Aggressive’,” said Palou on Sunday. “He’s not crazy. He does not drop a bomb from 50 meters away. He’s really good.

“You know when he’s behind and he has a better car that will overtake you. If there is a driver who can change tires based on their driving skills and setup, that driver looks great compared to everyone else. He passed about six cars in two laps. That’s crazy.”

Email IndyStar motorsport reporter Nathan Brown at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter: @By_NathanBrown.