The Athletic has live coverage of the 2026 Indy 500.
INDIANAPOLIS — Pato O’Ward is well-versed in the hope and heartbreak of the Indianapolis 500.
O’Ward, 27, has experienced everything from failing to qualify to coming within two corners of winning one of the biggest prizes in racing, suffering a late defeat at the hands of Josef Newgarden two years ago.
Yet there’s no regret or frustration. His relationship with this iconic race is “all positive.”
“It’s all been either a learning curve or some of the greatest memories that I have in my career,” O’Ward told The Athletic. “There are just challenges that you need to accept when you sign up for this.”
O’Ward will go into his seventh Indy 500 on Sunday not only harboring his own hopes of success, but also as part of McLaren’s bid to replicate its recent Formula 1 success. The team hasn’t won the Indy 500 since Johnny Rutherford’s victory in 1976.
Fifty years on, Rutherford will again be donning “McLaren orange,” as he called it, in his role as a team ambassador. The 88-year-old told The Athletic it felt “perfect” to have reunited with McLaren in recent years, and he will be watching closely on Sunday.
“I’ve been there and done that, you know,” Rutherford said. “It’s an opportunity to relive it, and to enjoy the team company and the team.”
McLaren last won the Indy 500 with Johnny Rutherford in 1976 (Michael Montfort/Getty Images)
McLaren has four cars in the 33-strong field for this year’s race. O’Ward’s full-season teammates, Christian Lundgaard and Nolan Siegel, have been joined by Ryan Hunter-Reay, a 45-year-old veteran going into his 18th Indy 500, who won the race back in 2014 and led a chunk of last year’s race that only whetted his appetite for another shot.
The McLaren IndyCar program has become the “baby,” to quote Lundgaard, of Zak Brown, McLaren Racing’s CEO.
When Brown took the reins of McLaren at the end of 2016, the remit from his new bosses was very clear: get the struggling F1 team back to the top. But he was already thinking of success beyond F1. He knew of McLaren’s history in other series, including wins at the 24 Hours of Le Mans and the Indianapolis 500. And one of those races had an extra special place in Brown’s heart.
“Indianapolis is kind of a second home,” Brown, who previously lived in the city for 20 years, told The Athletic. “The racing that I grew up with was Indy car racing.”
As Brown worked to turn the F1 team around — culminating in winning both world championships last year — the seeds were already being sown to get McLaren back to the Indy 500. A one-off entry for Fernando Alonso in 2017, in collaboration with Andretti, offered a first taste ahead of McLaren eventually buying into the Schmidt Peterson Motorsports team three years later.
In between, there was a miserable experience failing to qualify with Alonso in 2019, a “total disaster” that Brown now looks back on fondly due to how much he learned. But it didn’t shake his commitment to getting McLaren back into IndyCar.
“And here we are, coming off the most successful year the team’s ever had under our ownership,” Brown said.
O’Ward won twice en route to second place in the standings in 2025, while Lundgaard was a podium regular. Lundgaard then scored his first IndyCar win with McLaren two weeks ago in the road course race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
It’s working to restore the reputation of McLaren as an American racing powerhouse, as it was in the 1960s and 1970s when it dominated the Can-Am sports car series and won the Indianapolis 500 twice in 1974 and 1976. But to truly get back there, it’s going to take something more.
“We could win a championship, we could win another 100 race, but unless we win a 500… that’s the main goal, to put McLaren back in the victory circle at Indy,” Kyle Moyer, McLaren’s director of competition, told The Athletic. “Because that’s where they built their reputation in the States.”
Moyer said winning the Indy 500 was “the hardest accomplishment in racing”, given the competition. It’s about so much more than having a quick driver and car. Managing tires and fuel strategy, as well as reacting to yellow-flag cautions, can flip races. “You have to be perfect on that day for three hours,” Moyer said.
“This place surprises you, man,” added O’Ward. ”Like you can throw a pretty big curve ball at the wrong time and at the worst of times.”
Pato O’Ward during practice for the 110th Indianapolis 500 in Indianapolis on May 15, 2026 (Brandon Badraoui/Getty Images)
A “hiccup,” as he described it, came for O’Ward on Monday. After qualifying sixth the previous day, he got caught up in Alexander Rossi’s practice crash that forced McLaren to build up a replacement chassis that O’Ward wouldn’t drive until practice on Friday. Restoring the feel and confidence was the goal of the two-hour session on Carb Day.
“We ran good,” Tony Kanaan, McLaren’s IndyCar team principal, told The Athletic after the session. “Pato’s happy. We’re prepared. I think we have fast cars.”
If anyone can sympathise with O’Ward’s near-misses at Indy, it’s Kanaan. Despite winning the championship in 2004 and taking pole for the 500 in 2005, it wasn’t until 2013 that he finally won it. “I know exactly what he’s going through,” Kanaan said. “I had 12 years of the same thing. I thought I was done with that, I was like, ‘Oh, thank God.’ Now I suffer for him.”
“It’s been a long time since I’ve worked with a driver (who is) that naturally talented,” Moyer said of O’Ward. “He gets in and just wheels the car, which is great. He never gets passed. He’s always going forward.”
This year marks Moyer’s 39th Indy 500. He’s won 10 of them, enjoying successful stints with Andretti and most famously Penske. After his exit from the latter midway through last year in the fallout of the cheating scandal at Indianapolis, where Penske was found to have illegally modified two of its cars after qualifying, McLaren swooped in to secure Moyer’s services.
Moyer first met Brown at a Starbucks in North Carolina, and was immediately struck by his vision for the program. “We sat there for an hour and a half and talked,” said Moyer. “I showed up (at home) and my wife looked at me right away and said, ‘so we’re going to McLaren, aren’t we?’”
Moyer’s arrival was a big shot in the arm for the team, helping its evolution under Kanaan. After driving for the team at the Indy 500 in 2023, Kanaan moved up the leadership ranks to become team principal at the start of 2025. The team also opened a new shop at the start of 2026, taking over a former Andretti facility.
Kanaan wanted to change the culture within McLaren’s IndyCar setup as it moved away from the team’s previous identity and scale. Schmidt Peterson Motorsports enjoyed some success and scored race wins, but there had to be a shift in mentality if it wanted to win championships. The pursuit to win was now non-negotiable. It had to step up.
“Understand that I’m going to wake up every morning obsessed,” Kanaan said. “That’s what I expect from everyone.” He noted the similarity to Brown’s experience pushing change through at McLaren’s F1 team.
Tony Kanaan and Christian Lundgaard on the podium after the 2026 Sonsio Grand Prix in Indianapolis (Brandon Badraoui/Getty Images)
The transition from driving to now running an IndyCar team has given Kanaan a new perspective on success at the Indy 500, somewhat to his surprise. “I didn’t think I would ever feel the same way I did as a driver,” Kanaan said. “It’s not more or less, because it’s different. But I’m coming to the conclusion that the feeling is as good. It’s addicting.”
After last year’s Indy 500, Kanaan started to talk to Hunter-Reay, a former teammate, about joining McLaren for the 2026 race. He’s also supported the team and drivers at every test and race so far this year, serving as an experienced voice within the engineering room.
“We call him ‘dad’ now!” joked Lundgaard. “He’s got three extra kids added on top of the three he already has!”
Siegel added: “I think we kind of needed that. It’s been great to work with him. He has so much experience, especially here at the 500.”
Hunter-Reay said McLaren was “a brand that transcends motorsports” with its success across F1 and a world title win last year. “We need to get the Indy 500 win next.”
Brown has never seen McLaren’s IndyCar project as being totally separate from the F1 efforts. His metaphor of choice is that they are both planets within the McLaren racing galaxy. As of 2027, that will also include a top-level sports car program, giving McLaren the chance to compete for all three ‘Triple Crown’ races — the Indy 500, the Monaco GP and Le Mans — in the same year.
“We (won) them in three different decades with three different team bosses,” Brown said. “Maybe my personal goal and the team goals align. I’ve got my photo on the podium at Monaco (won last year by Lando Norris), so my personal dream is to have three.
“(I want us) to do it in the papaya era, the same era, the same decade. If it could one day happen the same year, that would be just insane.”
But first things first: tomorrow’s race. From sixth, O’Ward is certain to be a name in the conversation at the front. Finally getting that Indy 500 win would change everything, not just for the burgeoning McLaren team as a whole, but especially for O’Ward.
“I feel like that would represent the close of a cycle,” O’Ward said. “It all started with a dream, right? And it’s something that I’ve been working towards for quite some time now, that’s been within grasping distance.”
