Insider: Pato O’Ward’s been raising questions about future but Zak Brown holds the power

Despite reports to the contrary and additional unclear, circuitous quotes about his motorsports future made Wednesday during an IndyCar Zoom call, there’s no indication Pato O’Ward’s immediate future lies anywhere but his current home in the No. 5 Chevy at Arrow McLaren SP.  

The young Mexican IndyCar star raised eyebrows last month in St. Pete. When asked by IndyStar to confirm the belief he was under a long-term contract with McLaren Racing, O’Ward replied, “It’s still a question of where I’ll be next year.”

“I’m happy where I am with McLaren, but I don’t really know what’s going to happen with my future, to be very honest with you,” he continued. “I might still be here in IndyCar. I might be over there (in F1). I think this will be a big year about where I get guided and what path I take. I think a lot of those things are out of my control.”

Those quotes preceded a sit-down with select media the following day, where McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown was asked to confirm the length of O’Ward’s contract with McLaren and AMSP.

“We have him under a multi-year deal,” Brown said. “We think he’s a championship-caliber guy, so letting him go race somewhere else, we’re not about to hand him over without some really good reason, and I can’t think of a good one.”

Given that the McLaren F1 team had signed fellow young racing star Lando Norris to two extensions in a year’s time and his teammate, Daniel Ricciardo, was under contract through the end of 2023, it left understandable questions to what O’Ward meant about his future. Those questions were only inflamed Tuesday when a story from RACER stated O’Ward was “weighing a move away from AMSP, McLaren.” The headline came days after McLaren announced signing Colton Herta to an F1 testing deal for later this year.

Could O’Ward believe Ricciardo’s standing with the McLaren F1 team was that shaky? Did Brown misstate O’Ward’s contract details? Was O’Ward engaging in some sort of public ploy to exert pressure and renegotiate his current deal?

O’Ward’s responses Wednesday after being pressed multiple times from various outlets, along with additional clarifying information from series sources, have painted a picture that allows Brown and O’Ward to both be right.

O'Ward navigates questions about future

Initially, O’Ward was asked whether anything had changed in his outlook on his current home, where he picked up his first two victories in 2021 and had finished 4th and 3rd in the championship since he was signed late in 2019.

“We’re all going to have to wait and see what that answer is, to be honest. I don’t want to lie to you and everybody and say, ‘No, no, no,’ or, ‘Yes, yes, yes.’ I just think we’ll see how things shake out,” he said. “As of right now, I’m fully focused on delivering a season I know I’m capable of with the team around me, and I’m sure things will start taking their place.”

The latest on Andretti, McLaren, O'Ward and Herta:

• McLaren signs Herta to F1 testing role: 'Who knows what will come out of this'
• O'Ward on his racing future: 'It’s a question where I’ll be next year'
• Michael Andretti says he hopes to hear from FIA about F1 bid within a month
• Herta on chance to jump to F1 with Andretti: 'You can't pass up an offer like that'
• Michael would build new F1 team's cars in Indianapolis, says Mario

Pushed as to whether he had known of Herta landing a deal to test a previous F1 car with McLaren before it was announced Saturday, O’Ward paused for nine seconds to gather himself before saying, "I knew a couple weeks back, yep.”

Though Brown made good on a bet with O’Ward – giving his title-contending IndyCar driver an F1 test if he were to win a race – in December in Abu Dhabi following the F1 finale, there was reason to wonder whether Herta’s own opportunity had irked his former Indy Lights teammate.

Though O’Ward said Wednesday he wasn’t aware of any additional F1 testing opportunities with McLaren at the moment, IndyStar understands Herta’s selection doesn’t preclude McLaren from adding O’Ward to the “Testing of a Previous Car” (TPC) roster. To do so, IndyStar understands O’Ward and McLaren would need to come to terms on an additional deal involving F1 seat time – a contract which has not been agreed to. Though unconfirmed, there’s reason to wonder whether the sides hit an impasse over talks with such a deal that, when combined with Herta’s signing, led to the decision by the O’Ward camp to create a narrative that his racing future was not as buttoned up as the motorsports world initially thought.

A 'restricted free agent'

Later in the call, O’Ward was asked to respond to Brown’s assertion in St. Pete that McLaren had the driver under a multi-year deal.

“I’m currently under contract with McLaren, but just like anything, there are scenarios where I could stay where I’m at or where I could be in a different place,” he said.

When pushed on specifics – namely whether that uncertainty came from his ability to solicit offers from other teams that McLaren would then have the choice to match – O’Ward offered a nervous chuckle before saying, “Oh man, you’re good. Uhhh, bingo.”

It paints a contractual picture perhaps better understood in American professional sporting terms: For the two seasons following the 2022 campaign (2023-24), O’Ward is believed to be a “restricted free agent.”

The term, most often used in the NBA, refers to an athlete who’s free to negotiate a contact offer with any team, but once they reach terms, their current team can match it. Without a collective bargaining agreement between teams and drivers, McLaren would be allowed to insert their own stipulations that might include, for example, the need to only match a certain percentage of another offer in order to retain a driver.

Such a deal would mean that, technically, O’Ward’s fate in the IndyCar paddock isn’t completely locked down beyond this season, as he’s hinted, calling his future “a moving puzzle, in a way.”

“A lot of things can shift,” he said. “And as quickly as things can come, they can go away.”

More early IndyCar Silly Season news:

• Insider: Rossi's future with Andretti grows murkier with end of contract
• Ganassi on No. 48 driver next season: 'As far as I know, Jimmie (Johnson’s) in it'

All that being said, no other racing team in the paddock is operating with a budget in the same ballpark as McLaren’s. While full-season IndyCar programs run somewhere around $6 million-8 million per year to run, F1 recently instituted a cost cap that holds teams at $140 million in 2022 (though some expenses fall outside its parameters). IndyCar driver contracts hardly make any impact to McLaren’s bottom line.

Even Team Penske, a small wing of a corporation that produces revenue in the tens of billions of dollars annually, would be unlikely to produce a reasonable driver contract for a 22-year-old two-time race-winner that McLaren would be unable or unwilling to match. Brown and team president Taylor Kiel have been effusive in their praise for the team’s foundational driver since they signed him, and losing their only current championship contender would all but undo two-and-a-half year’s worth of work that vaulted what was once a mid-pack team with two wins from 2016-19 as Schmidt Peterson Motorsports into a world-recognized IndyCar championship contender as Arrow McLaren SP.

“There’s nobody I’d rather have driving one of our racecars than Pato O’Ward. He’s a world-class talent, and we’ve invested a lot in each other,” Kiel said Wednesday. “Pato’s young, and he’s got a lot of interest, as you can imagine, and I think everyone in the paddock would be silly if they didn’t try to at least have a conversation (with him). So I get it, it’s part of the business, and it’s a lot of pressure for him and us and the team, so all we can do right now is focus on each other, internalize everything, keep the noise to a minimum, work through our business and make sure we’re on solid footing going forward.”

Additionally, Kiel said team brass had addressed the topic internally among O’Ward and the team, and he didn’t believe it would be a distraction at Texas and beyond.

“It’s a blip on the radar,” he said. “Internally, we’re in a good place, and that’s what really matters to me. The external noise and everything that surrounds situations like this is what it is, and it’s part of the sport."

How Herta's future impacts O'Ward

When it comes to O’Ward’s future, it seems unlikely that he’ll be wearing anything other than papaya until at least 2024.

Whether those races come in North America or around the globe is another question. Brown stated multiple times in St. Pete that McLaren’s future F1 drivers will be decided from F1 testing and race performance, rather than any achievements gained in IndyCar or other series. O'Ward and Herta would behoove themselves to continue contending for championships, it’s the cleanest way they can obtain an FIA Super License but with potential practice and testing runs, no specific finishing spot is required.

Should it come from McLaren and not Michael Andretti’s hopeful F1 outfit Andretti Global, Herta and O’Ward will see their F1 dreams realized due to how they compare with each other, Ricciardo and the rest of the competition when given a chance to turn laps in a McLaren F1 car.

And on that note, it’s understood Herta’s inclusion in McLaren’s testing program positions him as a legitimate contender for a future ride, rather than as a favor to Andretti, Brown’s longtime pal, to give Herta F1 seat time. It’s notably been nearly a month since Mario Andretti went public that his son had submitted a formal request to the FIA for entry into F1 as an expansion team, and the elder Andretti told IndyStar late last week they still had no answer. The younger Andretti said immediately following St. Pete he hoped to learn of Andretti’s Global status “in a week.” It’s now been more than two.

Given the time, resources, energy and effort required to put together a proper F1 testing program, it’s believed McLaren’s interest in Herta is real, and that’s a fact O’Ward will ultimately have to come to terms with.

He and Herta headlined an LMP2 class-winning entry in the 24 Hours of Daytona in January, and they’re believed to have a friendly level of respect for each other dating back to their down-to-the-wire Indy Lights championship battle in 2018. They are seen widely as two of racing’s next young potential stars, but with McLaren’s desire to test multiple drivers before making its next F1 decision – and with the unlimited benefits of handing an American driver his big break in the current F1 climate – Brown would be silly to ignore the driver one year younger than O’Ward who has four more wins and three more poles in 10 more IndyCar starts.

Whether this all lights an internal fire inside O’Ward that takes his racecraft to the next level or sees him upend his career and burn bridges in the process is ultimately up to him.

“Truly, I’m kinda in the same place as you guys are at. There’s just a lot of noise right now, and I want to do a great season for the team that has been behind me the last couple years,” O’Ward said. “But the next decision I take in my career is the most important (one), and I need to make sure I’m doing what’s best for me and what makes me feel the happiest.

“Like any other athlete in either motorsports or any other sport, you have to be very careful and very aware of what’s going on and make the best decision that will put you into what you want to achieve.”

Email IndyStar motor sports reporter Nathan Brown at nlbrown@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter: @By_NathanBrown.