The IndyCar team currently on top — and at the bottom

The 2021 IndyCar seasons of the two Arrow McLaren SP drivers have been drastically different through 10 of the 16 scheduled races.

With six races remaining on the 16-race IndyCar schedule, Arrow McLaren SP find themselves in a position where they have a shot to end what is an 18-year championship run of the “Big 3” of Chip Ganassi Racing, Team Penske and Andretti Autosport.

Through the first 10 races of the season, the driver of Arrow McLaren SP’s #5 Chevrolet, Pato O’Ward, sits in second place in the championship standings with the first two wins of his career, one at Texas Motor Speedway and another on the streets of Belle Isle in Detroit, Michigan.

He trails Chip Ganassi Racing’s Alex Palou, the only other two-race winner so far this year, by 39 points.

He believe that this 39-point gap is one that he can overcome, while keeping the other championship contenders behind him.

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“I like where we’re at,” O’Ward told Beyond the Flag. “I think we have a good bunch of tracks that we are going to be strong at. And I think we’re all ready to maximize the weekends, maximize qualifying, execute, and just keep doing what we have been doing, but just better.

“A couple more wins wouldn’t be bad, and I think that should put us in the right place to be in contention when we get to Long Beach. But I enjoy being the hunter.

“We’re not far back. I know we can catch him, and I have a great group behind me to be able to accomplish some good races the rest of the year. … Every win that we’ve had this year has been truly earned. It hasn’t been, ‘Oh, because someone crashed,’ or ‘Oh, because someone else didn’t have a good strategy like we did.’ We had to fight our way towards the front to win, both Texas and Detroit. And I feel like that just makes the wins so sweet.”

On the flip side, O’Ward’s teammate, Felix Rosenqvist, is having a disastrous season in his first year behind the wheel of the #7 Chevrolet.

He was forced to miss two races after suffering minor injuries in a nasty crash on the streets of Belle Isle, and he sits in last among the full-time drivers in the championship standings. In fact, sitting in 25th place in points with an abysmal top finish of 12th, he sits behind four drivers who compete part-time.

While the fact that he has only competed in eight races hurts, three of the four part-time drivers he sits behind have combined to compete in only eight races so far this season.

Even Helio Castroneves, who has competed in only the Indy 500, is still ahead of Rosenqvist.

“It sucks; I’m not going to hide it,” Rosenqvist admitted. “It’s tough when you put all the work and effort in and the results are not coming your way. It’s something that we all go through. I’d say it’s probably a new thing for me. I had a kind of tough-ish season last year, but this one has been much worse. But you know, it’s one of those things.”

Even last season, he secured his first career win at Road America and finished in 11th place in the championship standings, five spots shy of where he finished as a rookie in 2019.

“The only choice you have is to keep working and keep fighting,” he said. “Obviously, sometimes you kind of need to refresh your head a little bit. I think it’s been good to have some time off from racing now, a couple of weeks. I’ve been back in Monaco at home, seeing some family and stuff like that, which I haven’t been able to do in a while. But yeah, I’m looking forward to getting back.”

He believes that the next race on the schedule, the inaugural Big Machine Music City Grand Prix on the streets of Nashville, Tennessee, could turn his disastrous 2021 season around.

“I feel like Nashville could definitely be a turning point for us,” he said. “It’s a track that I think personally will suit me well, but also the team. I think we had really good preparation with Chevy for the simulator for Nashville. That might be able to give us a leap. And overall, I just feel really energized, because I know we can have good results.

“We’ve had so many close calls this year where we were fighting for leads. Even the race where I crashed at Detroit that put me out for two weekends — we were probably in contention to win that race. Those kind of things, it’s frustrating, but it’s also the one positive thing we can look back on and say, ‘We are not complete rookies here, we are actually able to put our car in contention to win races.’ And that’s just where we have to execute from now until the end of the season. Just have a good run here to the end of the year, and try to have a better one next year.”

In addition to the lack of good results, he said that his crash in Detroit was the worst crash he has experienced in his motorsport career.

“Yeah, I would say so,” he said. “With crashes, it’s always funny how they work, because sometimes you have a big one and you don’t feel anything. I think, though, this one was both big, and the impact was pretty big physically as well.”

He went on to praise the safety measures IndyCar has implemented over the years.

“But I felt fine, and I was really impressed by how everything just, the car kept together, and everything that was supposed to break broke, but my bones didn’t break, so that was pretty impressive,” he continued.

“I’m just happy with all the work IndyCar did to get me back in shape, and also the work they do for safety in general with these cars. They’re practically bullet-proof these days. It’s cool that you can have a 90G impact and then pretty much be fine one week after.”

The Big Machine Music City Grand Prix is scheduled to take place on Sunday, August 8. IndyCar’s first race in more than one month is set to be broadcast live from the streets of Nashville, Tennessee on NBC Sports Network beginning at 5:30 p.m. ET.