IndyCar: 3 possible Arrow McLaren drivers for 2024
By Asher Fair
Arrow McLaren have two of their three current drivers under contract for the 2024 IndyCar season. Who else will be with the team next year?
With the 2023 IndyCar season quickly coming to a close, silly season attention has long been ramping up. There are quite a few teams that can factor into this year’s free agency chaos, and Arrow McLaren find themselves at the top of the list for the second year in a row.
Pato O’Ward is under a long-term deal to drive the No. 5 Chevrolet, while Alexander Rossi is under a similar contract to drive the No. 7 Chevrolet. But Felix Rosenqvist does not have a deal to continue driving the No. 6 Chevrolet past this season.
So Arrow McLaren have some big decisions to make. They would like to expand to four cars, but that might not be possible until they acquire Andretti Autosport’s race shop in 2025. In addition to O’Ward and Rossi, who else will be driving for the team in 2024?
Possible IndyCar McLaren drivers for 2024: No. 1 – Felix Rosenqvist
After a second straight season of failing to secure Alex Palou’s services, it is entirely possible that, once again, the once (twice) unlikely scenario of Felix Rosenqvist staying put comes to fruition.
It’s no secret that the 31-year-old Swede hasn’t been nearly as productive — nor consistent — since joining Arrow McLaren in 2021 as he would have liked. He has not yet won a race with the team and has scored just three podium finishes.
He has yet to better the sixth place finish he recorded in the standings with Chip Ganassi Racing as a rookie in 2019, though he did finish just one spot behind Pato O’Ward last year. He also just placed second, tying the team’s best finish of the year, over the weekend at Portland International Raceway.
While there is no way around the fact that Rosenqvist is on the hot seat, the speed he has shown this year, even without the level of execution he and the team would prefer, makes it hard for them to simply kick him aside, especially knowing that they want to run four cars in the near future anyway.
A driver known for road and street course success, he has become a regular frontrunner in superspeedway races. He has taken the two most recent pole positions at Texas Motor Speedway and started on the front row for this year’s Indy 500 before leading 33 laps. Do McLaren really want to allow a driver with Rosenqvist’s upside to sign with a rival team?