It was potentially shaping up to be an actual fight between Chip Ganassi Racing's Alex Palou and Arrow McLaren's Christian Lundgaard for the win in Sunday's Children's of Alabama Indy Grand Prix NTT IndyCar Series race at Barber Motorsports Park.
Then the McLaren pit crew not only blew it at the worst possible time, but they appeared to have choked away what should have been a surefire second place at worst to Lundgaard's former Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing teammate Graham Rahal, as the No. 7 team suffered an issue on the right rear during Lundgaard's final pit stop of the afternoon.
Lundgaard was still able to get back around Rahal for second several laps later, so it wasn't a total loss, but it was yet another runner-up finish for Zak Brown's team behind Palou, to the tune of 13.476 seconds.
Lundgaard's pit stop was around a 17-second stop, so the issue only cost him around 10 seconds, but it also meant that he had to spend time battling Rahal, versus coming out of the pits battling Palou.
Add us as a preferred source on GoogleSuch is the story for the team that, for the past seven years, has allegedly been "close" to becoming a true powerhouse organization.
McLaren is effectively the Buffalo Bills of IndyCar.
The Bills are the preseason darlings every year. Yet from January 2021 through November 2025, they went 5-0 against their archrival Kansas City Chiefs during the regular season, while going 0-4 against Patrick Mahomes and company in the playoffs.
Then this past season, with no Chiefs in the postseason, the Bills still found a way to lose in the playoffs again, despite having the easiest possible path through the AFC to the Super Bowl they will probably ever have.
Always almost good enough, just like McLaren.
Speaking of which, Pato O'Ward was a lap down on Sunday at one point, and he finished 17th on raw pace. Every year, he's supposed to be a championship contender, yet in year number seven, he has yet to truly take that next step to become one of the sport's elite.
Seriously, aside from being the sport's most popular driver, what has he won? If McLaren are the Bills, O'Ward is Josh Allen.
He's usually fast, he generally runs well, and he's always flashy, whether he's in the mix for a win or not. But his most recent major achievement is probably still the 2018 Indy Lights championship.
He is a nine-time IndyCar race winner, but aside from his status as the "best of the rest", he has not won a major event. Even his career-best championship runner-up finish came in the form of a 196-point deficit to Palou. For reference, the gap between a perfect pole-to-win weekend and a last-place finish is 49 points.
Colton Herta, another nine-time IndyCar winner and 2018 Indy Lights graduate, dealt with almost the exact same narrative at Andretti Global, specifically after he ended 2021 on a two-race win streak.
He was always supposed to be a championship contender, and he was even the betting favorite in the 2022 preseason. Yet at some point, it became time to admit that that combination was never going to get it done over the course of a full season.
O'Ward can still change that narrative, both for himself and McLaren, in a heartbeat by winning the Indy 500. He's always one of the favorites there as well.
But his history late in that race also leaves a lot to be desired, and it only adds to McLaren's perennial status as the sport's ultimate "almosts".
The Mexican driver didn't have quite enough to make the winning move on Marcus Ericsson's outside on the last lap in 2022. He crashed while battling with Ericsson for second in 2023. And he became only the fourth driver to lose the lead on the last lap in Indy 500 history in 2024, allowing Josef Newgarden to go back-to-back.
Sunday's pit issue with Lundgaard, who has yet to win in 21 McLaren starts despite being ahead of O'Ward in the championship standings after four races in 2026, only adds to McLaren's history of the being the bridesmaids.
And the fact that Sunday's runner-up finish came behind Palou, of all drivers, only makes matters worse for the team that has been burned by the four-time IndyCar champion and reigning Indy 500 winner both on and off the track for the better part of the past six seasons.