IndyCar: 5 way-too-early bold predictions for the 2025 season

McLaren fire at least one driver

I hate to be "that guy", but is this even bold at this point? This is a team that have made more driver changes in the last 15 months than Team Penske have in the last 15 years, and yet they want to be viewed as a legitimate championship contender.

Even with Pato O'Ward winning three races, tied for the most in the series in 2024, they are not yet on that level. Colton Herta's runner-up finish in the championship for Andretti Global made it relatively clear that Arrow McLaren are actually fourth in the pecking order at the moment.

When Alexander Rossi left Andretti for McLaren in 2023, he noted that he felt McLaren was one of three teams (the other two being Chip Ganassi Racing and Team Penske) capable of winning a championship. During his two-year run with the team, he ended up placing ninth and 10th in points without a win. From 2020 to 2022 with Andretti, he placed ninth or 10th every year and scored one win.

The problem is that McLaren haven't demonstrated a ton of patience with anybody not named O'Ward (who, to be fair, hit the ground running straight from when he joined the team in 2020), and while CEO Zak Brown may want to blame Alex Palou's change of heart for their ongoing game of musical chairs, the problem goes a lot deeper than that.

They dropped David Malukas before he ever competed in a race for the team, and then they dropped the driver whom they had confirmed as his full-time replacement, Theo Pourchaire, just two races after making that announcement.

By the time they had actually replaced Malukas with Nolan Siegel, Malukas was back with a new team following his injury – contending for race wins and poles, no less.

Siegel struggled mightily, recording just a single top 10 finish in 10 races behind the wheel of the No. 6 Chevrolet in 2024. If he doesn't improve in year number two, is there any reason to believe McLaren won't do to him what they have done to a number of others?

Let's not forget about Christian Lundgaard, who is set to replace Rossi. While McLaren is undoubtedly a step up from a Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing team that has pretty much turned into a backmarker, and Lundgaard outdrove his equipment from the time he joined them full-time in 2022, Rossi's McLaren tenure demonstrated that a team and manufacturer swap doesn't always mean the grass is greener.

Should Lundgaard struggle, which I admittedly don't expect, the No. 7 Chevrolet could become a lot warmer than anticipated as well.