A strong start to the 2024 INDYCAR season for second-place finisher Pato O’Ward (Photo: James Black | Penske Entertainment).
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — For the third time in five starts, Pato O’Ward finished second in Sunday’s Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg.
Compared to last year when a race win was taken away due to mechanical problems, a much cooler O’Ward was pleased to come home second to start off the 2024 INDYCAR season.
Like any track position, the podium had to be earned as O’Ward was surrounded by Team Penske late in the race. As Josef Newgarden ran away with the victory, the Arrow McLaren veteran had to fend off a hard-charging Scott McLaughlin, who was hitting his stride tremendously, and Will Power, who quietly worked his way toward the top-five.
In the end, O’Ward came home in the runner-up position on a day when Chevrolet reigned supreme. O’Ward scored his 21st career INDYCAR podium.
“Really strong day for us today. I think it’s a very solid foundation to what is going to be a very tight, very competitive rest of the year,” said O’Ward. “I think the Penskes were just too strong for us today. I think we were all kind of playing the fuel game a little bit and got to give it to everybody at Chevrolet, my guys over at Arrow McLaren.
“We got down to work in the offseason and we’ve made some gains and really cool to see the top 4 was all Chevrolet. I’m pretty pleased to see that.”
A strong start to the year will come a long way for O’Ward and the No. 5 squad, knowing the much-anticipated hybrid is slated to arrive midseason. With that in mind, O’Ward knows things must click on all cylinders to not only be in the hunt for the Astor Cup, but snap a now 23-race winless streak.
Any errors, whether it’s by the dream or a team skipping a beat, it’ll be detrimental: more than any other motorsports discipline in the world.
“You’ve got to be on it. There’s no room for error because you need to leave those Joker cards for mishaps that could happen when you introduce something new,” O’Ward commented. “I think there’s no room for error anymore because the guys that you’re competing against are also winning races, and when they’re not winning races, they’re on the podium. This is where we have to be, and this is where we have to maintain ourselves.
“I think we just keep approaching it like we have and be aware of who we’re racing and what we can accomplish each and every weekend.”
O’Ward navigating around the 1.8-mile street course in Florida (Photo: James Black | Penske Entertainment).
Among the talks postrace was the Chevrolet camp’s excitement about its superb performance at the 1.8-mile street course. Both O’Ward and McLaughlin preached the manufacturer for doing tremendous work in the off-season and it showed on Sunday.
O’Ward explained that around 20-25 people from the bowtie brigade camp met at the Manufacturing Technology Centre in London. Among those who attended were he and his teammate Alexander Rossi.
Cut and dry, improvements had to be made and they’ve made it known in the gathering as Chevrolet only won five races last year, all coming from Penske drivers Newgarden and McLaughlin.
“Everything that we thought that we did well, and just having an honest, open conversation of what’s going on because it just — whenever you’re at the end of basically life of an engine like this, a lot of the massive gains have been gained,” said O’Ward. “When you gain little bits and pieces here and there, they’re usually pretty substantial. I was super, super happy to see just how receptive they were of it and how they were just, ‘Yeah, we’re going to get to work!’
“They brought us a very strong package, and super happy with that.”
With his fifth season at Arrow McLaren underway, O’Ward hopes the second round of the championship trail in Long Beach (Sunday, April 21 at 3 p.m. ET on USA Network) carries the momentum from St. Pete. As he commented in the post-race press conference, he hopes all the negative news throughout the offseason served as an indicator that people care about INDYCAR.
“People want to be here. People want to see INDYCARs go racing,” said O’Ward. “I really don’t know what more we can ask for from the fans. I think it’s time to turbo charge it and just really make it what its potential is because it’s so big.
“This series is so freaking hard. Like it’s a big deal when you win an INDYCAR race. I think every single race should really be a big deal.”
