Pato O'Ward's Solve to Winning 2026 INDYCAR Title: Limit the Bad Days

Pato O’Ward finished the 2025 season 63 points ahead of third-place finisher Scott Dixon in the final standings. 

So combined with two victories, he enjoyed a great year.

But he finished 196 points behind champion Alex Palou. And finishing that far behind the champion makes him know that work that had to be done in the offseason as INDYCAR heads into its 2026 opener Sunday on the streets of St. Petersburg (Noon ET, FOX). 

[POWER RANKINGS: Alex Palou Still the Driver to Beat in 2026]

When O’Ward and Arrow McLaren went to work on trying to figure out how to catch Palou, there wasn’t just one simple answer, at least when it comes to what O’Ward could do and what his team could do.

"There’s always room for improvement everywhere — fitness, mental, car build, reliability, engineering," O’Ward told me Monday on a video call during a break in his media tour in a snowy New York City. "I don't think it's one specific way of doing it [for me].

"There's different ways that work for some people and others might much rather do something else. If it's giving more time to yourself or doing more of something, I don't know. But for me, it's just being well-prepared physically, always trying to maintain a good mental space and just making sure everything is in line carwise."

But what does O’Ward see, if anything, in Palou’s Ganassi car that he feels makes the difference? Palou won eight of the 17 races last year.

"Their car can do things better than our car, for sure, but we're trying to rectify those things," O’Ward said. "I don't think Alex has the best car for a certain street course. I think the Andretti car there is definitely the best.

"So it's just about trying to make your bad weekends better. Because our good weekends are very good. But we need to make our bad weekends much better. And I think that's where the Ganassi car, specifically in race trim, is super, super strong where sometimes we might not have those better bad weekends like they do. Our bad weekends are pretty freaking bad. So that's the biggest difference that I see."

[SEASON PREVIEW: Pato O'Ward Aiming for Elusive Indy 500]

The driver lineup at McLaren has stayed the same this year with O’Ward, Christian Lundgaard and Nolan Siegel. O’Ward also has the same personnel working on his car. Arrow McLaren did make some changes in key areas behind the scenes, including last summer bringing in former Penske executive Kyle Moyer to be the competition director.

The biggest change comes in location. The team moved from the cramped quarters of the Sam Schmidt Motorsports shop to the spacious building that used to house Andretti. After a complete overhaul of that building, McLaren now has the space it needs — 86,000 square feet, compared to 33,000 square feet of its previous home — and amenities that it didn’t previously have, including a state-of-the-art fitness center.

"I've gone more to the new shop in the last two weeks than I went to the old shop in one year," O’Ward said. "You just want to be there. ... It's nice to have a home that matches our goals.

"And I'm a firm believer that you need to act like it before you actually get there. It's been a great new thing, and I think it's arriving at just the perfect time."

O’Ward is genuinely excited about the opportunity as he seeks his first title and hopes to finally win the Indianapolis 500 after recent heartbreaks.

"I genuinely am excited for this new opportunity that we have," O’Ward said. "It's a new year. It's a new shot at every venue that we go to. So I'm trying to extract the most out of those weekends that we can. And I feel confident that we're going to be stronger than last year."

Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR and INDYCAR for FOX Sports. He has spent decades covering motorsports, including over 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass.