How McLaren is striving towards IndyCar's elite

Once we got used to seeing the large two-storey Arrow hospitality unit regularly appearing at IndyCar races, before the pandemic made such luxuries superfluous in 2020, it was easy to forget the humble beginnings from which the squad now known as Arrow McLaren SP had grown over the previous two decades.

The rise was not meteoric: there were definite flat spots, usually as a result of partnerships that had their roots in expedience rather than expectation of excellence. Counterbalancing that trait along the way, team founder Sam Schmidt, whose underlying ambition and business smarts could rarely be questioned, doesn't tend to shy away from making difficult decisions. Consequently, the team's form never dipped for longer than a season, and the general trend was always upward.

Now, little more than a year after Arrow Schmidt Peterson Motorsport formed a partnership with McLaren, the team truly does appear to have entered a new era. In fact, the biggest question now is whether Arrow McLaren SP is going to turn IndyCar's Big Three - Team Penske, Chip Ganassi Racing and Andretti Autosport - into a Big Four, or if it will replace Michael Andretti's team in that top trio.

In 2020, it came very close to achieving the latter. Either way, the team appears ready for success, thereby returning the McLaren name to US single-seater racing's Victory Circle more than 40 years after its last win.

Schmidt, a winning driver in Indy Racing League who was rendered quadriplegic after an accident in testing in January 2000, has the mindset of a champion and the soul of a true motorsport addict, inspired by the example of the similarly injured Sir Frank Williams. Throughout 2000, he spent the year assembling a team, and thus was born Sam Schmidt Motorsports. After only a couple of full IndyCar seasons, he turned most of his attention to Indy Lights and, over the course of a dozen years, his was the team to beat in the junior series, producing seven champions between 2004 and 2013.

But it was in 2010 that Schmidt noticed a new way back into the top rung. The FAZZT race team had been a hastily formed house of cards, and after just one season it was collapsing, so Schmidt bought the assets, Alex Tagliani included, and his team, run by former Walker Racing team manager Rob Edwards, regularly impressed in 2011. 'Tag' took a couple of poles, became a regular participant in the Firestone Fast Six, and it was only for personal reasons that team and driver split at season's end.

"If I look at why we did IndyCar, aside from the obvious history that we have there, Formula 1 doesn't yet move the needle in North America as much as we hope it will, and think it will in time" Zak Brown, McLaren CEO

With the arrival of the Dallara DW12 for 2012, the IndyCar Series got the make-over it needed, the restrictions on the spec car became more stringent, and Schmidt hired the fast, methodical and composed Simon Pagenaud. Over the next three years, during which former Atlantic team owner Ric Peterson became Schmidt's business partner, Pagenaud and race engineer Ben Bretzman delivered four wins and in 2013 took third in the championship, before both were scooped up by Penske for 2015.

James Hinchcliffe - not as quick as Pagenaud but arguably a more instinctive fighter - became lead driver in the team, and the likeable Canadian scored a couple of wins over the next two seasons, despite a crash during 2015 Indy 500 practice that almost killed him and put him out for the rest of that season.

But both he and the team were hard to gauge. Was their inconsistency in 2016 and 2017 down to Hinchcliffe and team-mate Mikhail Aleshin requiring very different handling cars? Was the team unable to give either of them the cars they needed?

The picture became clearer with the arrival of IndyCar rookie - but vastly experienced - Robert Wickens in 2018. He was very fast, demanding of his engineers and always pushing for excellence, and it's beyond cruel that his flurry of podiums and top-five finishes were brought to a shattering halt with his injuries suffered at Pocono. In 2019, his absence from the team as a driver meant SPM trod water rather than fight with the series' established elite, and that made all involved restless.

Arrow Electronics had gone from traditional primary sponsor of Hinchcliffe's car to full-blown team partner, and the company's directors had got involved not just to be part of the scene but instead be seen - at the front. Major change was needed.

In April of that year, McLaren CEO Zak Brown said that it was a case of 'when' rather than 'if' McLaren returned full-time to IndyCar racing, and Arrow SPM's partnership with the famous marque was announced in early August 2019. In between times, however, McLaren had failed to qualify Fernando Alonso for the Indy 500. How was the Woking company's input going to help an under-performing IndyCar team?

But Brown, like Schmidt, doesn't tend to make the same mistakes twice, and over the next few months it became clear that this was not going to be a branding exercise in the manner of the one-race-only deal when Alonso drove a McLaren-backed Andretti Autosport car at Indy in 2017. This partnership would herald an unambiguous return to the series in which McLaren scored 28 wins (including three Indy 500s) and two championships back in the 1970s.

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"If I look at why we did IndyCar, aside from the obvious history that we have there, Formula 1 doesn't yet move the needle in North America as much as we hope it will, and think it will in time," explains Brown. "If we look at the majority of sponsor partners, one of the yearly questions is that [F1] is not big enough in North America for us. So IndyCar gives us that platform to say, 'Ah, North America's really important for you? We have a solution there...'

"IndyCar is about the North American marketplace for us and our partners. BAT is a big sponsor of ours in F1. They are now in IndyCar. Arrow Electronics, our title sponsor in IndyCar, is now a significant partner of ours in F1. We're getting a cross-pollination of partners."

Arrow McLaren SP's switch to Chevrolet engines for 2020 was inevitable, for McLaren and Honda had long since fallen out over Alonso's and the team's criticisms of the marque's F1 power units. But there were more changes afoot in that summer of 2019. Inevitably in a spec racing formula, there is much emphasis on driving talent, and neither Hinchcliffe nor ex-F1 driver Marcus Ericsson were cutting it, so they were cut loose. In Ericsson's case, he was informed before season's end that his services would not be required for 2020, whereas the axe fell on Hinchcliffe after the 2019 finale.

In came 2018 Indy Lights champion Patricio O'Ward, who had looked startlingly rapid in Carlin's IndyCar during a part-time campaign, and 2019 Lights champ Oliver Askew. Many had sympathy for the likeable Hinchcliffe: he had another year on his contract, so his sudden unemployment was a shock. But a rival team owner viewed it unsympathetically.

"Sam's very tough and he understands racing," he said. "We all know there's only four or five drivers in IndyCar who can win you races you aren't supposed to win by being superfast and aggressive - and then the weekends where you give them a great car, they're gone. That's Power, Dixon, Newgarden, maybe Rossi, maybe Bourdais on his best days.

"Wickens was going to be in that group, and now Pato and Colton [Herta] will probably be in there - and could have another 20 years left! Colton's tied up with Andretti, but that leaves Pato. You've got to grab a guy like that while you can. Hinchcliffe peaked years ago, and Ericsson is decent but nothing special. Sam did the right thing."

O'Ward and Askew were race-engineered by incumbents Will Anderson and Blair Perschbacher respectively, while highly regarded former Newman Haas kingmaker Craig Hampson joined the team as R&D and race engineer of the extra Indy 500 car for Alonso. As it transpired, once Alonso shunted his primary car in practice and was left with less perfectly optimised bodywork, he became anonymous. But in most other regards 2020 has to be seen as a success for Arrow McLaren SP.

"It's a young IndyCar team, which is what I kind of feel we have in F1, even though we've been around a long time. It's a very youthful-in-spirit racing team" Zak Brown, McLaren CEO

O'Ward delivered a pole position, four podiums and fourth in the championship, showing not only great pace but also astounding maturity and self-restraint for a driver in his first complete IndyCar season. Askew doesn't have the bullish self-confidence of O'Ward but he was also unluckier.

After he too landed a podium, a heavy crash on the Indy road course led to an undiagnosed concussion that put him out of action for two races, and then he was told he was being released at season's end. Given that this news emerged before the youngster's comeback in the season finale, team management again presented IndyCar fans with rods with which to beat it.

But again, you could hardly argue with the team's choice of replacement for Askew. The 2019 IndyCar Rookie of the Year, Felix Rosenqvist, scored his first IndyCar win in 2020 by passing O'Ward two laps from home at Road America. When his relationship with Ganassi ran its course, AMSP was delighted to grab him. Six weeks later, the team revealed it had signed two-time Indy 500 winner and former McLaren F1 driver Juan Pablo Montoya to race its third car at the Speedway.

Brown sounds convinced that returning full-time to IndyCar after 40 years is already paying off for the company, and that the investment will be rewarded with success - sooner rather than later.

"We have an IndyCar team that sits inside McLaren in Woking that is exclusively dedicated to IndyCar, where we bring F1 and motor racing knowhow and technologies," he says. "I think Taylor Kiel, who is the president of the team [Gil de Ferran has now left the programme], has done an outstanding job. He's young, energetic, very smart and highly motivated.

"So it's a young IndyCar team, which is what I kind of feel we have in F1, even though we've been around a long time. It's a very youthful-in-spirit racing team. I think we've got a great driver line-up in Pato and Felix Rosenqvist... as strong a line-up as any IndyCar team out there. Juan Pablo coming back to do Indy will be a lot of fun, and I expect him to be very competitive.

"We brought on Craig Hampson, who is recognised as one of the best engineers in IndyCar racing. I think we've collaboratively built a really strong IndyCar team. It's a very strong championship and I don't think you could have a better custodian for a racing series than Roger Penske. I think IndyCar as a series is on the up."

To appreciate how highly this team has come to be regarded in the last year, though, it's Chevrolet's IndyCar programme manager Rob Buckner whose words carry the most weight. Before 2020, there was a yawning gap in Chevy's line-up of teams - Penske and then the rest, except on ovals where Ed Carpenter Racing would often shine - which made it difficult for the Bowtie to win the manufacturers' championship. Arrow McLaren SP's switch from Honda has made a big difference, says Buckner.

"From our first conversations with Zak, Taylor Kiel and Sam, we realised it was going to be a very competitive team," he recalls. "Seeing what they had done with Robert Wickens in 2018, we knew they had the performance. The team was already on the rise, so it was a question of, 'How do we put a deal together?'

"And the team did a really nice job of executing last year. I think we were all a bit frustrated we haven't gotten a race win together yet. But it was a really tough year to be a rookie with zero testing going on, so those two inexperienced drivers did well, and I also think Arrow McLaren SP builds great cars. They've been a great group for us to work with, and they helped us address that lack of depth by being competitive week in, week out.

"We got great feedback from the drivers and engineers, and we think that is going to continue with Pato and Felix in 2021. I mean, just from the talent point of view, those two are going to push each other really hard, which benefits each other, and the team and us too.

"Having those two guys as team-mates in as strong a team as Arrow McLaren SP already is, and how strong we think they're going to become, that really is a big boost for us. We're very happy about it."