Pato O’Ward has never been shy about saying what he thinks, but even by his standards this one landed with a thud: he’s asked Zak Brown to “fire” him as McLaren’s Formula 1 reserve because, in his own words, F1 isn’t his dream anymore — and the current cars don’t excite him.
It’s a striking shift from a driver who’s spent the last few years with one foot in the F1 paddock and the other firmly planted in IndyCar. Since 2022, O’Ward has been part of McLaren’s Formula 1 programme, turning up for young driver FP1 outings and logging mileage in Testing of Previous Cars. All useful, all respectable, and all the sort of thing that keeps a driver’s name hovering around the edges of the grand prix world.
But the truth is O’Ward’s career has been moving in a different direction for a while. His day job is in IndyCar with Arrow McLaren, where he’s won 10 races since joining the team in 2020 and has finished inside the top three in the championship twice. He’s recently extended his IndyCar deal, and he’s talking like someone who’s done trying to keep doors open “just in case”.
Speaking on the Speed Street podcast with Conor Daly, O’Ward explained he went directly to Brown — “the guy that calls the shots” — and asked to be cut loose.
“I’m grateful for the experiences and all the things I’ve been able to learn in the world of Formula 1, and driving those race cars,” he said. “But I really think I’m just in a different point of my life now and I really don’t care anymore… There’s really nothing in me that is aching to keep on as a reserve in Formula 1.”
Then came the line that will make plenty of F1 people bristle: “Looking at where the [F1] race cars are currently, I’m not really excited to drive one.”
There’s an honesty in that which is almost alien in modern driver management, where everybody is expected to say they’ll do anything for a chance — even when the chance is theoretical and the cost is very real. Being a reserve can be a useful gig, but it’s also a constant state of readiness: training, travel, simulator work, sponsor obligations, and a calendar that belongs to the team. O’Ward framed it less as a dramatic split and more as reclaiming control of his life.
“I want to focus on my priorities and enjoy my life because I feel like a lot of the times I don’t really get to dictate my schedule at all,” he said. “So yeah, I want to be able to train more, eat better, and just prepare for ’27, which is going to come fast.”
That last part is important: he’s not stepping away from racing ambition — he’s narrowing it. And he’s doing it at a time when McLaren, like every team, has to manage mandatory FP1 rookie appearances. There are four required sessions across the season, and McLaren has already ticked off one at the Barcelona Grand Prix by running Formula 2’s Leonardo Fornaroli. Whether O’Ward appears in any of the remaining slots now feels like a genuine question rather than a formality.
The bigger picture is what O’Ward is really saying about the two worlds he’s experienced. He didn’t dress it up as “F1 bad, IndyCar good” — but he didn’t hide behind diplomacy either. He’s had enough proximity to F1 to understand its daily reality, and he’s decided it isn’t the environment where he’s happiest.
“I can’t tell you the amount of times of people were like ‘when Formula 1, when Formula 1’ and obviously that’s been a dream of mine ever since I was a kid,” he said. “But also being around that world for many years… I have enough of a whiff of what that world is like and I genuinely don’t think that is for me.”
O’Ward went further, describing IndyCar as “the best place for motor racing” — a line that will resonate with anyone who values racing as an act rather than a product — before adding he doesn’t “need to be more famous or have more money”.
And then, with the sort of metaphor that sticks because it’s not trying too hard, he delivered the closer: “I know F1 is put on a pedestal, but just because the plate looks like gold doesn’t mean what you’re eating is healthier.”
For McLaren, none of this has to be messy if they don’t want it to be. Drivers come and go through reserve roles all the time, and O’Ward has been a useful part of their ecosystem while remaining a headline act in IndyCar. But it does underline something teams don’t often say out loud: the F1 ladder isn’t a universal aspiration anymore, not when a driver is already winning races, building a life, and enjoying his work somewhere else.
O’Ward sounds like someone who’s stopped measuring success through the prism of Formula 1. In a sport that runs on hunger and myth-making, that might be the most unusual thing he’s ever done.
