Felix Rosenqvist in the No.6 NTT DATA Arrow McLaren Chevrolet had a disappointing end to his time with the team.
Starting his final race with the team from pole position, the Swede ended the race on 19th place and speaking following the action he commented saying:
”What a ride. It really was a roller coaster for my final drive with Arrow McLaren. We started on pole with a mega car and a strong first half of the race. Then Marcus came into me and our day was ended from there. The No. 6 crew fought hard to stay in the race, but it’s a shame considering the potential we had going for us. I have to thank the team and especially my crew for the speed we had all season long. To have two poles and two podiums in the wild season that we had, I’m really proud of us and I leave with my head held high. It’s been really special racing with Arrow McLaren, and now I’m excited for what’s to come in 2024.”
Pato O’Ward in the No.5 Arrow McLaren Chevrolet ended the race in ninth place and as a result he is now eligible for an FIA Super Licence for Formula One.
“Our race was looking so strong, and that was a very disappointing end to what could’ve been a great result. We kept our nose clean, did a nice job on track, and the team nailed it in the pit stops. It’s frustrating having our day thrown away by other people’s mistakes.
“It’s been a strong season for us and performance has been consistent. We still need to clean things up here and there, but I’m proud of the job that I’ve done. We’re going to come back next year even stronger and see where we can stack up, racing hard and pushing for wins.”
Alexander Rossi in the No.7 VELO Chevrolet ended the race in seventh place having come from 15th on the grid and ends his first season with Arrow McLaren in 9th place on 375 points.
“I think we learned a lot this year. There were a lot of very positive things to draw upon. It was just a year of a lot of weird things. Today’s race was a perfect example. We had to manually jack the car up for the last two pitstops. It’s the little things like that that we need to work on, but ultimately the team grew massively. On the No. 7 side, I feel like we improved tremendously throughout the year and have a lot of things to learn from when we see all these tracks again for the second time together next year. We’ll focus on the positives, try to improve on the negatives and go into the off-season.”
Arrow McLaren were left disappointed as they didn’t win a race this season and the consolation for Race Director Gavin Ward was the fact that the team assisted Chevrolet in winning the Manufacturers championship.
“It might take a while to figure out exactly what happened in this race. There were an awful lot of caution laps, and we had a bit of a roller coaster of emotions there through the race. For a little while it looked like we were perhaps going to get a little lucky, finally get that win with Pato. As it panned out, we got pretty unlucky.
“I’m just gutted to see Felix get punted there, again by Ericsson. Then Alexander got hit from behind which broke his air jack, which then added a lot of time to his pitstops, so we had to get creative about how we were going to get to the end with the least amount of stops and lose the least amount of time with that problem. So to get him to finish were he did is a pretty decent result.
“I think the most positive thing we can take out of today is that Chevy brought home the manufacturer championship which we were pushing really hard to help make that happen. Chevy put in a lot of hard work all year long, and we’re putting a lot of hard work in already for next year. I can’t wait for the off-season. I can’t wait for next season