Arrow McLaren’s Pato O’Ward had a great Honda Indy 200 at the Mid-Ohio Sportscar Course after he came from 25th place on the grid to finish the race in eighth place in the No.5 Arrow McLaren Chevrolet and speaking following the action, he said:
“I was comfortable and happy in the car today, a great job by the entire team to fight from 25th to eighth. We didn’t have help from anybody today. No yellows, no lappers, no nothing. I’m happy with our result considering that we truly had to fight for every single position. We passed nearly every single car on the track, so there wasn’t one lap that went through that we weren’t pushing to the absolute maximum, so I’m pleased with that and congratulations to Alex Palou. “
Alexander Rossi started the race from 13th place and came home in tenth place and speaking following the action, he commented saying:
”The race was probably our best session of the weekend, which just goes to show how much of a struggle it was. The team did a good job overnight with a lot of changes to get the car more in the window. It’s disappointing to only have a 10th place finish, but we’ll move on to Toronto.”
It was an unfortunate race for Felix Rosenqvist in the No.6 NTT DATA Chevrolet as the Swede was involved in an accident with fellow Swede Marcus Ericsson and finished the race in 25th as a result and speaking following the race he said:
”It was a frustrating race for us. We got taken out on Lap One by Ericsson. I gave him a lot of room, but I think he misjudged a corner. He came up to say sorry, and he took on the responsibility, but it doesn’t help, you know. We tried to get it back. We tried to run long every stint, hoping for a yellow so we could get a lap back, but it just didn’t work out. We had really good pace in the car, but it just wasn’t our day.”
Arrow McLaren Race Director Gavin Ward said:
“To go from 25th to eighth was a good recovery for Pato. It felt like we were actually capable of more. We can’t change the past with qualifying, but even in the race, we were capable of fighting for the podium. The strategy was good, the car pace was exceptional, Pato drove great. We had a bit of a hiccup in the first pitstop that lost us some time that we need to look into. We had little help from fellow Chevy cars on the traffic side later in the race that certainly hurt us and was pretty disappointing. I’m just gutted for Felix being run over by Ericsson in Lap One. He just can’t seem to buy a break. He had tons of pace; his fastest lap was four tenths quicker than Pato’s and seven tenths to Palou in the race. Rossi made up a little bit of ground from his starting position, but we always want more. Coming away from this race feels like we didn’t reach our potential, but we’re encouraged the pace is there and keep working toward the rest of the season.”