Arrow McLaren’s Pato O’Ward says he doesn’t see why the NTT INDYCAR SERIES is not racing internationally and the sport has a big potential to have more races in Latin America such as Mexico and Brazil.
Speaking during the content day, O’Ward said that is not a case of going fully international like Formula One but that INDYCAR should focus on their roots and this is important he feels that racing in Mexico is not a priority right now for the sport.
O’Ward said that the mentality needs to change in terms of the sponsors wanting to go international echoing the sentiments of Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing’s Graham Rahal who said on Wednesday that the likes of United Rentals who are now a global brand.
McLaren Racing is a global brand thanks to their involvement in Formula One and other series and O’Ward wants a race or two in Europe. When it comes to the growth of the series, O’Ward commented saying:
I’m going to go with not just I think in sports route but in just growth in general.
I’m only 24 years old, so I know there’s a lot more people that have a lot more experience than I do. But from my years of life so far, when you see things grow — it could be a person, it could be a company, a business, a group of people. But when you’re just speaking of growth, change will usually kind of rattle people’s floor. Like it’ll kind of move things around. Some people will like it, some people won’t like it.
But when you don’t evolve and when you don’t change, you sure as hell will not grow. The only way to doing that is to change things up.
The way that things grow nowadays is completely different to what it was 30 years ago. Keep in mind, I wasn’t alive 30 years ago, but I have heard a lot from my grandparents, my parents. I have seen what just 10 years has done and has shifted in the markets of a lot of products and a lot of different things.
I think having a good product, yes, like that is important. But ultimately what you need is you want people to be present. You want people to be a part of something that’s just not race cars going around.
I think we as a series are a perfect example of that because the racing is unbelievable. The racing is so good.
But there is something missing that we have yet quite to crack. And I think there’s a lot of examples that are going around in motorsports that have shown growth. It’s basically not a plug and play because every series is different, but you see how other series grow.
I think the most simple way would be like really see what is working for them; what is causing that to happen.
I’ve always been from the mentality — everything I do, I always go 100 percent. I never do things halfway. Maybe that’s a bit aggressive to obviously a series or whatever. But we have the potential to be like two or three Xing, not growing 5 or 10 percent a year. We’re selling ourselves short by just wanting to grow incrementally like that.
Like I think we really have the potential to see like massive gains, but just like in a lot of things, you just obviously have to fuel it if you want to see some of that double, triple, quadruple.
I know I’m just a voice. Some people agree with me, some people don’t agree with me. I believe at Arrow McLaren as a group, we are on the boat of definitely turbo charging it a bit and just getting it a bit more — taking more of an aggressive approach, which has been proven to work.
I don’t know. I try and do my best to help and to bring new audiences and new people to the series, because I feel like once people see and watch it, they’re going to want to stick around.
The problem is you need to get it in front of as many eyes as you can.