Pato O’Ward won’t go without a podium in 2026. In fact, he won’t go winless either.
The driver of the No. 5 Arrow McLaren Chevrolet passed his teammate, Christian Lundgaard, on Lap 42 of the Honda Indy 200 and held off a late charge by Lundgaard to score the victory at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course.
“It’s great that the first podium of the year for me is a win,” O’Ward said. “We’ve had performances, and I think today was a textbook showing of execution. I want to give it to my guys in the pits; they were phenomenal. I know they’ve been working so hard because this year that has been a bit of a challenge, and I know they’re working so hard to give me the pit stops that they gave me today. I know they’ve been working hard for that.
“I really want to recognize that because they make or break my race. They truly allowed me to fight my way and keep my position today as we were fighting on track.
“Obviously the cars have been strong all weekend. It’s been a very strong weekend for all three cars. It was a matter of being perfect.”
It’s his 10th career victory in his 109th career NTT INDYCAR SERIES start.
Pole sitter Lundgaard, who’s gone from a sure fire guarantee to return to the seat of the No. 7 Chevrolet to doubtful, gave Arrow McLaren its first one-two finish in INDYCAR with a runner-up.
“Yeah, very long day, very tough day,” Lundgaard said. “Obviously very tough physically out there with the heat, but also just an all-green race. It didn’t really help that we were quite loose. We kind of went into the race knowing that — or thinking the balance was going to go towards understeer, and I don’t think that was the case as much. I think we kind of overreacted and made the car a lot harder to drive.
“Very, very difficult, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how difficult the car is to drive. I still think we sort of maximized today, which is always nice.”
Kyle Kirkwood rounded out the podium.
“Yeah, that was one of the most physical days I’ve ever had in a race car,” Kirkwood said. “I’m cooked right now. Running all green around here with it being hot and this place is just so busy as it is, and it’s qualifying laps every single lap. My shoulders are shot. That’s why I’m leaning over. Will I’m definitely hydrated, just cooked.
“We drove from 10th to third. A lot of it was strategy and pit stops. We had a lot of good strategy that put us in a podium position there, and we also passed some cars in the beginning of the race, so a little bit of both.
“A really good day overall. It wasn’t where we were meant to qualify. We should have qualified towards the front, I think. I guess I’m glad that we were able to get us back towards the front in the race.”
Rinus VeeKay and Alex Palou rounded out the top-five.
Will Power, Christian Rasmussen, David Malukas, Josef Newgarden and Nolan Siegel rounded out the top-10.
Pato O’Ward erases goose egg season with win at Mid-Ohio
Race summary
Lundgaard led the field to green at 12:53 p.m. ET. The field settled into a green flag rhythm. Scott Dixon broke this up when he kicked off a cycle of green flag stops on Lap 7 (for those drivers running a three-stop strategy). This primarily consisted of cars that started the race on soft tires. By Lap 17, all but 11 cars made their first stop. The first of these cars on the two-stop plan pitted on Lap 25. Lundgaard pitted from the lead on Lap 27, but exited pit lane maintaining the lead.
Given where everybody pitted, that threw a two-stop plan out the window.
Mick Schumacher and Sting Ray Robb kickstarted the second round of stops on Lap 35. During this cycle, Lundgaard got off line in the keyhole and O’Ward pulled to his outside on Lap 42. Down the backstretch, they raced side-by-side. O’Ward completed the overtake in Turn 5 for the race lead. He pitted from the lead on Lap 48 and exited ahead of Lundgaard. Newgarden pitted from the lead on Lap 50 and O’Ward cycled back to the lead.
With 33 laps to go, O’Ward led Lundgaard by less than a second. With both of them on soft tires and dealing with lap traffic, third-place VeeKay, on hard tires, cut the gap from two seconds to 1.5 seconds by Lap 60. By Lap 63, O’Ward cleared Dennis Hauger in the keyhole. He stayed on track, while Lundgaard, VeeKay and Kirkwood pitted. Lundgaard exited ahead of both drivers, but Kirkwood exited ahead of VeeKay. O’Ward pitted from the lead on Lap 65 and cycled out roughly four seconds ahead of Lundgaard. Palou pitted from the lead with 25 laps to go. Power pitted from the lead with 24 to go and O’Ward cycled back to the head of the field.
With 18 laps to go, Lundgaard cut the lead to O’Ward from four seconds to 2.5 seconds. With 15 to go, the gap shrank to 2.1 seconds. With 13 to go, it dipped under two seconds. With 10 to go, Lundgaard pulled to within 1.4 seconds of O’Ward. With nine to go, O’Ward caught the tail-end of the field and lost time in his lead to Lundgaard. With four to go, however, the gap stabilized around 1.3 seconds and O’Ward drove on to victory.
Pato O’Ward erases goose egg season with win at Mid-Ohio
What else happened
Alexander Rossi and Dixon made contact on Lap 38. Rossi received a two-spot penalty for avoidable contact.
Pato O’Ward erases goose egg season with win at Mid-Ohio
Nuts and bolts
The race lasted one hour, 43 minutes and 23 seconds, at an average speed of 117.932 mph. There were five lead changes among four different drivers and zero cautions.
Palou leaves Mid-Ohio with a 56-point lead over Kirkwood.
The NTT IndyCar Series returns to action July 19, in the Borchetta Bourbon Music City Grand Prix at Nashville Superspeedway.
