Arrow McLaren “breaking curses” in IndyCar - Portland qualifying reaction
- Archie O’Reilly
- Aug 9, 2025
- 9 min read
IndyCar’s final road course qualifying session of 2025 has ended with the same team leading the way that headed the field for the first road course event of the season.
Arrow McLaren secured their first-ever front-row lockout at the Thermal Club in March, with Pato O’Ward leading new teammate Christian Lundgaard. And now in the seventh and last road course round of the season at Portland International Raceway, the papaya pair have finished in the inverse order for the team’s second qualifying 1-2 finish.
Unfortunately for Arrow McLaren on this occasion, they will not actually lock out the front row, with pole-winner Lundgaard demoted six places due to an unapproved engine change. But they still have O’Ward to lead the field to green for a second time this season.
With the final two oval races featuring single-car qualifying, DIVEBOMB details the reaction from the lead drivers after the final group qualifying session of 2025…
Arrow McLaren breaking new ground
With O’Ward second in the standings - 77 points clear of Chip Ganassi Racing’s Scott Dixon in third - he is on track for his and Arrow McLaren’s best-ever championship finish. Álex Palou has been in a different league out front but the team have at least shown they can contend.
It has been a season of newfound consistency for O’Ward in particular, with a worst race result of 17th, 11 top-seven results, nine top fives, two wins and a total of six podiums in 14 rounds. With five podiums, Lundgaard sits fifth in points in his first season with the team too.
“We’re breaking curses, as I like to call them,” O’Ward said. “Zak [Brown, CEO of McLaren Racing] was finally at a race win in the flesh [in Toronto]. We’re finally breaking curses at certain circuits that have always been a very tough challenge - for not just my side but sometimes all three cars.
“This is a perfect example of [Portland] in the past being a big struggle. I’m glad that we’ve pushed forward. The guys have brought me new things - new upgrades - to try on the cars.
“That just speaks to how hungry we are to close that gap and bring the fight to pretty much the No.10 car [of Palou], which is the only car that’s up there all the time. His success this year has overshadowed a little bit of how strong the team has stepped up and given us the tools to perform every weekend.”
Arrow McLaren’s three cars qualified 18th, 23rd and 24th in Portland last year, salvaging 12th, 15th and 21st in the race. But whether within a race weekend or from event to event, the team has appeared to massively improve at problem-solving in 2025.
“A massive turnaround to where we were here last year,” O’Ward said. “Super proud of everybody and all the work that’s gone into specifically this weekend to turn things around.”
Internal competition proving key
Arrow McLaren have not always had multiple cars consistently running up front during the infancy of their time in IndyCar. No teammate of O’Ward’s has beaten him nor finished better than eighth in points across his previous five years with the team.
But they are on track for a double-top-five finish in the championship as things stand in 2025. While 20-year-old Nolan Siegel has a little more to find on a more consistent basis to allow the team to fire on all three cylinders, O’Ward is relishing the competition from Lundgaard.
“It’s been great,” O’Ward said. “Sometimes the solution to making sure that you improve maybe in places where you haven’t been as strong is getting your ass kicked. That’s the number one priority.
“The purpose of pushing somebody is you learn from somebody where they’re stronger than you. I feel like I knew as soon as Christian came into the team, that was only going to make me better. I think vice versa for him. He’s also got someone in me that is going to be pushing him every single week.
“That is ultimately bringing the team to new heights. The engineers are obviously motivated to give us everything that we can in order to keep on fighting and pushing us forward. But that’s all you can ask for. You want somebody to push you.
“It might make your life a little bit more stressful but, at the end of the day, it’s only going to make you better. That’s why we’re here.”
How Lundgaard secured his P1 Award
Lundgaard’s third career pole and first for Arrow McLaren came as a little bit of a surprise. He paced both the all-car session on primary tyres and group segment on alternate tyres in Practice 1 on Friday but felt as though he lost performance in Saturday’s Practice 2.
“I did not expect that [pole],” he said. “[I was] optimistic going into qualifying day [but O’Ward] gained some pace from Practice 2 going into qualifying; I almost felt like it was the opposite way for me from yesterday to today.
“I felt really good yesterday and struggled a little more today with basically no changes in the car overnight. It feels like a big surprise.”
Unfortunately for Lundgaard but also to his relief, Chevy found an issue with his engine overnight from Friday into Saturday. This necessitated the unapproved engine change which will see him start from seventh as opposed to pole on Sunday.
But having made a habit of driving his way to the rostrum on road and street courses this year - with podiums in half of the 10 races - and having finished second after starting seventh at Laguna Seca last time out, there will remain confidence in the No.7 camp.
Lundgaard’s closest challenger for fifth in the championship, Meyer Shank Racing’s Felix Rosenqvist, has been promoted to the front row owing to the Dane’s penalty, though Lundgaard does hold a 42-point buffer. He is still only 20 points adrift of Andretti Global’s Kyle Kirkwood in fourth and 35 behind Dixon in third too.
The keys to such immediate success with Arrow McLaren, with a podium tally level with that managed by predecessors Rosenqvist and Alexander Rossi put together across five seasons? An aligned vision and quick discovery of a desirable philosophy.
“It’s quite simple,” Lundgaard said. “It’s wanting the same thing - and that’s to win. You want to be competitive. We’ve done well at that. We identified some differences and things that I like on the car compared to Pato and Nolan very early in the season. Most of our big finds were in Sebring, the first test we did. We just carried on from there.
“It’s been awesome. We’ve had almost some better results than expected. For sure also some worse. But ultimately if you look at it, we’ve had a great season. We’ve been pretty much competitive at every event. We’re just trying to continue doing that.”
O’Ward’s in-weekend turnaround
O’Ward showed glimpses of pace in practice but did not have the same level of comfort as Lundgaard did on Friday. Hope from pre-weekend had started to dissipate, as much as sixth place overall in Practice 1 and 11th in Practice 2 was hardly a disaster.
“I definitely knew that [this qualifying result] was possible coming into the weekend,” O’Ward said. “But in practice I wasn’t feeling super confident just because I was really struggling with the car. I was struggling to get a lap together.
“When you’re operating at over-capacity sometimes, when you nail the perfect lap, you know that car shouldn’t truly be there. I couldn’t get it right. Very random in qualifying… in Q1, as soon as we went out there, it felt like a completely different car without changing anything.
“I must say it’s a bit of a surprise. The car randomly turned alive. As soon as I felt where the car was, I knew we had a shot for pole. Just missed it with Palou getting into the wall in our optimal temp window.”
O’Ward has grappled with some issues to re-find his pure pace of the past in qualifying since the added weight of the hybrid system forced some alterations to his on-the-edge driving style. But he has still been a more-than-consistent Fast 12 feature and has now notched his third front-row start - and second in succession - on a road course this year
Palou “went looking for mushrooms”
On a weekend where O’Ward has to outscore him by 13 points to keep the championship mathematically alive into the final two rounds, Palou notched his 13th Fast Six qualifying result in 15 races this season - his worst qualifying result of the year still only ninth.
But going deep in Turn 11 with a lock-up and making light contact with the tyre barrier, Palou finished last in the Fast Six session. He will still start fifth, which rather speaks to how inconsequential his rare errors seem to be; the other this season came at Mid-Ohio, where an off-track excursion when leading was only punished by dropping one position.
“Happy that we had pace. Obviously not happy that I went looking for mushrooms there in Fast Six,” quipped the four-time champion in-waiting. “I tried a little bit too hard. Just lost the car. I don’t know if I impeded anybody… I’m sorry if I did.
“I just locked a little bit. It was not much - just enough that you kind of are off the rubber and the car felt like it accelerated instead of braking. It was a small mistake.”
Palou’s error, over-pushing a little to try and close the gap to his Arrow McLaren competitors, denied him a genuine shot at a sixth pole of the season. But he still believes he can win and clinch the championship from fifth, even with O’Ward starting from first place.
O’Ward gunning for race wins
O’Ward knows, with Palou’s advantage at 121 points and a lead of 108 points good enough to secure the championship with two races to spare, the prospect of winning his maiden title this year is more than a long shot. So in his mind: why look at points?
“I’ll be thinking winning the race,” O’Ward said. “The points will take care of themselves.
“It juices it up for all you fans, also for ourselves [by fighting Palou]. The guy’s pretty much won it already. I know they’re making a big deal out of this… we are 130 points back. He has got to have the worst luck he’s ever had in his career in order for us to keep this alive.”
Starting from the third row, Palou holds a similar mindset knowing that a victory will secure him the title. But as much as adding to his historic year with the nigh on unprecedented feat of clinching in the third-last race would be welcome, he knows he has three races to get the job done. It is not a disaster if it remains mathematically a contest beyond Portland.
“[Winning the race] is obviously the goal,” he said. “I’m not going to drive differently just because we have a chance. As long as we finish the year with the championship at home, that’s the goal. If we can get it tomorrow, great. If we can’t, it’s okay.
“But knowing that by winning the race we can clinch it here, that’s what we’re shooting for.”
Managing the treacherous Turn 1
Portland plays host to arguably the most Lap 1 jeopardy with the long run down to the heavy braking zone of Turn 1. So often has it been the scene of opening-lap calamity.
Starting alongside his good friend and former teammate Rosenqvist at the front of the field, O’Ward may have a quiet word about getting through the first corner safely.
“I’ve been having dinner with him the last two nights,” O’Ward said. “I think it’s going to be the same tonight. I will tell him: “Let’s not screw each other up!”
Palou is aware of the possible jeopardy. He feels relatively safe inside the top six but knows there is often desperation to go for any gaps that may open up. He himself admitted he will approach the start off instinct depending on how things may open up.
Pole-winner Lundgaard starts directly behind Palou on Row 4. But as much as getting ahead of Palou could help teammate O’Ward, Lundgaard has his own top five in points to preserve.
“Ultimately I’m fighting for my own championship,” he said. “That’s really where my priorities lie. If I have a chance of passing Álex, I will. But it’s not to help Pato. It’s not how we race.”
Malukas and Power share Row 2
There is another interesting dynamic on the second row, with Team Penske’s Will Power lining up alongside AJ Foyt Racing’s David Malukas, who is being touted as the heir to Power’s No.12 entry at Penske in the future - whether next year or beyond.
By qualifying fifth and finding himself promoted to fourth, Malukas continues a year of standout qualifying performance - particularly stacked up against teammate Santino Ferrucci. Even then, he still wanted more.
“The car was so good,” Malukas said. “We were definitely fighting for pole with this car - it was that good. But every single run, we had something going wrong. First one, that was on me; come in, had to do a drive-through. And by the time we go back out, red flag comes out.
“Each session, the way things played out, we were on cold tyres, just scraping laps together. And each time, it was giving us a Fast Six. So the fact that we’re not on strategy, scraping laps together and we still made it to P5 just goes to show how good that car was.
“It feels really good [to have Penske-like pace]. I’m new to the team coming into it this year and learned a lot, building chemistry with the team. We’ve been on a pretty big upward trajectory and we’re on track for what I wanted - competing in the Fast Six repeatedly.”
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