Bold additions & a brutal axing: Assessing Arrow McLaren’s driver-market moves
- Archie O’Reilly
- 6 days ago
- 11 min read
In a major piece of IndyCar news, it was confirmed on Monday afternoon that Arrow McLaren have signed six-time series champion Scott Dixon and reigning Indianapolis 500 winner Felix Rosenqvist to multi-year deals, starting in 2027.
This incredibly confirmed the looming exit of one of IndyCar’s finest prodigies, Christian Lundgaard, after two years with the team, as well as the departure of 21-year-old Nolan Siegel.
The signing of Dixon - after a quarter-of-a-century with Chip Ganassi Racing (CGR) - marks the addition of the greatest driver of his generation. Rosenqvist, meanwhile, returns after a previous three-year stint in papaya from 2021 to 2023. They join the sport’s most popular driver, Pato O’Ward, as he approaches his eighth year with the team.
The shake-up serves up some of the biggest moves in recent memory - both in the signings and loss of a driver tipped as a future champion - as Arrow McLaren’s vision is laid bare.
The modern greatest - a statement still?
The IndyCar world was rocked last week by the confirmation that Dixon would be leaving CGR after 24 full seasons. Given the legacy he has built with the team over such an extensive period of success, it would have been reasonable to expect he would retire there, as team owner Chip Ganassi desired with his multi-year contract offer.
But Dixon had other ideas. Now 45 years old, he appears to want to leave no stone unturned in the latter years of his career. It is much like Lewis Hamilton’s move to Ferrari in Formula One or akin to Tom Brady joining the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (and winning the Super Bowl).
With one victory in 38 races, this is no longer Dixon at his ruthless peak. Since Álex Palou joined CGR in 2021 - one year after Dixon’s last title - he has gradually been engulfed more in the shadow cast by the generationally talented Spaniard.
He finished third in the standings last year but was 259 points - one point fewer than the total scored by Graham Rahal, who finished 19th in the championship - behind his teammate. Arrow McLaren are not yet championship calibre, but there is an opportunity for Dixon to end his career by building them into that while taking himself out of that head-to-head with Palou.
Ultimately, he loses little by rolling the dice and heading for a wildcard team among IndyCar’s front runners. All the while, there is the future prospect of a top-class sportscar drive amid McLaren’s pending Hypercar programme, while Dixon gets the opportunity to drive for a brand founded by a fellow legendary New Zealander, Bruce McLaren.
From an Arrow McLaren perspective, this is a move for long-term impact, without Dixon being a driver likely to be a long-term feature. It is a canny acquisition from a leadership side for a team which has had a very young lineup, particularly looking ahead to IndyCar’s new chassis in 2028, when Dixon’s experience of different formulas should aid the transition.
More immediately, his vast experience from a quarter-century with IndyCar’s best team of recent decades is invaluable for an outfit a little too often left confused at their performance, particularly on bad weekends but even in their better races.
After his recent Road America victory, Lundgaard was left mystified at why things had been so poor, then at how he won the race. That sentiment has not been uncommon.
Since the McLaren name rejoined the series in 2020, there has been the lack of a champion driver within the camp on a full-time basis. Dixon knows as well as anyone what works and what does not, which is essential for Arrow McLaren, for whom Pato O’Ward was runner-up in the standings but a massive 196 points behind Palou last year.
O’Ward himself should be delighted by this move, given how glowingly Palou has spoken about the extent to which Dixon has aided his development into IndyCar’s omnipotent force. Should he be the ‘sponge’ that drivers so often speak about, there is a chance for the Mexican to absorb the wisdom necessary to be refined into a true championship-level driver.
Even if this is a Dixon marginally in decline, his genius has not faded and likely never will. That said, this remains a truly landmark coup for Arrow McLaren.
The release of a field-leading prodigy
How the Dixon move is framed does depend on who you interpret him as replacement to. If the underdelivering Siegel, it is a no-brainer. But if over Lundgaard, who is 21 years Dixon’s junior, the move can be called a little more into question, as much as you can never knock bringing onboard one of the greatest the sport has ever seen.
For many years, Arrow McLaren seemed to try and fail to find two reliable front-running chargers, even in the initial two years as a three-car operation. Rosenqvist could not provide that in his previous stint, nor could Alexander Rossi.
But Lundgaard arrived at the start of the 2025 season and immediately hit the ground running. Within four races, he had recorded three podiums, exceeding the two-podium tally of predecessor Rossi from his two seasons and levelling Rosenqvist’s output from three campaigns. By season’s end, his six podiums matched O’Ward’s total for the year.
The Dane became the first teammate of O’Ward’s to finish better than eighth in the standings with a fifth that could have been third, if not for a mechanical issue in the season finale.
Arrow McLaren finally had what they wanted: two drivers to rely upon for regular race wins. And two drivers to guide them, seemingly, long into the future. Now in 2026, after 11 rounds, Lundgaard leads O’Ward by 29 points in third; for the first time, their golden boy, O’Ward, has been given a serious run for his money - and his game has been raised as a result.
Incredibly, the announcement of Lundgaard’s axing came 24 hours after the team’s first-ever 1-2 finish. Before that point, with no podium for O’Ward in 14 races, Lundgaard was their only podium-sitter with his four rostrum visits in 2026, including a pair of road-course wins as he continued to form something of a duopoly in the discipline with Palou.
For all the chat that results do the talking, for Lundgaard to be cut at a point where he has 11 podiums in 28 races for Arrow McLaren is quite the dramatic contradiction. And as part of that change, in Rosenqvist, they are bringing back a driver who recorded eight fewer podiums in 20 more races (three podiums in 48 races). Why? Ovals.
Because for Arrow McLaren, the Indy 500 is the overriding priority - seemingly over the wider season. They would appear willing to sacrifice a title-fighting driver for what they perceive to be four Indy 500 challengers over three drivers able to fight in May.
It is a move that feels harsh on Lundgaard, who had to almost relearn the oval craft in 2025 after three years with an ailing oval outfit in Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing. And as is often shown by O’Ward’s on-edge nature, Arrow McLaren’s oval car has hardly proven the easiest to drive.
Even still, Lundgaard’s return, while clearly not up to scratch and often with a decent gulf to O’Ward, has not been disastrous. He finished seventh in his first Indy 500 with the team last year, recorded sixth-place results at Iowa Speedway and the Milwaukee Mile and recently led the team with his 10th at World Wide Technology Raceway.
There have been foundations laid for a driver with no oval background in his formative years. And for a driver of his standard, it should come with few doubts that he is able to learn the craft. There are case studies aplenty of elite drivers who have taken time to get up to speed on ovals, even Palou to a degree - at least in terms of the shorter variety specifically.
It appears rash, for a team with emphasis on a long-term vision, to simply abandon Lundgaard over this. Especially when you consider team principal Tony Kanaan and new sporting director Ryan Hunter-Reay are both Indy 500 winners themselves.
Could they not have supported and coached Lundgaard in the discipline, rather than so cheaply parting with such a high-end talent? Instead, they have released a driver ovals away from arguably becoming the series’ most complete non-Palou package.
Time will tell whether it happens, but Arrow McLaren gravely risk Lundgaard falling upwards, given vacant seats including that left by Dixon at CGR - a proven championship-winning team in a much more stable state, surely conducive to allowing Lundgaard to flourish even more. One would think that move could be sweet for CGR given past animosity.
For Lundgaard, there should be universal hope that he lands at another front-running team. How inexplicably cruel would it be if that was not to be the case?
Rosenqvist rekindling with his ex-team
In isolation, especially if the Indy 500 is such a priority for the team, the addition of Rosenqvist is not a bad move. But this feels like a complex situation.
This is Rosenqvist going back to a place where things did not necessarily work out in the past. It is a team reverting to a driver they were even actively trying to replace for much of his previous stint (albeit with Palou, which you cannot particularly blame them for).
The previous three-year collaboration was not a catastrophe - at least after the first year, where 21st in the standings, featuring a two-race injury layoff, was poor for a driver who had finished sixth in points as a rookie for CGR two seasons prior.
But it was generally average even after Rosenqvist had settled, with eighth in the standings in 2022 solid and 12th in his exit year buoyed by flashes of serious pace but underwhelming overall.
Streakiness has been a staple of much of Rosenqvist’s career - likewise for Arrow McLaren as a team - and inconsistency was regularly rife during those three years. That would serve as certain evidence that this is an Indy-centred signing, rather than one bringing lofty full-season goals.
In moving back to Arrow McLaren, Rosenqvist does risk becoming the bridesmaid again, whereas he has appeared to excel as a leader with Meyer Shank Racing (MSR) in the past three years. He has looked to have truly found a valued and stable home, which results - led by his joint-best and the team’s outright best championship finish of sixth last year - have shown.
That came to a head in May, when Rosenqvist took a career-defining Indy 500 victory - the second win of his IndyCar career on the biggest stage of all. But it had also not been the easiest start to his season, initially begging the question as to whether MSR would even opt to re-sign him at the end of his contract. But 0.0233s changed everything.
Winning the Indy 500 by the closest-ever margin, he was placed back onto the radar of IndyCar’s best, rather than possibly even facing scraping the barrel of lower-order outfits.
It is somewhat of a gamble for Rosenqvist to leave behind a team he has driven to new heights after joining them in a struggling state, where they were scarcely able to even record top-10 race finishes. He leaves behind strong foundations at a team on an upwards trajectory, now able to fight for wins and podiums in their technical alliance with CGR.
Arrow McLaren offer that potential, too, but there is apprehension in the fact that Rosenqvist struggled to take advantage of that last time. He is perennially quick at the Indy 500, which is the main reason for his signing, but drivers also will not want to disregard the wider season. What says it will be different this time around for Rosenqvist on that full-season scale?
Admittedly, while still not entirely out of transition, the team feels in a more stable state. With a restructured leadership core and new, state-of-the-art team facility, Rosenqvist certainly comes into a better environment. But there remains lots to make sense of.
For the vision of Arrow McLaren and their desire to win the Indy 500 immediately to fuel their dream of winning the Triple Crown as an organisation, the Rosenqvist signing is entirely justifiable. But that vision comes into question when you realise they are almost sacrificing part of the long-term, title-fighting project it felt they were embarking on.
With Lundgaard leaving and Rosenqvist rejoining - ‘going back to his ex’ - as much as the Swede certainly has a high ceiling and an exceptional working relationship with both O’Ward and Dixon as former teammates, it would appear something of a backwards step.
Justifiable to go all-in for the Indy 500?
Come May, there will be a lot of pressure - possibly more than is ordinary - on the Arrow McLaren team to deliver, given the onus being placed on the Indy 500.
Of course, there is always an extra onus placed on a race of such seismic magnitude; it is certainly not unusual for it to be perceived as being as big as - or bigger than - the championship. But Arrow McLaren have taken this to a drastic level.
Lundgaard’s departure is a clear statement that they are almost willing to forego part of a championship charge, purely to ensure that, from next year, all four cars can have a genuine chance at winning the Indy 500. There is a risk to that, especially in a race often lottery-like, hence the popular statement: “The Speedway chooses the winner.”
Especially when you have an Indy-only entry for a specialist - Ryan Hunter-Reay returning again for 2027 - giving up a prodigious talent not quite up to scratch on ovals, just to have one more car in the fight at Indianapolis if all goes right is a huge gamble. That is not to say Lundgaard would not have been in the fight, either, had the opportunity presented itself.
Ultimately, you cannot begrudge the organisation-wide Triple Crown desire. But this is a marked placing of most of the team’s eggs in the Indy 500 basket, even if that is not to say this lineup cannot and will not produce over the wider season.
After all, this is not an organisation which always does things authentically - and breaking the mould is no bad thing for the sport. But there will be no hiding in 10 months’ time.
The Siegel factor
In some ways a forgotten part of Arrow McLaren’s moves - largely because it has long seemed expected - is the exit of Siegel, who Kanaan put his faith in midway through the 2024 season, replacing high-potential former Formula 2 champion Théo Pourchaire.
Siegel impressed through the experience of being bumped from the Indy 500 with Dale Coyne Racing that May, when Kanaan had served as a mentor for him. He went on to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans in the LMP2 class the following month and had been unveiled as the new driver of Arrow McLaren’s No.6 Chevrolet within two days of that success.
At the time, Siegel was midway through his second complete campaign in Indy NXT but had completed two points-paying races in IndyCar - Long Beach with Dale Coyne Racing, plus the Thermal Club exhibition, and Road America with Juncos Hollinger Racing. Even still, the 19-year-old was thrown into the deep end with a sudden top-team drive.
With no time to prepare with the team, Siegel was immediately on the back foot, abruptly thrust into a top-team environment where winning is the ultimate expectation. It was hardly a surprise that he recorded only one top-10 result in those nine races.
But it scarcely improved in 2025, when he had time to gear up for the campaign, with only two top-10 finishes and 22nd in the standings. So for 2026, Kanaan clearly laid out his expectations - publicly before privately - that Siegel must finish in the top 10 in points to keep his ride. Clearly, only 20th through 11 races, that was too unrealistic an ask.
It has been challenging for Siegel in a setting of so much scrutiny, where he has been under seemingly constant pressure, if not internally then externally. But he is also no lost cause as an IndyCar driver; he has shown glimmers of improved speed of late. He remains raw, though, and still struggles to get over the line for any consistent stretch of race finishes.
At 21 years old, he is still extremely young - much younger than the age of many when they enter IndyCar. He loses nothing now by hitting the reset button and seeking out an environment with less weight of expectation, where he should be afforded the chance to gradually build up in a way he has not in the past two years.
He is plenty young enough that he can absolutely yet prove to the right people, in the coming years, that he deserves a shot back at the top in the future.
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