O'Ward's Indy 500 performance made his case as Ricciardo's McLaren replacement

Marcus Ericsson’s extreme weaving didn’t look like it would be enough to hold back Pato O’Ward from snatching victory in the two-lap shootout at the Indianapolis 500 on Sunday. For a moment Ericsson’s Chip Ganassi Racing Dallara appeared on course for a violent meeting with the end of the pitwall before he swerved somewhat alarmingly across the track in his determined bid to break the tow to O’Ward’s Arrow McLaren SP entry.

As they approached Turn 1 for the final time, the Mexican was still hanging in there. He drew alongside, on the outside line, and we held our collective breath in anticipation for the big clincher. Yet it didn’t come. Just as O’Ward looked set to ‘send it’, wheel to wheel with his rival at full blast, he backed out and let Ericsson off the hook. Given his reputation as IndyCar’s exciting young firebrand, such discretion was a surprise in the heat of the moment – but perhaps reflected a growing sense of maturity in a driver who instinctively knew this was a gamble that wasn’t about to pay off. It wasn’t worth what he felt was an inevitable outcome, and even with an Indy 500 victory on the line, he was probably right.

“He was going to put me in the wall if I’d gone for it,” said a deflated O’Ward in his immediate post-race interview. In such a moment, no red-blooded racing driver would be thinking consciously about banking points as the priority, but the 23-year-old’s instinctive decision-making still showed an admirable sense of responsibility to his team. Double-points were on offer at The Brickyard and O’Ward knew he and his similarly well-placed team-mate Felix Rosenqvist had a job to do beyond pitching for victory. Backing out had everything to do with a grounded sense of reality rather than any macho bull about bottling it.

O’Ward also knew he didn’t quite have the car underneath him to get the job done, and in his moment of intense frustration at the defeat remained just on the right side of diplomacy. He didn’t say the words ‘we didn’t have enough power from Chevrolet’, sparing the blushes of the team’s vital partner, but he was only too clear in his messaging all the same. The team had trimmed out his car as far as it could go to give him the speed to take on Ericsson’s Honda power – but it simply wasn’t enough.