SPEEDWAY, Ind. — A lot of the attention might’ve been on Kyle Larson in Sunday’s (May 26) Indianapolis 500, but it was the two full-time Arrow McLaren drivers who nearly left with the Borg-Warner trophy.
In the final laps of the race, Pato O’Ward and Alexander Rossi were very much in the thick of things. However, neither was able to capture the win.
O’Ward was leading with half a lap to go before Josef Newgarden passed him with an aggressive outside move heading into turn 3. The Monterrey, Mexico native was unable to catch back up to the Team Penske driver and finished a close second.
“Just so close again, so f**king close,” O’Ward told NBC Sports.
As for Rossi, he took the lead from Newgarden with nine laps to go. But when Newgarden reclaimed the lead two laps later, O’Ward followed him by his teammate.
Rossi never recovered, eventually losing one more spot to Scott Dixon before settling on a fourth-place finish.
“I’m just trying to figure out how we got beat,” Rossi said. “Ultimately, we had the track position and just were one or two laps short on fuel, so that was the disappointing part.”
That setback paled in comparison to Rossi’s teammate, O’Ward forced to swallow his second runner-up finish in three years.
Over the final seven laps, O’Ward and Newgarden swapped the lead back and forth a few times. However, when O’Ward passed Newgarden while taking the white flag lap, it seemed like the Indy 500 was his.
Turns out he was sadly mistaken. Newgarden caught right back up to O’Ward in the next two corners and passed the Arrow McLaren driver in turn 3, where few passes had been made on the day. O’Ward ran out of time to respond and fell short in another oh-so-close Indy 500 attempt.
“I put that car through things I never thought it would be able to do,” O’Ward said. “I thought sometimes, ‘That’s it,’ and somehow I came out the other side of the corner. It’s just so painful when you put so much into it and then [wind up] two corners short.”
O’Ward was in a similar situation last year, but when he took an inside run to try to pass Marcus Ericsson, it resulted in the Arrow McLaren driver pounding the wall and winding up out of the race.
It felt like Lady Luck might throw O’Ward a bone.
Instead?
She doubled down on causing misery.
“[The track] owes me nothing,”…
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