It’s no secret that Mexican racer Pato O’Ward is one of the hottest commodities in motorsport right now. As an official member of the McLaren Driver Program, O’Ward will be taking a Formula 1 car out for practice ahead of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix later in November, but during the racing season here in America, O’Ward is firmly focused on being the best he can in IndyCar. The 24-year-old driver is on his way to becoming a marketing guru, and so I wanted to know: What can IndyCar do to take advantage of the exploding interest in motorsport that stemmed from Netflix’s Drive to Survive series? O’Ward’s answer was simple: IndyCar needs to stop trying to outdo F1.
“IndyCar needs to embrace Formula 1 and not compete against it,” O’Ward said in an interview with Jalopnik during a track day he hosted at Circuit of the Americas. “[Formula 1] is never going anywhere. It has invested astronomical numbers into the series and into making people feel like they’re part of something — but they did it by going to the biggest platforms.”
O’Ward is, of course, referring to the annual docuseries about F1 released ahead of each new season on Netflix. Formula 1 took a gamble by investing in the series, and that gamble paid off, perhaps in part as a result of the COVID-19 lockdowns. Countless people were confined to the couch and looking for something new to watch. There at their fingertips was Drive to Survive. The docuseries explored a world many Americans hadn’t seen before; paired with a quick return to competition in 2020 and a compelling 2021 season, new fans everywhere were hooked.
As the competition in F1 has petered out in favor of a run of dominance by Max Verstappen of Red Bull Racing, those new motorsport converts have looked to the horizons for something a little more racey in terms of on-track action. Perfectly poised to grab their attention is IndyCar — but the open-wheel series just hasn’t quite done enough to draw those new audiences in.
“I don’t think [IndyCar] realizes how big the series can be if they just gave it more love,” O’Ward told Jalopnik. “They’re giving it love, but they need to multiply it four or five times.”
O’Ward pointed to himself as an example: he’s one of the only Latin American racers in motorsport generally, but his dedication to building and engaging his fan base has given him a profile that is almost unheard of for a younger IndyCar driver. He’s been able to leverage that fanbase in countless ways, including the track day he’d organized at COTA; people love Pato, and they’ll spend their hard-earned money to get a hot lap from their idol and drive their own sports cars on the same track as him. O’Ward has sold out grandstands dedicated specifically to him — and that’s only the beginning.
Because of that, a race in Mexico would likely perform well for IndyCar. O’Ward has the profile to draw massive numbers in his home country, and that’s before factoring in the feverish passion Mexican sport fans hold for members of their own nation — whether or not they’ve heard of that form of sport before or not.
“It’s mind-boggling that we don’t race in Mexico,” O’Ward said, the exasperation clear in his voice. “And then IndyCar was like, oh, we’re gonna have an exhibition race at Thermal. What? If we’re going to do something, let’s do it properly.”
So, if O’Ward was in charge of IndyCar, what would he do?
“I wouldn’t do the exact same thing Formula 1 is doing, because it’s global. It always will be global,” he said. “But we have this massive pool of people in Latin America waiting for a race. Go full-in. Brazil. Argentina. Mexico. Uruguay. Somewhere in South America, then maybe a race in Europe — then we’ve got a badass calendar.”
A global push would broaden IndyCar’s horizons, especially if it were to focus primarily on moving into Latin America and South America, where only a handful of prestigious international racing events happen each year. As it currently stands, however, O’Ward believes IndyCar is underestimating itself and what it can achieve, instead relying on the claim that its racing is far more compelling than that found in F1 as its primary selling feature.
O’Ward, though, finds that mindset outdated, saying, “Formula 1 is your best example to show you that people don’t give a shit about racing. What really matters is everything that comes with it. IndyCar does the racing very well, but it’s not a prestige product.
“With F1 — before a car even hits the track, you know F1 is here in town because of everything it involves. IndyCar keeps saying, oh, budget — but there has to be a point where you’re like, screw budget. Let’s make this the best we can, and the rest will come. You have to trust that money will come in because you’re offering a product that is now worth it.
“The people who come to a race, they just want to be a part of the event. The racing aspect is the least of their worries.”