Insider: How the loss of Alex Palou will affect Zak Brown, Arrow McLaren
SALINAS, Calif. – Zak Brown has no time to waste on uncertainties and no energy to spend on anything other than moving his racing teams toward the top.
It’s why for next weekend’s Singapore Grand Prix, the McLaren Formula 1 team hasn’t bothered canceling the hotel room for a certain Spanish driver who, contractually, would be expected to be on-hand as team principal Andrea Stella’s reserve driver for the weekend, but will likely be half-a-world away in his Carmel, Ind. apartment, or in his native Spain with friends and family, or on a beach somewhere basking in the glory of one of the most dominant title runs IndyCar has seen in decades.
“(Alex Palou) is still our reserve driver, but I think that’s changed, because I don’t think he’s going to show up in Singapore – which he’s obligated to do,” Brown told a small contingent of reporters Saturday at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca while on-hand for IndyCar’s season-finale. “He was supposed to be with us every race after the IndyCar season.”
And you’re sure he’s not coming?
“Yeah, yeah, I’m pretty sure,” Brown mustered through a laugh that masked his anger at Palou, who just over a month ago, instructed his lawyers to deliver Brown the news that he would no longer be racing in IndyCar for Arrow McLaren from 2024-26, as the contract he put his signature to Oct. 1, 2022 allegedly states. “I haven’t heard a single word from him, personally, since that all happened.
“It’s pretty disappointing how it’s been handled. There’s ‘what’ happened, but also ‘how’ it’s been handled, and that’s probably as surprising as anything. I’m not going to get into a running commentary. I’ll let the (U.K. Commercial Court) and the facts when they surface allow people to come to their own conclusions as to Alex’s character.”
I'm sad the way it's worked out': Alex Palou responds to McLaren lawsuits
Source: McLaren to claim $20 million-$30 million in damages in U.K. lawsuits vs. Alex Palou
Brown spent less than four minutes of his 32-minute availability addressing his rogue driver who, after attempting to bolt from his championship IndyCar ride at Chip Ganassi Racing last summer for a massive payday and chances at the Formula 1 world, is now staying in his No. 10 Honda ride for the foreseeable future.
But the massive wake Palou left behind will continue to send ripple effects through Arrow McLaren — starting with the driver set to replace the two-time champion that Brown and his team’s racing director Gavin Ward moved “very quickly” to interview, sign and announce in the span of a month.
Palou, Pato O’Ward and Alexander Rossi were set to give McLaren arguably the most talented lineup on the grid. Yes, they still would’ve only combined for fewer wins (21 vs. 29) and the same number of IndyCar titles and Indianapolis 500 wins alone as Josef Newgarden, but their ages – 31, 26 and 24 – at a time when the elder statesmen at Team Penske (Will Power, 42) and Chip Ganassi Racing (Scott Dixon, 43) have relatively short runways left, would’ve made for a tantalizing combination of youth, experience and upward-trending results.
Ward’s analytical deep-dive pointed to 21-year-old David Malukas, the Dale Coyne Racing driver who finished runner-up in the 2021 Indy Lights championship to Andretti Autosport’s two-time IndyCar race-winner Kyle Kirkwood, who has two podiums and is currently 16th in points. Brown and Ward remarked about his oval prowess – both his podiums have come at World Wide Technology Raceway – as well as his boyish energy and the way he, at times, overcame DCR’s equipment and personnel deficits the last two years to produce nine top-10s.
And the young American-Lithuanian driver is far less likely to threaten Arrow McLaren’s more established tandem of O’Ward and Rossi, giving the team a long-ish-term project to groom instead of a world-beater who very well might’ve come in Day 1 to take over as the team’s alpha dog.
But Malukas is not a two-time champion. Instead of a third sure thing to complete the trio, Arrow McLaren has again taken a chance on a young talent who’s just as likely to swim (O’Ward) as he is to sink (2020 rookie Oliver Askew and, in a way, the outgoing Felix Rosenqvist).
“He’s a bright guy with good charisma and a strong work ethic who brings a level of keenness and enthusiasm that I think is going to be great for everybody,” Ward said. “We want drivers invested in the team.”
Zak Brown: Alex Palou 'does not intend to honor' contract with McLaren Racing
'McLaren 'playing the victim': Chip Ganassi comments on Alex Palou's contract status
According to Brown, who also picked the brain of his rookie F1 driver, Oscar Piastri, who raced Malukas in the Formula 4 UAE Championship in 2016-17, the soon-to-be-ex-Coyne driver was the top choice of Rossi and O’Ward when Brown and Ward presented the pair with a list of three or four options.
“I think the combination of the three is nice, because everyone’s a little different, whether it’s experience levels or different personalities that are complimentary,” Brown said. “If you had three of any one of those drivers, that’s not the right combination.
“It’s no different than not wanting to have three Zaks around.”
Added Ward: “One thing I want this team to be is one that makes its drivers better and one where they can grow and succeed. This is a great opportunity with someone who’s still pretty fresh who, with (special advisor Tony Kanaan) and his mentorship, can build a bit of a system where we put the whole package together and really lean into the strengths of the individual and let them grow.”
Stepping back, there’s no one else you would want in this paddock to sell you on an idea than Brown – and certainly no one else’s team’s bank account in charge of it all – but it remains hard to ignore the difference of adding a defending champ who won four races and an Indy 500 pole in six weeks this summer to an Arrow McLaren squad that remains winless in 2023, compared to one whose season highlight was a single pole.
That’s not to say the future is bleak. O’Ward may get another shot at an F1 Free Practice 1 in Palou’s place, and should the 24-year-old Mexican driver make up nine points to Newgarden in Sunday’s race, O’Ward would qualify for a Super License that would allow him – should Stella wish – to step into Palou’s vacated F1 reserve driver role.
Insider: With 2nd title in 3 years, future now public, Alex Palou on the way to becoming CGR legend
In the IndyCar world, Brown and Ward said they’ve ruled out a rumored technical partnership with another Chevy team for 2024 that would’ve given them a fourth full-time car – most likely the No. 77 of Juncos Hollinger Racing’s Callum Ilott. That would have been in preparation of expanding to four full-time cars of their own when Arrow McLaren takes over Andretti Autosport’s current shop in two years. But that doesn’t eliminate what Brown called a “strategic” partnership that could still expand Arrow McLaren’s footprint in the coming months.
As they wait for Michael Andretti’s passion project, a $200 million, 575,000 square-foot state-of-the-art race shop to be built in Fishers – which will allow Arrow McLaren to move into Andretti Autosport’s current 85,000 square-foot home in 2025 and be fully-operational for 2026 – Brown and Ward explained they’ve managed to find band aids to the team’s increasingly old shop space on Indy’s northside that was built to run a two-car program.
“I think there’s a lot we can do to improve as a team in the facilities we’re in. Yes, we want a new shop, and it’s a big investment and very important to our long-term success as a team that we nail that, but we’re pretty close now to teams that have their 100,000 square-foot building,” Ward said. “I think we can take it to them even before we get to that.”
Off the track, Brown beams with pride in his team’s ever-growing digital and social media footprint that in its fresh ideas and reach sits years ahead of the rest of the IndyCar paddock. In O’Ward, he has IndyCar’s unquestioned most popular driver and the most popular team
Brown and Ward revealed Saturday that next season, Arrow McLaren will roll into St. Pete for the season-opener a “pretty cool engineering truck” similar to the assets Brown and Stella use in F1 that the former asserted no one else in the IndyCar paddock that will “give the engineers and drivers a better, more complete environment to work in,” he said.
“We can’t be naïve to the infrastructure we’re up against,” Ward said. “Penske has a wind tunnel program, and Ganassi runs cars through a mountain in Pennsylvania for a month each year. We’re not the only team putting in work like this.
“But I think we’ve got an opportunity. Those are established investments they made 10-20 years ago, but the sport’s moved on. What does it need now? That’s where we’re going to invest.”
And yet, unless O’Ward, Rossi or Sunday’s polesitter Felix Rosenqvist do something all three are yet to all seasons – win – Arrow McLaren will step into the upcoming offseason with far more questions than answers. Its number of podiums through 16 races – 10 – remains shy of Team Penske’s, despite the five-win deficit, and when you consider CGR’s eight wins, having only seven fewer podiums isn’t too shabby.
But it’s not where Brown and Ward want to be. As an idolizer of Roger Penske and Chip Ganassi's antagonist (Brown) and an ex-Penske employee (Ward), neither lacks the ambition, nor the knowhow to get to where Arrow McLaren and its supporters believe it should be. But short of purchasing an old Astor Cup from a museum or a defunct team’s storage space, securing Palou for the future was the next-most sure thing.
What remains in his wake are questions, hopes and dreams.
“We’ve got good competition,” Ward said. “And I think we should recognize the strength of our opponents. We’ll feel that much better when we beat them.”
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: IndyCar: How the loss of Alex Palou affects Zak Brown, Arrow McLaren
