Arrow McLaren, Team Principal Gavin Ward “Mutually Part Ways”

Source: Matthew Ashton – AMA / Getty

INDIANAPOLIS — On Tuesday, Arrow McLaren announced that they have “mutually parted ways” with their IndyCar team principal Gavin Ward.

The announcement is somewhat of a surprise as teams shuffle and jostle for manpower ahead of the 2025 season. Ward was brought in to lead McLaren Racing’s IndyCar team in 2022. Ward had previously been with Team Penske before joining Arrow McClaren.

“I leave Arrow McLaren after two years developing a people-first culture set to topple the 20-year domination of IndyCar’s championship teams,” Ward said. “We’ve made major strides during my tenure.”

McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown said they plan to rely on an assortment of leadership within the team for now, including former IndyCar race director Brian Barnhart and former Indy 500 winner Tony Kanaan.

“I want to thank Gavin for the time he gave to our Arrow McLaren team the past two seasons,” Brown said. “We’ve grown significantly from where we were when he joined the team in 2022, and he was a big part of that transformation. We have a strong team in place.”

After not winning a race at all in his first season leading the team in 2023, Ward led Arrow McLaren to three wins with Pato O’Ward in 2024. In 2025 the team will bring back O’Ward and will also field cars with Nolan Siegel and Christian Lundgaard.

The 2024 season was a never-ending carousel of drivers, it seems, for Arrow McLaren as the team started the season with David Malukas in their third car. His injury at the time forced them to then bring in the likes of Callum Ilott and Theo Pourchaire.

The team even announced that Pourchaire would pilot their third car for the remainder of the 2024 season after the Indy 500, but they soon walked that back and decided to go with Siegel for the rest of 2024 and all of 2025.

Arrow McLaren finished the 2024 season with two of their three cars in the Top 10 of the Leader’s Circle standings.