Indycar: Why McLaren’s Return has been Done the Right Way

Earlier today, McLaren announced that they will return to full-time IndyCar competition in 2020, ending a 41-year period since they last competed in a full IndyCar season.

McLaren will partner with current IndyCar team, Arrow Schmidt Peterson Motorsports (Arrow SPM) and Chevrolet to form a newly named team called: Arrow McLaren Racing SP.

At the moment, Arrow SPM utilise Honda engines so it does mean that one of their current drivers, James Hinchcliffe will likely end his partnership with Honda-Canada since he has stated he looks forward to ‘rekindling his relationship with General Motors’ .

The announcement also stated that Robert Wickens (who suffered life-changing injuries following a crash at Pocono last year) “will be honoured when the Canadian star is able to resume his IndyCar career, if he chooses to do with the reconfigured team.”

If Wickens pulls off a miracle and somehow gets back to racing, then this in itself is simply outstanding news. What a story it would be if Wickens could race in IndyCar one day.

Of course, it is also great to see the McLaren name return to IndyCar and not just for the Indy 500. This is exactly what IndyCar needs and it is good to see McLaren not shy away from the series after suffering a nightmare earlier this year in the Month of May.

The team have also said that they are open to adding a third car for Fernando Alonso, should he intend to compete in a full IndyCar season next year. Alonso seems to desperately want a top Formula One drive and has been quiet over what he is doing in 2020 and should he not find the drive he wants in F1, then an IndyCar season is possible. I am just not sure he wants to do a full IndyCar season, he would much rather race with one of the top three F1 teams. More on that in another article.

Personally, I think this is all fantastic news.

McLaren will have learnt an endless amount of lessons from this year’s failed Indy 500 effort and they immediately knew that they would need some help and experience to compete for podiums and wins rather than being a backmarker.

It would be unrealistic for McLaren to enter IndyCar alone so this partnership has been done the right way. The partnership will be very similar to McLaren’s 2017 Indy 500 effort when McLaren-Honda had the support of Andretti (one if IndyCar’s biggest teams).

And look how that turned out. Alonso managed to qualify into the Fast Nine (shootout) on his Indy 500 debut and led the race for 27 laps. The two-time F1 champion was in race-winning contention for most of the race until his Honda engine failed coming down the front stretch.

For Andretti Autosport, they went on to win the race with Takuma Sato who became the first driver from Asia to win the Indy 500.

Arrow SPM may not be the same force as Andretti but they have a lot of experience, having raced in IndyCar since 2001. This year, they have not had the outright pace of the big three teams but have managed to take a podium for each of their full-time drivers (Hinchcliffe at Iowa and Marcus Ericsson at Detroit).

With some extra money from McLaren, the new partnership certainly won’t hurt SPM and will definitely be the right way forward from McLaren’s perspective. It might be a little too much to say they can join Ganassi, Penske and Andretti at the head of the field but they should be closer and should be able to fight for some podiums and maybe 2-3 wins.