Following Patricio O’Ward’s split from the Harding Steinbrenner team earlier this week, several IndyCar team owners have given their take on the story. With no deal to drive in 2019 immediately forthcoming, it looks increasingly likely the young Mexican driver will miss the start of the IndyCar season.
Many have had sympathy for the situation O’Ward, finds himself in, Ricardo Juncos, team owner of Juncos Racing told Indycar.com “It's sad what happened with him because I was a race car driver myself,”
“I understand how difficult it is, how good he was doing things. He was doing exactly what he had to do. You can never ask for anybody to do better than he did last year. I think if you take a look back when he debuted at Sonoma, it was probably one of the best debuts that I've seen in many, many years. So what else you can ask for the guy? Nothing.”
With only one race confirmed for the year, for Kyle Kaiser at the IndyCar Classic in March, could Juncos be O’Ward’s saviour?
“I would love to run Pato," added Juncos. "They know that, everybody knows that. We have the team ready to go. It's not up to me. We'll see. If we ended up being together, great. And if not, it's fine. I mean, we are all a racing family, so is he. So it's all good.”
This is the other recurring theme. Everybody likes Pato, respects what he has achieved so far and would like to have him in their team. But as is the case throughout the motorsport world and beyond, money talks. The deal has to be right, and built on cash, not fairytale endings.
Trevor Carlin echoed those thoughts. “I would imagine the fact that the deal hasn't moved forward with the Harding thing is because of lack of funding,” added the Carlin boss. “So that's probably going to hinder us doing anything with him as well now, but he's a super talent. We'd like to talk to him, see if there is any way of putting the deal together.”
No team owner is going to compromise their existing setup and drivers by over-reaching their existing capacity. “This team's grown recently and I think you've got to walk before you run,” mentioned Piers Phillips, team president for Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing. “It's important, with Graham and Takuma, we've got to do a job for those guys first and foremost.
“So you've got to have the foundation in place before you start to grow and we're not there yet. We know we would love to do a third car, but you've got to do it properly.
"You've got to do it so it doesn't detract from your first two and, obviously, if it were somebody like Pato, you've got to give them the team. You've got to give them what they need to do the job that we can win with. You've got to do everybody justice, otherwise, it's not worth doing.”
It appears there aren’t too many avenues left for O’Ward left to explore.
“Unfortunately, he's in this situation,” philosophised Juncos. “But you know what, life turns around. I've been in that situation many times when you feel like destroyed and you want to give up and somehow you get force from somewhere and life turns around.”
Many observers will hope that turnaround comes soon. But quite where, or who, it comes from is likely to keep all of us – including perhaps O’Ward himself – guessing for a little while longer.
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