The NTT IndyCar Series has had a tough news cycle this off season, with the dominating story being a delay to the introduction of the planned hybrid system until after the Indy 500.
As big as that story is on its own, it continues a pattern of IndyCar struggling to bring exciting features to fans who crave new innovations to hold their interest.
New features could also help to spread interest in the series to new audiences, especially in a landscape where motorsports series around the world have seen a resurgence in popularity over the past few years.
Talking during a pre-season media conference on Thursday, Pato O’Ward was particularly serious while describing what he feels the series needs to do in order to have its popularity grow to match the racing product.
“I’m only 24 years old, so I know there’s a lot more people that have a lot more experience than I do,” said O’Ward, thoughtfully. “But from my years of life so far, when you see things grow — it could be a person, it could be a company, a business, a group of people.
“When you’re just speaking of growth, change will usually kind of rattle people’s floor. Like, it’ll kind of move things around. Some people will like it, some people won’t like it. But when you don’t evolve and when you don’t change, you sure as hell will not grow.
“The only way to doing that is to change things up. The way that things grow nowadays is completely different to what it was 30 years ago.
“Keep in mind, I wasn’t alive 30 years ago, but I have heard a lot from my grandparents, my parents. I have seen what just 10 years has done and has shifted in the markets of a lot of products and a lot of different things.
“I think having a good product, yes, that is important. But ultimately what you need is you want people to be present. You want people to be a part of something that’s just not race cars going around
“I think we as a series are a perfect example of that because the racing is unbelievable. The racing is so good. But there is something missing that we have yet quite to crack. And I think there’s a lot of examples that are going around in motorsports that have shown growth.
“It’s basically not a plug and play because every series is different, but you see how other series grow. I think the most simple way would be like really see what is working for them; what is causing that to happen.”
There are multiple areas in which IndyCar’s on-track product has remained stagnant, including continued use of the Dallara DW12 chassis and the 2.2-liter V6 engine, both of which debuted in 2012.
The series consistently has a high number of passes and ample close competition to keep fans’ interest, but with every year that passes more and more fans agree that there should be interesting innovations introduced to renew their excitement factor.
O’Ward has historically agreed with those assertions and has pushed the mindset that the series should try new things, including praising the merits of what holding a race in his native Mexico would bring to IndyCar.
He even did some of his own promotion for the series, offering free tickets to recent races at Texas Motor Speedway for any person who bought merchandise from his online shop.
The still-youthful Mexican driver realizes that he is not part of the management of the series and does not necessarily consider all the consequences before pushing for new race venues and new components to be used on track.
He does, however, strongly feel that the path to growth for the series is to try new concepts, see what works, and entertain the fans with aggressive strategies.
“I’ve always been from the mentality — everything I do, I always go 100 percent” continued O’Ward. “I never do things halfway. Maybe that’s a bit aggressive to obviously a series or whatever. But we have the potential to be like two or three [times the size], not growing five or 10 percent a year.
“We’re selling ourselves short by just wanting to grow incrementally like that. Like I think we really have the potential to see like massive gains, but just like in a lot of things, you just obviously have to fuel it if you want to see some of that double, triple, quadruple.
“I know I’m just a voice. Some people agree with me, some people don’t agree with me. I try and do my best to help and to bring new audiences and new people to the series, because I feel like once people see and watch it, they’re going to want to stick around. The problem is you need to get it in front of as many eyes as you can”
O’Ward will be competing in his fifth full IndyCar season in 2024, continuing his tenure with the Arrow McLaren IndyCar Team alongside Alexander Rossi and David Malukas.
