Pato O'Ward has stepped away from his McLaren Formula 1 reserve role to concentrate fully on IndyCar, and he is not leaving quietly. The Mexican spent three seasons as McLaren's F1 stand-in, running the occasional FP1 session, but told reporters this week that the pull of grand prix racing has gone — and a large part of the reason is the machinery arriving for 2026.
"There is nothing in me that is aching me to continue as a reserve in F1," O'Ward said. "I'm in a great place in IndyCar. I love the series. That's where I want to be."
His objection is as much philosophical as personal. O'Ward has become one of the sharpest critics of F1's new regulations, arguing the cars have been engineered into something he no longer wants to drive. "The new Formula 1 cars — what the series has done has been a mistake," he said. "The truth is, when you look at them, they are artificial."
He reserved his bluntest line for the sport's push-to-pass-style overtaking aids. "You don't want to be flipping a switch to say, 'Oh, I'm going to press it to pass him artificially,'" he said. "It's not Mario Kart; we're racing here. Honestly, I have zero desire to be part of that."
That framing matters because O'Ward's original ambition was never about the F1 badge. "The hunger I had to get to Formula 1 wasn't for fame or money," he explained. "It was because the cars were something impressive. Driving those cars was something impressive." By his own account, that spark is gone.
McLaren has already moved on. The team named reigning Formula 2 champion Leonardo Fornaroli to its reserve roster over the winter, giving it a full-time European option that O'Ward — committed to Arrow McLaren's IndyCar programme — could never be. "A big thank you to Zak, Andrea and Alessandro for this opportunity," Fornaroli said on joining, a reminder that the queue for an F1 seat rarely stays empty for long.
Not everyone is taking the protest entirely at face value. Pundits on the GRID Network podcast noted the obvious tension in his stance: for all the criticism of "artificial" racing, O'Ward would still, in their reading, happily climb into the McLaren for an FP1 run if the timing suited. The suggestion is that some of the fire is a driver making peace with a door that was never quite going to open, rather than a pure rejection of F1 itself.
Either way, the practical outcome is the same. O'Ward, 26, has a race-winning IndyCar career and a title fight to chase in a series he clearly rates more highly than a watching brief in F1. "I feel that right now, today, this is the best series for a driver who wants to race," he said of IndyCar. For a driver who spent years angling for a grand prix chance, walking away on his own terms — and telling the world exactly why — is its own kind of statement.
---
*Originally published on [Newsformula One](https://newsformula.one/article/pato-oward-ends-mclaren-f1-reserve-role-slams-2026-cars). Visit for full coverage.*