1,000 Greatest Drivers: Pato O'Ward

I accidentally called him Beto once.

On my original schedule, I had Bob Welborn for May 5 and O’Ward for May 6, but I decided to switch ‘em ‘cause the opportunity to cover the Mexican driver on Cinco de Mayo was too tempting to resist. I won’t get many more such opportunities on future Cinco de Mayos because O’Ward and Pedro Rodríguez are the only Mexican drivers currently on my lock list. I might consider listing others including Adrián Fernández and Memo Rojas but those are obviously a lot iffier. Honestly, I already think O’Ward is the best Mexican driver ever. Even though Fernández won 11 IndyCar races and had a best points finish of second while O’Ward has won 7 races with a best points finish of third, I don’t even think it’s close. O’Ward was the highest-rated active IndyCar driver in my model at last update and his teammate head-to-heads are pretty insane. His career teammate head-to-head is 110-39 and his records of 9-6 vs. Colton Herta, 23-10 vs. Felix Rosenqvist, 20-6 vs. Alexander Rossi, and 6-1 combined against Fernando Alonso, Hélio Castroneves, Kyle Larson, and Juan Pablo Montoya are pretty insane. He is well ahead of both his McLaren stablemates currently dominating the F1 title chase even though it’s incredibly obvious he’ll never get one of those rides. Fernández meanwhile was kind of like the Ryan Newman of CART in that he kept getting a lot of stupid pit strategy wins because Jim McGee, his chief strategist at Patrick Racing, was maybe the greatest crew chief in IndyCar history whose history dated back to Mario Andretti in the ‘60s. While it’s sad that Fernández’s career ended up getting overshadowed by his winning both of the races where Jeff Krosnoff and Greg Moore died as well as the tire debris from his crash at Michigan killing fans in the stands, I also kind of get it because he was substantially worse than his baseline numbers while O’Ward is substantially better than his. O’Ward’s teammate rating of .263 and Fernández’s below average rating of -.051 suggests that if they competed together O’Ward would win 80% of the time, which makes all that “Pato who?” business from last year look really silly indeed. Not only is O’Ward arguably the most popular driver now, if he has a smaller media footprint than Fernández, it’s only because IndyCar now is not as big as CART then and because the general media fragmentation of the post-Internet world has made every generation’s modern-day equivalents to past generations’ greats in any medium more niche. There’s a reason I have O’Ward as a lock and don’t have Fernández, and I argue below that he’s better than Rodríguez too, although that argument is more contentious.

To be honest, one of the reasons I’ve been arguably Álex Palou’s biggest skeptic is because I kept thinking O’Ward was secretly better. Not only is he the highest-rated IndyCar driver in my model currently, but he was also the highest-rated driver of 2022 and 2023 while Palou has not yet led my model in any season. Furthermore, I do think given the context of McLaren’s shakiness that what he was doing was better than what Palou was doing in a more stable Ganassi ride and I was impressed that O’Ward was the only driver in recent years who’s really delivered championship-caliber performances on all track types. Finally, O’Ward has an electrifying style and is fun to watch, while Palou is about as exciting as reading stereo assembly instructions. Having said that, 2025 has definitely made me reconsider. Although I was still ranting about Palou’s overratedness after he backed into another win to start the season at St. Pete due to stupid strategy reshuffling, I give up. Palou has now worn me down in a Stockholm Syndrome kind of way, and I can’t even attempt to deny he’s the best driver anymore (even though he still hasn’t won on an oval yet). Palou’s win at Thermal where he passed O’Ward for the win and built up a 10-second lead in 13 laps and his win yesterday at Barber where he led all day and won by 16 seconds were two of the best three wins of his career. The fact that he did all that in a race where Scott Dixon started 26th, sucked all day, and finished 12th 59 seconds behind makes it probably one of the drives of the decade. Palou’s advantage over Dixon yesterday was so stark that for the first time I can remember, I now feel Dixon is overdue for retirement. Since Dixon isn’t even close to challenging Palou anymore, while O’Ward actually is receiving a significant challenge at McLaren from Christian Lundgaard (who I would say has generally been faster), I don’t think I can pretend O’Ward is better than Palou anymore. But he’s still the only 2020s driver I think is even close…

Oh, and the tagline. On one of the racing Discords where I used to post, I indeed mixed up his name with that of a lousy Hispanic-cosplayer presidential candidate (calling him “Beto O’Ward”), which led to muchos laughs back in the day… Aren’t I too young for those kind of brain glitches?