ALL WINTER, motorists heading west on 16th Street in Speedway were confronted with a mysterious question. If they managed to look up from dodging chuckholes around North Rochester Avenue about a mile east of the dormant Brickyard, they no doubt spotted a black billboard hovering just behind 500 Guns emblazoned with two massive words and a punctuation mark: Pato Who?
The simplest answer: He’s the owner of the billboard.
Born in Monterrey, Mexico, IndyCar driver Patricio “Pato” O’Ward has, at just 25, fast become a fan favorite and media darling for the series. For years, he has lobbied for the league to schedule a race in his native Mexico. Last September, IndyCar CEO Mark Miles was quoted in The Indianapolis Star, saying track officials in Mexico City told him that neither the series nor O’Ward were “well-known enough” to draw a crowd in his home country. Soon after, O’Ward won the Milwaukee Mile in West Allis, Wisconsin, taking his third checkered flag of the season. During the post-race press conference, O’Ward wore a wide, black sombrero with his logo stitched on the front. Runner-up Will Power needled the winner about Miles’ comments.
“We should be in Mexico City, not NASCAR,” Power said, turning to O’Ward. Third-place finisher Conor Daly let out a playful “Ohhhh!” and joined Power in laughing at the burn, two veterans razzing the youngster.
O’Ward shrugged it off, smiled wryly, and winked. Leaning into his microphone, he responded, “Yeah, Pato who?”
The clip went viral (or at least as viral as anything related to IndyCar goes these days), and O’Ward and his marketing team doubled down on the trolling, printing and selling Pato Who? hats, stickers, and T-shirts through his online shop. Then he bought two billboards in Speedway (the second along Crawfordsville Road on the other side of the IMS). “Mark Miles said I wasn’t famous enough because I wasn’t on enough billboards,” O’Ward tells me via a late-February video conference. “So, I purchased two billboards. It’s just me having fun with it.”
Whether intended as a joke, a jab at authority, or a makeshift guerilla marketing campaign, Pato Who? might be the most important query in all of IndyCar at the moment. The series has been searching for a mainstream splash since the days of Danica-Mania, with Danica Patrick gracing the cover of Sports Illustrated, and a banana-suited Helio Castroneves dancing with the stars on national TV. IndyCar is entering the first year of a historic and record-breaking media rights deal with Fox Sports, and it’s no coincidence the network dedicated an entire 40-second Super Bowl commercial to O’Ward (with its narrator proclaiming, “Pato looks like a one-man boy band, he charms like a British spy, he smells like burnt rubber, and he doesn’t have fans—he has groupies.”). He combines a boyish innocence with an uninhibited wit and candor in the spotlight, laying his emotions bare whether he’s celebrating on the podium, crying in the pits, or jabbing at authority in a post-race press conference. He was IndyCar’s top merch mover even before the Pato Who? swag hit the shop. Last October, a little over a month after the Milwaukee press conference, he showed up for a last-minute appearance at a Mexico City mall during Formula One weekend expecting 120 people—only to be swarmed by more than 4,000 screaming fans spilling out of the building, some waving giant floating Pato heads, others holding signs identifying themselves as “Patties” (a play on Taylor’s Swifties). “It was insane,” O’Ward says. Then, with no small amount of hubris: “After that, a race in Mexico City shouldn’t even be a negotiation.”
Even stateside, O’Ward draws fervent crowds. “Last year in Portland, we were in the trailer trying to debrief, and the fans outside chanting, ‘Pato!’ were so loud we struggled to hear each other,” says Nick Snyder, performance director for Arrow McLaren and race strategist for O’Ward’s No. 5 Chevrolet. “I’ve been doing this since 2003, and that’s the biggest support I’ve seen for an IndyCar driver. It even rivals some F1 drivers.”
But despite 38 top five finishes and seven wins in his first five seasons, O’Ward has yet to win the one race that could shift his fame into a higher gear—the Indy 500. He has also struggled to put together the week-to-week consistency required to win an overall IndyCar season championship. Part of that is just youth. O’Ward seems to be undergoing the type of identity crisis most young people deal with, especially those thrust into early success. Specifically, he appears torn between his childhood dreams of Formula One and an opportunity that seems his for the taking here in Indy. He admits to sometimes being unable to live in the moment and focus on what’s in front of him.
So who is Pato O’Ward? That’s a question the driver might be asking himself.
On October 15, 2022, a baby-faced O’Ward stood in the garage at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca in Salinas, California, in a blissful daze. His eyes were particularly bright and wide, his tussled crop of dark hair freed from his racing helmet. He had just completed an exhibition run in Ayrton Senna’s 1990 Formula One Championship McLaren MP4/5B car, and he looked like a kid who had just unwrapped the only big-ticket gift on his wish list. “I’m still giggling, man,” he told an interviewer. “I can’t express how different this is. This is so alive!”
“You’re getting a chance to do more F1 stuff here coming up soon,” said the interviewer, referring to the announcement that O’Ward would make his F1 debut in free practice at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix the following month. “You’re living your best life, Pato O’Ward.”
“I wouldn’t want to be in any other position, man. It’s everything I’ve ever dreamed of. I feel very grateful for what I’ve been able to accomplish so far and stoked to see what the future might hold.”
With tech that makes its cars lap those in other series, face-melting speeds, and global renown, F1 is widely considered the pinnacle of motorsport. Many drivers, especially those with international backgrounds, consider piloting the futuristic machines their ultimate goal. O’Ward is no different. “My dream of being a racing driver has always had F1 as the backbone. That’s what I’ve strived for,” O’Ward tells me. “They’re the greatest race cars you’ll ever lay your hands on. You want to go as fast, corner as fast, brake as late as possible, all these little things they allow you to do. It’s like the acceleration wants to kill you. It gives you such a sensation that really is addicting. You don’t want to get out of the car.”
Growing up, O’Ward did everything he could do to get into one. He split his time between Mexico and Texas karting and then open-wheel racing, including in the LATAM Fórmula 2000 and Formula Renault 1.6 NEC. In 2014, at 15, he moved abroad to compete in the French F4 Championship, a first stepping stone to F1. He finished seventh in points, with one win and two podium finishes, despite only participating in 15 of 21 races. It drew the attention of Team Pelfrey, the Indy-based racing team that lured O’Ward to the Pro Mazda Championship, later rebranded Indy Pro 2000, the third rung on the ladder to IndyCar. “They gave me the option to get back to the U.S. from Europe,” says O’Ward. “My first test was on the road course at IMS. They guided me toward IndyCar.”
While Formula One is more of a competition between makers that rewards the innovation and investment of the people who build the cars, the machines used in IndyCar and its feeder series are spec, meaning they use the same or similar car parts. That means the drivers make the difference—and they get the lion’s share of the glory. O’Ward shined early and often in Pro Mazda, winning six of the first seven races, including two at IMS in 2016, just his second year. From there, he climbed to IndyLights (now Indy NXT), the next rung up the IndyCar ladder, one step away from the main series. Again he shone in his sophomore season, winning nine races and securing the IndyLights championship for Andretti Autosport. “He was very passionate, very aggressive,” says former IndyCar driver and 500 champion Tony Kanaan, who is currently team principal at Arrow McLaren. “He was a raw talent that could adapt to anything and still make it go fast, which is very rare.”
O’Ward has a knack for adapting to any style of racing, be it on a road course, a street course, or an oval—which makes him ideal for IndyCar. But sponsorship issues scuffled his would-be rookie year in the big-league series with Harding Steinbrenner Racing, forcing him to patch together races with Carlin in 2019. Just before the Grand Prix of Indianapolis that May, O’Ward announced a surprise deal with the Red Bull Junior Team to race in Formula Two, the penultimate level before F1. He then failed to qualify for the 500 with Carlin. That October, Red Bull dropped O’Ward after the FIA, the world motorsport authority, determined that he hadn’t accumulated the necessary points for the Super Licence required to race in F1.
Suddenly without a seat, O’Ward called Zak Brown, CEO of McLaren Racing, one of the oldest and most successful teams in F1, which also operates Indianapolis team Arrow McLaren. Brown signed O’Ward to the latter going into the 2020 IndyCar season, during which the driver grabbed three podiums and finished fourth in overall points. The following season, Brown promised O’Ward that if he actually won an IndyCar race, he’d get to test a McLaren F1 car. He won two, in Texas and Detroit, good for an eventual third place in the championship standings. True to his word, Brown put him in McLaren F1 machines for postseason and private testing and eventually the free practice in Abu Dhabi. Following the 2023 season—in which O’Ward reached a career-high seven podiums, though he continued to struggle with consistency, finishing fourth in points once again—O’Ward finally earned his Super Licence. McLaren named him its F1 reserve driver and folded him into the F1 driver development program as his IndyCar star continued to climb the pole.
The only thing Indianapolis racing fans seem to like better than a winner is a driver who comes up just short. Think Michael Andretti, who could never quite get to Victory Lane in three decades of trying; Danica Patrick, who launched her career by leading 19 historic laps and finishing fourth; or Kanaan, Will Power, or Josef Newgarden, who all finally got their sip of celebratory milk after more than a decade of near misses.
If heartbreaking Brickyard losses endear drivers to fans, it’s no wonder O’Ward is so popular here. After finishing sixth in his 2020 debut and earning Indy 500 Rookie of the Year, he returned the following year to finish fourth. In 2022, he led 26 laps before finishing second. He led 39 laps in the 2023 spectacle before crashing on lap 193 of 200 in a battle for second. And then last year, he took the lead in the first turn of the final lap, only to be passed in Turn 3 by eventual winner Newgarden. “So close again,” O’Ward told reporters after the race, tears in his eyes. “So. Fucking. Close.”
But the fan outpouring during and after that race—people crying with him, waving signs and Mexican flags—seemed to overshadow the celebration in Victory Lane and certainly made O’Ward feel as though he’d won. He has embraced this welcome, buying a home in Meridian Hills late last year to be near his IndyCar team and the track where he’s seen the most consistent success in his career. “It’s a special event to be a part of,” says O’Ward. “The Month of May for me is the only month where I can live in the present and absorb everything. All year long, you’re always looking forward, looking forward. It’s easy to lose sight and push forward for what you want. You forget the best moments are where you are currently. … It feels like time stops.”
Being more present in IndyCar, and not just in May, might be O’Ward’s secret to finally winning the 500 and earning a points championship. And it could help give the series notability approaching that of F1—both here and abroad. “Anything you cannot filter and use to your benefit is a distraction,” says Kanaan, who frequently counsels O’Ward. “Why are you living in the future and not enjoying the present? His desire to go to F1 and that opportunity not presenting itself, that was the case a few years ago. Now, I think he’s dedicated to us and to the series, putting it in a position to grow. Win in the present, win here, and that will put you in the position for the future if the opportunity comes.”
“I’m definitely not as antsy to get to F1 as I was three years ago,” O’Ward says. “Maybe that’s me maturing. Maybe that’s me seeing I’ve got it so good here.”
Meanwhile, O’Ward has paid for his Pato Who? billboards to remain up at least through the Month of May. He, his team, and many in IndyCar hope that by the end of the month, the answer to that question will be clear.
