Pato O'Ward is at a pivotal point in his career this off-season as he balances helping McLaren's Formula 1 team and trying to win an elusive IndyCar title - in the series where he may now well be its biggest star.
No sooner were O'Ward's "DMs popping" - after an IndyCar commercial about him aired during the Super Bowl - than he was pounding around Jerez managing almost 150 laps in a McLaren MCL60 from 2023, before quickly heading back to Texas ahead of IndyCar's pre-season test at Sebring earlier this week.
The takeaway from all of that is simply: 'That's a lot of stuff going on!' O'Ward's barely had any time to himself this off-season.
After all, his off-season wasn't the same as IndyCar's off-season. After the campaign in the States wrapped, O'Ward in his role F1 reserve driver was part of McLaren's (successful) efforts in seeing its F1 constructors' title over the line.
From an outside perspective, as he has been working with the F1 team for years now, each year he gets older it's easy to see the possibility of him having a future racing in F1 as increasingly distant. Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri are a constructors' title-winning partnership on multi-year deals, forming a line-up that is regularly labelled one of the best on the grid.
The Race wondered if O'Ward has accepted his chance might not come and if he is happy enough carrying on in a support role as test driver, or if he still expects more.
"It's cool to have seen the team win the constructors' championship and everything, I was happy to be at least a 'small crumb' part of that," replied O'Ward, speaking in an exclusive interview with The Race.
"But it's quite tough because it's like going to a buffet, not being able to eat - everyone else is eating and enjoying and you're just there; you don't get to do what you love to do, and you get to watch other people do it.
"It's definitely not my favourite thing in the world.
"I'm at a point in my career where I'm all in, and I've been all in for so long for this opportunity in Formula 1 to come about, but that always has a deadline, it will always have a date where it's just... 'that's enough', because it might never happen.
"I'm not open to doing it for five more years. I think there's definitely a deadline and that will come sooner rather than later. I'm giving it everything this year and hopefully my opportunities keep on growing.
"I would say it's to the point where I think it's reached a pretty intense role in terms of having a presence at all the flyover [F1] races, and I want to drive the car. I want to be in the car.
"So hopefully that becomes more and more and more to kind of balance out all of the days that, in the off-season, you just kind of do all the dirty work, rather than what you actually enjoy."
O'Ward constantly stresses how much he loves the F1 work and how he's really not trying to sound ungrateful over a dream opportunity. But at the same time, it's easy to see how far it stretches him and at some point - I'd suggest, anyway - you have to weigh up whether the F1 work impacts your other goals and whether it's all worth it.
How 2025 will be different
Of course, the 'other goals' are to win an Indianapolis 500 and an IndyCar title, which require 100% of most drivers' time to achieve.
Gavin Ward has left McLaren's IndyCar team, triggering a significant management shake-up which has effectively installed former sporting director Tony Kanaan as his replacement - although the IndyCar team will run like the F1 operation, with department heads reporting into a central committee.
As O'Ward points out, it won't affect his day-to-day work and he ultimately trusts McLaren CEO Zak Brown to make the right decisions to push the team forward.
But it does need that 'push'. While it's competing against nine cars just across Andretti, Ganassi and Penske, the team hasn't made as big of a step as it would have liked in the last few years in terms of tangible results.
"Not finishing races kills you, man," says O'Ward of his 2024 campaign. "All our great weekends were great, but our bad weekends really sucked, and that just kills you at the end of the year.
"We had four DNFs really, that's a lot!
"It's roughly 80-100 points that we just left on the table - two of them were my mistakes, and the two other ones were a team mistake.
"So you've got to leave those joker cards for when you when you really, really need them.
"Ultimately, you've just got to leave some room for things to happen, and that pretty much leaves no room for error in terms of my side, where you've just got to be on it."
O'Ward was fifth in the championship last year, 84 points behind champion Alex Palou - who did also leave points on the table.
The mistakes O'Ward mentions were a pair of incidents at Barber and a spin in Toronto, as well as mechanical gremlins at Gateway and race two at Milwaukee (O'Ward had won race one). There were other slightly disappointing results to boot, like a 15th at Portland and 16th in Long Beach after contact with then team-mate Alexander Rossi.
O'Ward's openness to, maybe even propensity for, taking big risks was a point of discussion through 2024 - but Kanaan's new role hasn't forced any changes. Instead, he's told O'Ward "the team is behind you" and Pato says "I definitely feel that in everything that I do".
But it's clear O'Ward has some big targets to hit and may have to play it safe(r).
"I want to finish every race, that is my goal," he says. "I know it seems like a very simple goal, but it's a lot harder to do.
"I just want to keep it simple. I want to look back on the year and be like, 'Wow, we finished every lap'. I think that's a pretty big accomplishment, and that usually delivers in terms of sitting pretty in the championships.
"I'd like to have a better qualifying year than I did last year. I think last year was just one of the worst years for qualifying for me.
"I want to be in the fast six [pole position shootout]. That means you've executed when it comes to getting the most out of the car, and then the race is hopefully a little bit easier. So, I also have areas where I want to be better."
Enjoying the Indy 500?
On the Indy 500 side, O'Ward was overtaken for the win two corners from the end last year. It was the second time he'd been runner-up there - and he's clearly now among the favourites every year going into the event.
"Oh, man, it's like the never-ending job keeps on getting heavier," says O'Ward, who also just wants to enjoy this year's race more.
"It's just such an amazing event to be a part of where things can get lost quite easily when there's so much pressure and focus on how we need to win.
"You forget, there are so many factors that will affect your end result, you're doing yourself a disservice if you're not enjoying what the whole freaking month is about. I want to be able to look back on the month and be like, 'wow, that was freaking awesome'."
That doesn't change his opinion on what a successful month of May looks like, though.
"Sadly anything that's not a win, it’s always a disappointment, to be honest," he adds. "It's not like, 'Hey, we're on the podium'. It's more of like, 'Haha, first loser, you suck'."
You can see the constant blend IndyCar drivers need to achieve under the current points system. When Palou is capable of going a whole season finishing no worse than eighth in 17 races, as he did in 2023, the pressure is on to be consistent. But then you can't just be eighth every week; you still have to push to be in the top five pretty much constantly and win races if you're going to have a shot at the title.
The two approaches are diametrically opposed, but a non-negotiable blend in a modern IndyCar campaign.
It's clear that O'Ward has had a busy off-season, that his F1 dreams stagnating can't help, and that more changes to an IndyCar operation which has been full of change every year might not necessarily be the obvious foundation for success.
But doing the same thing every year and expecting a different result wouldn't be an option for McLaren either.
It has to take big swings at overcoming the IndyCar hierarchy, and O'Ward will almost certainly be the person to lead that charge - if it can be done.
