Signing for McLaren at the age of 19 would be a dream for most drivers, and it was for Nolan Siegel, too. But his situation soon turned - as he went from the young and unassuming talent everybody liked to public enemy number one for 'stealing' Theo Pourchaire's IndyCar seat in one of the most controversial stories of the 2024 season.
"There's been a tremendous amount of outside negativity, like, disappointingly so," Siegel tells The Race in a lengthy pre-season interview. It feels like mentally he has already moved on from last year, but it still warrants some inspection from those of us on the outside.
"I didn't qualify for the [Indianapolis] 500 and everyone is like, 'Oh, I feel so sorry for him, the little rookie that had no experience, he did so well'." It's worth noting here that Nolan is smiling and doing a mock child's voice to ram home the point...
"And then, signed for McLaren, and a week later, finished 12th in my first race at Laguna and everyone's going, 'Why is he here? He shouldn't be here'. So it's an interesting dynamic, for sure..."
The context is that McLaren first missed out on Alex Palou after his contract U-turn to stay at Chip Ganassi, signed David Malukas, who got injured in the 2024 pre-season and was let go in May, signed Pourchaire until the end of the season, then dropped him a month later to put Siegel in the car for the last 10 races.
This made a lot of Pourchaire fans angry and, to be honest, it was easy to get caught up in the negativity of the situation, asking why McLaren had ditched then reigning Formula 2 champion Pourchaire - who had long been touted as a potential Formula 1 driver - for someone who hadn't won a championship in his junior career, even if his record was impressive in places.
I certainly shared this view, and was perhaps guilty, like many, of forgetting that this also impacted Siegel, who had earned a brilliant opportunity at one of racing's biggest names. Instead, all anyone could focus on was the negativity, which was why Pourchaire had been ditched.
"Everybody's going to have an opinion," says now McLaren team boss Tony Kanaan, speaking to The Race in detail about Siegel's journey and his hectic off-season.
"If we could go through all the details, I think people will have a completely different view of it. But yeah, he was in a hot seat. I was in a hot seat myself. So that's why we're working with him.
"I think he was probably in one of the most stressful times of his career, not just like driving for McLaren, people saying, 'You don't deserve to be there, what did you do, why you're there?' Blah, blah, blah. He managed pretty well on the perception."
It didn't help that Siegel didn't quite get a headline result on the board in the latter half of the year, although his seventh place at Gateway was relatively impressive.
But he was also thrown in after starting the year expecting to do a full Indy NXT season and with limited Dale Coyne IndyCar outings. Not to be thrust under an IndyCar microscope as a rookie with very little testing, on tracks he hadn’t done in an IndyCar before, all while most of the other drivers had over half a season under their belt.
It's not fair that Siegel's promotion came intrinsically tied to a negative situation in which the wolves descended on him as much as McLaren for the situation. Sadly, that's a price Siegel has had to pay for getting a seat in one of motorsport's most prolific teams.
I still think Pourchaire would have been the right choice on the evidence at hand, and didn't see enough last year from Siegel to change that opinion. But that doesn't mean Siegel can't and won't prove me wrong. And if he isn't able to reach that level, the situation in which he got the chance will have to be a mitigating factor in judging him.
The thing that speaking to Siegel did make me realise that he didn't deserve to be thrust into the circumstances he found himself in.
Kanaan, who helped Siegel even before he joined McLaren, was the person who put his job on the line for McLaren to sign Siegel, and his belief has inspired Siegel to make it through this difficult period.
Both McLaren and Siegel have had one of the most intense off-season The Race has come across in covering IndyCar, across multiple levels.
Siegel and the immediate team on his car have watched every single race from last season together and broken down strategy decisions to analyse what they might have done in that situation, across multiple cars per race. That's an enormous level of detail to go into, especially with his crew members.
He's put on around 15 pounds in muscle (7kg) to be better prepared this season, and Kanaan has also made Siegel follow his own path of using a sports psychologist. Kanaan felt this helped him at early points in his career, and at the end when he felt people were saying he should retire and make way for younger talent.
"I introduced him on the sports psychology side, it's because, by default, you're thinking, 'Well, it was his first year, he was under a lot of heat, so the second year is going to be piece of cake'," Kanaan added.
"Well, technically. But then you think about [what might be going on] now in his head: 'Alright, I had a year to learn, now I have to deliver, because everybody will judge me again'. So that can add even more pressure to it."
Part of the problem people have with the Siegel versus Pourchaire debate is that Pourchaire is only a year or so older than Siegel, is an F2 champion and long-time F1 reserve who is clearly highly regarded in Europe and did a good job in his IndyCar outings.
Siegel is so far away from that resume in terms of his achievements so far, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t the right choice and won't blossom into a fantastic IndyCar driver long-term.
That's the problem: we don't know! Even Kanaan says he knows Siegel has massive potential but doesn't know if he will reach the levels of the drivers he picks out as examples, Alex Palou and Scott Dixon.
And sadly, you’ll have to wait a bit longer before judging as it’s clear Siegel needs time. He’s basically a rookie starting this season as he hasn’t done most of the races in the first three-quarters of the season in an IndyCar yet.
But nothing has made Kanaan feel his very vocal admission that this move needed to work or he might have to give up his job, was misplaced or wrong.
"I know the potential is there," said Kanaan. "Having three cars and such a disruption that was not caused by any means, by us, but you know what? That's not an excuse. I run this place now, it's my problem.
"So I had to be strong enough to be able to, at the time with Gavin [Ward, former team principal] and Zak [Brown, McLaren CEO], to make the tough decisions without worrying about what people are going to think, because I'm always doing what I think is the best for the team.
"I owe an explanation to my boss, why I'm doing this, and if they are behind me and it's a big mistake, I'll own it and if I have to get out of the door because of it, it happens to everybody."
When Siegel was hired, many people assumed it was because he brought significant backing - his father works for a venture capitalist firm that handles $5.8billion in assets according to its LinkedIn page - but McLaren insisted that, because Siegel had become available, it had to act to sign him up before another big team did for 2025, and that was the main reason.
Fundamentally, all of this will be forgotten if Siegel can deliver in the ballpark of his team-mates Pato O'Ward and Christian Lundgaard this season and the preparation has certainly geared Siegel up for that.
One thing he has already proven is a massive amount of mental resilience and maturity in the face of an amount of vitriol most people would crumble under, not least at 19 (Siegel turned 20 in November).
He's ready to just ignore that noise and focus on the people he feels are important.
"That's where working with Tony and having someone that sees and believes in my potential is really important, because ultimately, the opinions that matter to me are, Tony's opinion, and even Pato's opinion and Zak's [Brown] opinion," said Siegel.
"Those are people that have seen me drive the race car and have seen it from the inside and those are people that I think believe that I can succeed, and that's kind of what drives me forward.
"Certainly drives me forward a lot more than the negativity brings me back. Because if Tony goes, 'I don't think you're good enough, I don't think you can do it', that would hurt, for sure.
"But the people that are saying that aren't people that really know what's going on. So as long as the people that are involved and know what's going on believe that we can succeed, that's what matters to me."
It's a massive year for Siegel.
Just as he's turned over a new leaf in search of reaching his potential, maybe it's time for us to wipe the slate clean and stop focusing on the negativity around his appointment. Let him enjoy the massive achievement of being signed by McLaren at such a young age.
But sadly, as everyone knows, racing is a results-based business, and you're only as good as your last race no matter the odds against you and how nice you are.
There's no way Kanaan would put his job on the line if he really didn't believe Siegel was special. We'll find out, even if we do have to wait a while to get the full picture before judging.
