McLaren - a team never afraid to make bold personnel decisions - has parted ways with its IndyCar team boss Gavin Ward, someone who race engineered in Formula 1, reported directly to Adrian Newey in his Red Bull days designing aero and more recently won the IndyCar championship at his first attempt with Penske.
So what has happened here? Why has McLaren decided a new direction was needed and Ward seemingly wasn’t? Especially after what was the team’s best season effectively since it returned to IndyCar in 2020.
Who is Ward?
Ward started out on Red Bull’s test team in electronics way back at the start of its F1 project, initially applying to Jaguar for a gap year placement but by the time he arrived Red Bull had taken it over.
He impressed so much in that year that the team paid the remainder of his school fees at Oxford Brookes and signed him immediately after graduation.
He was part of the group that came up with F1’s first proper full-time seamless shift gearbox, and then he moved up to race engineering with Mark Webber and then Daniel Ricciardo.
After that he moved into an aero role designing things like front wings and reported directly to Newey.
Always looking for a new challenge, he jumped to Team Penske in IndyCar in 2019 where he won the championship with Josef Newgarden at his first try.
He had to wait until his gardening leave was up and joined McLaren in the second half of 2022, before becoming team principal de facto for 2023.
What McLaren says about Ward’s exit
While it wasn’t clear from the initial announcement on Tuesday, it’s clear now that McLaren made the decision to part ways with Ward - at least that is what it claims given Ward wasn’t part of the media call held after the announcement with Zak Brown and Tony Kanaan to offer his side of the story. The press release announcing his departure did carry a quote from him.
“As you will have seen, we have made a change. Gavin Ward has departed us as our team principal,” Brown said in his opening comments.
"In our quest to become a regular race winner, championship contender, which we are kind of closer than we've ever been, but not yet close enough, we ultimately felt that a change was best as we continue to build out our team."
He was later asked what the main reason for the move was.
“The team's grown,” he said.
“We've gone from two cars to three cars, and then, of course, four at the speedway [Indianapolis].
“So we're a different racing team today, and so moving forward, I think we need a different approach to our leadership, and also give an opportunity to those people in the racing team to give them the ability to kind of stretch their legs, if you like.”
Brown was keen to emphasise there was no issue with Ward, taking the time to thank and praise him on multiple occasions.
“My relationship with Gavin was excellent, is excellent,” Brown added. “So no, there was never any kind of personality clashes.”
What’s next for McLaren?
Brown says that McLaren won’t rush to sign a replacement and he hopes the IndyCar team will work like its F1 equivalent, with a ‘senior leadership team’ making the decisions and Brown basically operating as a tie-breaker where needed when tough decisions are required.
McLaren’s IndyCar leadership team
Tony Kanaan - Deputy Team Principal
Brian Barnhart - General Manager
Scott Harner - Director of Racing Operations
Nick Snyder - Technical Director
Brad O’Brien - VP, Finance & Business Operations
Lauren Gaudion - VP, Marketing & Communications
Sophie Markakis-Smith - Chief of Staff
Tony Kanaan is the deputy team principal at the team, having formerly been the sporting director, and he was asked flat out if he wanted the top job, but poured cold water on that and played up his versatility - saying he will go wherever the team needs him.
At least for now, the team will operate without a de facto team principal.
Its best finish in IndyCar is third with Pato O'Ward in 2021. It was seventh the following year and then didn't win a race in 2023, before returning to form this year - although O'Ward was its best championship finisher in fifth.
Its biggest challenges have been investing in the team in all areas to get it up to speed with the series' top squads, after taking over the smaller Schmidt Peterson team for 2020. It's still in the same two-car shop from then until it takes over Andretti's old HQ in the second half of next year.
It has been extremely competitive at the Indy 500 in the last two years, and O'Ward only lost after being overtaken two corners from the end in the 2024 edition by Josef Newgarden.
Can we explain the timing?
It’s curious that Ward was apparently at F1’s Mexican Grand Prix just a few weeks ago wearing full McLaren papaya and as of Monday, he doesn’t have a job.
Perhaps that shouldn’t be a surprise for a team which signed a driver until the end of the season earlier this year and then dropped him a month later for a less qualified driver, just a few days before a race weekend.
Brown said he has been considering this move for some time, but wanted “buy-in” from the senior leadership team before making the decision. And added nothing had happened since Mexico that had brought about the decision.
“I'm constantly evaluating our racing teams and how we can continue to improve, whether that's in personnel or technology or racing drivers or whatever the case may be,” Brown added when asked to explain the timeline by The Race.
“This has been on my mind since kind of the second half of the season, I'm always thinking down the road.
“So ultimately, made the decision not that long ago, and I was in Indianapolis a couple weeks ago visiting with the entire team, just assessing what we might need moving forward.
“It's nothing that's happened overnight. I'd say it's been a work in progress, and felt now was a good time to get the season behind us and make some decisions with enough time to be fully prepared to go into the next racing season.”
What next for Ward?
There may yet be a sting in the tail for Ward, who will have the whole IndyCar grid and probably a lot of the F1 grid banging down his door and lighting up his phone for what might feel like forever.
He may have some sort of clause that prevents him from joining another team immediately.
Brown said “we never get into contractual details”, but never one to shy away from a question, he added “safe to assume that non-competes are normal course of business with senior leadership in racing teams”.
A non-compete clause - or a period you can’t join a competitor after you finish your previous employment - is common in motorsport and the lengths vary. It could be anywhere from six weeks to six months, and there’s fewer than four months until the next IndyCar season gets underway.
Ward is no stranger to this having been sent into gardening leave by Penske before joining McLaren.
That period is worth looking back on now because McLaren championed taking such a prized asset away from Penske, and now the tables have turned as McLaren is setting Ward loose to work elsewhere.
He’s good enough to work in any paddock but if he wants to stay in IndyCar, he provides a threat to McLaren.
Asked if he was concerned about this, Brown replied: “Yeah, all I can really do is concern myself with our team.
“Gavin is immensely talented. He's a great engineer, great technician. So for sure he will land somewhere, and for sure he'll add value to that racing team.
“But I think the best way for us to win the championship is to be the best team that we can. And wish him the best, and for sure he'll add value to whatever racing team he ends up at.”
It’s a bold claim from Brown - “to win the championship is to be the best team that we can” - basically saying to be that best team McLaren needed to remove Ward from his position.
Ward came to the team from an engineering role so he didn’t have decades of experience in people management. But what he did have experience of was a lot of different working cultures, and he certainly made Arrow McLaren a better place to work than when he arrived, if you were an employee there.
McLaren will continue that work with fantastic people in that ‘senior leadership team’, but it’s hard to imagine how removing Ward made it better. Not when you look at his resume and the team coming off arguably its best season, achieved amid driver revolving door hell and growing pains for a team that hired nearly 50 people last summer, an unheard of hiring spree in IndyCar for anything other than a brand new team.
More hires and some news on the way
“We've hired nearly 20 people,” Brown said about this off-season, “some very experienced people, most of which you're aware of, some of which are not yet public knowledge.
“In our quest to become a regular race winner, championship contender, which we are kind of closer to than we've ever been, but not yet close enough, we ultimately felt that a change was best as we continue to build out our team.
“I’m very confident in the team that we have.”
It already hired over 40 people last summer and considering some teams are only around 40-50 people total, this hiring spree over multiple years feels unprecedented.
Brown also promised more news, adding: “I think we will now start to enter an era of stability since we acquired the team, which we'll have some further news on shortly.”
We’re not sure what that is, but McLaren already has a majority stake in the team so that will be interesting to digest when Brown reveals all.
