McLaren is having by far its most interesting IndyCar season. And that's saying something!
It swapped team bosses for this year but has turned it into a record podium-scoring year, has finally become a competitive multi-car team, has been the closest threat to IndyCar dominator Alex Palou as the top Chevrolet-powered team, and is set to move into a new factory next year - which could elevate McLaren to the level its resources demand.
It’s done all this despite Honda and Palou's dominance, risen above the difficulty of having its de facto team leader Pato O'Ward properly challenged by a team-mate - Christian Lundgaard - for the first time, in a tiny factory, and while still recovering from last year, where losing Palou triggered a bizarre driver merry-go around than was sometimes within its control and sometimes outside of it.
With so much to unpack, and after that milestone of breaking its record number of podiums in a season since McLaren bought into the Schmidt Peterson team for 2020, The Race dialled up team boss Tony Kanaan for an insightful, behind-the-scenes and sometimes hilarious interview, which you can listen to in full on The Race IndyCar Podcast.
O'Ward's maturity
Pato O'Ward is one of IndyCar's fastest drivers. But one question that's often hung over him has been can he do it consistently and make good decisions in races?
While last season was a tough one in terms of very occasionally being too risky, this year he's barely put a wheel wrong. His qualifying performances haven't been as strong as they often were in the past, but his races have. And even if he's 121 points behind palou, he's 77 clear of the next-best driver.
"Pato has matured a lot," reckons Kanaan, the 2013 Indianapolis 500 winner, adding that McLaren has worked hard to give him more structure, and to up its game too.
"I think Pato in the past, more times than less, carried the team on his back. I know that's our job as drivers, but sometimes Pato put a car in the top five and the car [only] belonged in the top 15.
"But then while he was there, he would make a mistake and not finish a race because he was on the limit, trying to go over the limit to keep it there. And then people had the impression that he wasn't consistent."
Kanaan says because O'Ward was "mature enough", he "put his head down, owned it when he made a mistake, was mad when it was a silly one" and recovering from those errors has proved his consistency.
New team-mate Lundgaard has also played a role.
"When I took over it was more of like, 'How can I push the team? Then I can push Pato more',” says Kanaan; basically, the team needed to be at O'Ward's level to help him more.
"And I think with Christian coming to the team, let's face it, Pato had some tough team-mates but not at this level. It made Pato have to adjust and it takes time."
Kanaan reels off his own IndyCar team-mates, including Scott Dixon, Dario Franchitti and so on, and says he was "the least successful of my team-mates", but working with drivers of that level "made me so much better".
Lundgaard has started well - more on that below - but he's still got a way to go to be at O'Ward's level and to do that consistently.
"Not because he's driving for me, not because I'm in this team, but this kid's potential, I wish I had half of it when I was driving," Kanaan says of O'Ward. "I would be much better than I was."
That's IndyCar champion and Indy 500 winner, Tony Kanaan, giving quite the compliment.
Lundgaard's surprised everyone
While you could debate whether Lundgaard's 2025 has been exponentially better than Felix Rosenqvist's 2022 season, Lundgaard does look set to be O'Ward's highest-scoring team-mate in IndyCar so far - and in his first season at McLaren, too.
A team which famously has had O'Ward carry it on his back and has left a trail of high-profile and successful drivers struggling to adapt in O'Ward's wake.
For years now, McLaren has been working to make the car more driveable for every type of driver and clearly it's made a lot of good progress.
But equally, Lundgaard really has hit the ground running in his first opportunity in a top IndyCar team.
"Especially how much Christian had struggled in previous years, I wasn't expecting him to plug and play and just have no hiccups," says Kanaan.
"He started it so strong that it's hard to remember that it's still his first year with the team. His first year running consistently in the front. We forget about those kind of things."
Kanaan reckons Lundgaard is "a lot better in a pressure situation than actually managing a good one sometimes", which has certainly helped.
Being so close to O'Ward right away is really impressive. He's got three races to go and needs only 19 points to beat the best score in a first season of any of O'Ward's team-mates - the 377 points scored by Alexander Rossi in 2023 - and is fifth in the standings, and averaging over 25 points per race.
Now that Lundgaard is settled, next season is going to be the big measure of where he's at. He's not at O'Ward's level on ovals yet - although his previous team Rahal Letterman Lanigan was not the best place to learn ovals with, as a young driver in the period he was there.
The new factory
Early in 2026, McLaren will move into an extended version of Andretti's old factory, 86,000-square-foot in size and much more befitting of a team of this name and calibre.
We've gone into a lot more of the detail on what that could mean for the team in this feature.
"I truly believe it's important, but that means we're going to win 10 more races because of that? I want to believe that, but we'll see!" jokes Kanaan, referencing the point that the factory doesn't add obvious on-track performance. But if it makes everyone's lives easier and more efficient, that will create a better atmosphere that can open up more opportunities.
He, like many other people who have worked at McLaren, has spoken about the almost-embarrassing feeling when people come to McLaren's current IndyCar operation, perhaps expecting a smaller version of the McLaren Technology Centre Formula 1 base that in reality it's not even close to.
"Are we the poor brothers that don't have anything like, 'My brother's a lot more successful than me'?!" Kanaan asks.
The new shop will be much more befitting of the team it's become.
Breaking out
It's one thing celebrating more podiums, being the closest team to Ganassi, being the top Chevrolet team. But for a squad like McLaren that's not enough - for it or for fans and onlookers. It needs to be winning titles.
"It's the best season of the team, but the other team [Ganassi] has dominated in a season that I've never seen in 26 years," Kanaan adds.
"We're getting beaten by one car, eight races [won], but that is the motivation that I need and then the team needs, if I'm able to use that in a very productive way [to say]: 'That is a reality, guys. That's life'. So we need to go chase it, right?
"But let's be real on how we've been building this team, how we have increased the number of podiums and look on the Chevy side, because there's Chevy and Honda there, we're being the best team, but constantly, right? Against Penske, which is a big organisation. So there are a lot of positives for sure.
"Once you put the McLaren name on it, people are going to expect us to win as much as Ganassi and Penske. We have the resources, we have the people, we have the mentality. But we are, if you think about it, a fairly young team since McLaren bought Arrow McLaren [Schmidt Peterson]. So we've got to take that into consideration.
"There are a lot of things that we're behind on because of the years that they have been around - 20, 30 years."
As well as being a driver that the team is still suing over reneging on a contract he signed with it, Palou is also a former team-mate of Kanaan's from Ganassi. Despite all of that, Kanaan's not afraid to pay Palou his dues for what he is doing in single-handedly beating McLaren.
"It's pretty remarkable, what Palou is doing, to be fair," he adds. "It's one of those seasons that he will never forget, because he dominated. We will never forget because we got beaten, week in, week out.
"I've got to give it to the guy, he's raising my game every day. I wake up with his picture on my fridge every morning and I look at his face!"
The mystery megastar McLaren wants
For months now, Zak Brown has been teasing a driver racing in the Indy 500 for McLaren next year and it being some sort of spectacular, sensational signing that will take everybody by surprise.
That driver is set to test soon, but we still don't know who it is. So we asked Kanaan directly for a name.
"Listen, if you want me to do another podcast with you, I might as well keep it quiet, otherwise we're going to do it about why I lost my job!" he laughs.
"We have a couple options. The option that Zak's mentioning, I think if we can pull it off, it's only because it's Zak.
"Being friends with him for 30 years, Zak is a guy that can make it happen once.
"Secondly, if you're ever going to sit down with Zak to negotiate anything, just be prepared that he's going to get the best out of you - and you're going to think you made the best deal of your life!
"And he's pretty good in winding people up in a good way. Look at all of us: he does that [teasing the mystery driver] and disappears, and goes and wins races in Europe, looks good [with a] 1-2 every weekend.
"And now I get left here to answer this kind of question, that you don't want to answer! So I cannot answer that question."
Asked if he is the driver Brown is talking about - after all, Kanaan has had multiple send-offs only to return, and would even have raced this year as team boss had Kyle Larson missed the Indy 500 - Kanaan says that suggestion "has to die at some point".
He adds: "I feel awesome that, as a retired race car driver, when people keep wanting you, that is actually a really good feeling.
"But this year, I have to say, it was probably the worst, most nervous year I've ever had on the grid [at the Indy 500].
"When people said, 'Hey, you might start this thing', I swear to God, I think I have switched since I retired; [with] my responsibility with the team, I'm like, 'I don't want to do it, am I ready? I'm not'. It got to my head.
"So it is not me and I don't think Zak will talk about me with that much excitement anyway, so you can forget about that!"
This is all part of Brown's brilliant mind in terms of relying on the media - myself included - to be intrigued and promote McLaren via this story of a mystery driver. I know that.
But given this is the team that has put Fernando Alonso and Kyle Larson in the Indy 500 and has the resources to attract pretty much any driver outside of F1 to race at the Brickyard, it's hard not to wonder what he has up his sleeve.
