Is Arrow McLaren SP ready for IndyCar’s title fight?

With Patricio O'Ward and Felix Rosenqvist leading its line-up, 2021 could be the year Arrow McLaren SP-Chevrolet joins the IndyCar elite, writes David Malsher-Lopez.

Updated Feb 21, 2021, 5:58 PM

Once we got used to seeing the large two-story Arrow hospitality unit regularly appearing at IndyCar races – before the pandemic made such luxuries superfluous in 2020 – it was easy to forget the humble beginnings from which the squad now known as Arrow McLaren SP had grown over the previous two decades.

The rise was not meteoric: there were definite flat spots, usually as a result of partnerships that had their roots in expedience rather than expectation of excellence. Counterbalancing that trait along the way, team founder Sam Schmidt, whose underlying ambition and business smarts could rarely be questioned, doesn’t tend to shy away from making difficult decisions. Consequently, the team’s form never dipped for longer than a season, and the general trend was always upward.

Author David Malsher-Lopez

David Malsher-Lopez is Motorsport.com’s U.S. editor, covering the NTT IndyCar Series and IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship. Since completing journalism college in 1994, he has worked for Autosport, TRMG, Motor Sport, Autosport (again) and Racer, before joining Motorsport.com in 2015… where he has found himself enjoying a third spell writing for Autosport. Over the course of those 27 years, he has served as a journalist, sub-editor, features editor, deputy editor and editor. In 2015, he also wrote Will Power’s biography. David lives with his wife Sophia in California and when not writing about racing, he will be found reading about planes and classic cars, attending airshows, listening to a wide variety of music or watching cop shows from the ’70s. He intends to one day own a grand piano, an Airedale terrier and a vintage Pontiac. He doesn’t do Facebook and doesn’t understand Instagram but can be found @DavidMalsher on Twitter.