Pato O’Ward stood at the Milwaukee Mile and said what he had been holding in for weeks. Speaking publicly for the first time about his 2027 Arrow McLaren lineup, the 26-year-old did not talk about lap times or setup notes. He talked about the way people had been talking about Scott Dixon, and he could not hide how much it bothered him.
“I’ve been shocked at the disrespect that he’s received,” O’Ward said. “For people to talk down somebody like that really is a shame. Talk down on me as much as you want. Like, I don’t care. But to talk down on somebody like Scott Dixon, sometimes I really do feel like I wish people felt ashamed a little bit more, because to disrespect somebody from that caliber and that level.”
The trigger was simple enough. Arrow McLaren announced this month that Dixon, a six-time series champion at 45 years old, will join the team in 2027 alongside O’Ward and Indianapolis 500 winner Felix Rosenqvist. Some fans and pundits questioned the logic of building around a driver in the back half of his 40s. O’Ward, the team’s incumbent star, decided he was not going to let the criticism stand unanswered.
A Locker Room Defense From an Unlikely Voice
O’Ward has spent parts of the last two seasons as Arrow McLaren’s undisputed leader, the young face of a team trying to climb back toward the front of the grid. His willingness to publicly defend a future teammate, rather than stay quiet and let the noise pass, says as much about him as it does about Dixon.
“Just to have a chance to learn from someone like Scott Dixon is, I would say, one of the luckiest positions anybody in racing can have,” O’Ward said, “because you’re learning from, in my opinion, one of the best the series has ever seen, somebody that not only embodies what I believe a great champion is in the car, but also somebody that embodies that outside of it.”
Dixon’s numbers back up every word. Six championships, 59 career wins, and a résumé that places him among the most accomplished drivers in American open-wheel history. But 2026 has not been kind to him on paper. Dixon has struggled to string together clean qualifying efforts all year, an average starting position of 16.0 through his first four races, and mechanical failures have compounded the frustration.
“It’s been a trying season,” Dixon admitted earlier this year, before the McLaren move was even public. “We’ve definitely had a pretty rough patch throughout. We’ve had a load of mechanicals. It’s been extremely frustrating. Indy, I think, was one of the best 500 cars I’ve had and it was over before it even started.”
Twenty-Five Years, One Difficult Goodbye
Dixon’s departure from Chip Ganassi Racing closes out a 25-year run that produced most of his championships and defined an entire era of the sport. He has been careful in public about how he wants that chapter to end, saying it mattered to him to leave the team he has known his entire adult racing life on good terms.
“It’s important to leave CGR respectfully after 25 years,” Dixon said, reflecting on a partnership that began when he was still establishing himself as a rising talent and ends with him as one of the winningest drivers the series has produced.
That context is part of what makes the criticism sting for O’Ward. A driver walking away from a legacy team in his mid-40s, mid-struggle, is an easy target for anyone looking for a punchline about age and decline. O’Ward sees something else: a champion closing one chapter with real dignity and opening another with a level of hunger that younger drivers rarely match.
“He has achieved way more than a lot of other drivers have ever achieved ever in IndyCar,” O’Ward said. “For people to talk down somebody like that really is a shame.”
Building a Lineup Around Respect, Not Just Speed
Arrow McLaren’s decision to sign both Dixon and Rosenqvist for 2027 reshaped the team’s identity almost overnight. Rosenqvist, fresh off his Indianapolis 500 win, returns to a team he previously drove for. Christian Lundgaard, the driver Dixon and Rosenqvist effectively displaced, becomes one of the most sought-after free agents left on the market for 2027, a reminder of how quickly IndyCar’s silly season can turn one team’s gain into another’s opening.
O’Ward is the only constant across the change, the sole holdover from the team’s previous era. He will be the youngest driver in what is suddenly one of the most experienced championship-caliber lineups in the paddock, flanked by two drivers who have combined for an Indianapolis 500 win and six championships between them. Rather than treat that as a threat to his own status, he has described it as an opportunity most drivers never get.
“One of the luckiest positions anybody in racing can have,” is how O’Ward described it, a phrase that reveals as much about his own maturing perspective on the sport as it does about his regard for Dixon.
A Silly Season Reshaped by One Signing
The ripple effects of the Dixon and Rosenqvist signings extend well past Arrow McLaren’s own lineup. Christian Lundgaard, released to make room for the two incoming veterans, entered July as the most talked-about free agent left on the board, a driver good enough to have started the year as a McLaren regular now searching for a seat for 2027. Ganassi, for its part, has spent weeks working through its own succession plan at the No. 9 car Dixon will vacate, with Lundgaard’s name repeatedly surfacing as a candidate to replace the driver whose departure created the opening in the first place.
That kind of circularity is common in IndyCar’s silly season, but it rarely centers on a driver in his mid-40s the way this one has. Dixon’s move is being treated across the paddock as one of the more significant driver transactions the series has seen in years, not for what it says about a declining star chasing a payday, but for what it says about a team willing to bet its competitive future on a champion many assumed had entered the twilight of his career.
What Comes Next for Both Drivers
Dixon still has half a season left to finish with Ganassi, the team that gave him his identity in American open-wheel racing. Every remaining race carries the pull of a goodbye tour he never wanted to need. A strong finish would go a long way toward quieting the critics O’Ward took aim at. A rough one will only invite more of the same.
Whatever happens between now and the season finale, the Milwaukee comments have already changed the narrative around Dixon’s final year at Ganassi. He is no longer just a champion managing decline in public. He is a driver whose incoming teammate has staked his own credibility on defending him, a rare vote of confidence that carries force precisely for coming unsolicited, from a driver with nothing to gain by giving it.
For O’Ward, the moment revealed something about the kind of teammate and leader he wants to be as Arrow McLaren enters a new phase. Defending an aging champion against public doubt is not a move that boosts his own stock. It is simply, in his mind, the right thing to do for a driver who spent 25 years building the standard everyone else in the series is still chasing.
“Sometimes I really do wish people felt ashamed a little bit more,” O’Ward said again, a line that will likely follow Dixon into every remaining race of his final Ganassi season, whether the results turn around or not.
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