McLaren admits it “didn’t have enough” to win the Indy 500

McLaren team principal Tony Kanaan admitted that the squad “didn’t have enough” to win the Indianapolis 500 on Sunday.

McLaren’s lead driver Pato O’Ward qualified on the front row of the grid for the 109th running of the Indy 500 and made a brilliant start to take the lead on lap 9.

While Takuma Sato did pass O’Ward shortly afterwards, the Mexican driver was still circulating near the front until a poor restart dropped him outside of the top 10.

O’Ward was able to recover lost ground and climb back up to fourth place, but lacked the late-race pace to put up a fight against the leading trio of Alex Palou, Marcus Ericsson and David Malukas.

He eventually crossed the line more than two seconds behind race winner Palou in fourth, a year on from his heartbreaking defeat to Penske rival Josef Newgarden.

McLaren’s other full-season drivers Christian Lundgaard and Nolan Siegel finished ninth and 16th respectively, while wildcard Kyle Larson crashed out on lap 91 after losing the rear-end of his car on the restart.

One-time IndyCar champion Kanaan was proud of McLaren’s latest effort in the Indy 500, but was forced to concede that it wasn’t a match to the competition.

"At the end of the day, only one person leaves this place happy,” said Kanaan. “We fought all day as a team. Pato was pretty strong, but it looks like at the end there, we didn’t have enough.

“With the nature of this race, look at Marcus Ericsson, look at Malukas. No one could do anything [to overtake Palou]. But I’m proud of this team.

“As far as Championship points go, we’re still pretty solid. Obviously, Alex Palou is unstoppable right now. It reminds me of when Dan Wheldon won in 2005 exactly like this. The first three races finished second and then won the 500.

“But again, I’m proud of the team. There was a great turnout of fans for the sellout, great turnout of our team partners. I think we’re living up to the papaya army dream.

“We’ve been setting the standard at every event with how we show up and build even more Arrow McLaren fans. It's about more than just the racing; it’s about what we’re building here.

“But also, I’m a racer. If I don’t win, I’m mad, and I knew today I was going to be either really happy or mad. But we move on. Detroit is next week, and we’ll show up ready to fight again."

O’Ward felt was “stuck” in the closing stages of the race, with the new hybrid Indy cars not as conducive to overtaking as the series’ previous machinery.

“We’ve seemed to have had every single result in the top five over the past five years except for the most important one,” he said.

“Congratulations to Alex; I've got to get on whatever he's eating or sleeping on because he's on a run that I've never seen before, one I don’t think this series has seen before in 50 years. It's impressive what they've done.

“My race was a lot of up and downs I would say. The restarts were chaotic, and we were just three cars too far back. We made four or five spots in the last pit stop sequence. I think we were just one pit stop sequence short or one restart. Everybody you could see was stuck."