When it returned to the Indianapolis 500 in 2019, McLaren partnered with an underfunded Juncos operation with a Chevrolet engine, and Alonso did not make the field of 33.
Brown vowed McLaren would return and he lived up to that promise. He purchased a stake in the team Sam Schmidt and Ric Peterson co-owned along with Arrow. By 2021, McLaren’s ownership stake increased to 75 percent.
This year, Schmidt and Peterson continue to serve as partners, but the team is pretty much a McLaren operation.
Schmidt, a former driver and race winner in the old Indy Racing League, is paralyzed from the neck down following a crash at Walt Disney World Speedway on Jan. 6, 2000. He has since become a successful IndyCar team owner.
Schmidt’s team was essentially a midpack operation capable of winning races. But he saw an opportunity to leap to the front of the field when he agreed to a deal with McLaren.
“The only thing constant in life is change,” Schmidt told SPEED SPORT. “We have to realize the viewer is constantly changing and we have to constantly change our product to meet the viewership and whoever is attending races and watching racing on their phones and laptops.
“Frankly, that’s one of the things that drove us to partner with McLaren. Seven-million followers globally – FE, Extreme E and Formula 1. Its gives us a leg up on an international basis with our partners and everyone else.”
When Brown was visiting the IndyCar paddock before joining the series, IndyCar stakeholders welcomed the idea of additional cars. Others, however, took the pragmatic approach, “Be careful what you wish for because McLaren will dramatically change the game.”
“Great,” Schmidt responded. “It has changed the game. It has raised the level of competition. It has raised the level of exposure. Pato O’Ward has more than 1 million followers. They have several million as a team. Hopefully, it is pushing everyone else to raise their game as well as the series. A lot of it is social media. A lot of it is digital.
“It’s a black hole to an old-timer like me, but I’m not the future of the series.”
McLaren is the future of Arrow McLaren and could be the future of IndyCar as the next great team in the series. Brown has ambitious plans for the team and the series, and he has the budgetary power of McLaren to make that happen.
There are plans for a massive racing facility, a 97,000-square-foot-building in Whitestown, Ind. The $25 million campus will elevate the operation in terms of resources and technology.
Brown hired former Formula 1 and Team Penske engineer Gavin Ward as racing director and longtime Andretti Autosport and IndyCar Series executive Brian Barnhart as the team’s general manager.
“We’re very excited about Gavin leading the team moving forward,” Brown said. “We’re definitely thinking long-term about our commitment to Indy car racing.
“We’re going to field very competitive racing cars with aspirations for them all being in a position to win races and compete for the championship.
“That being said, we are still a pretty young team, especially with onboarding. The amount of people that we’ve onboarded over the winter will take some time to work through the experience of working together.
“But we are very excited.”