Pato O’Ward Outduel’s Christian Lundgaard To Win at Mid-Ohio

Pato O’Ward outdueled his Arrow McLaren teammate Christian Lungaard to capture his first win and podium of the NTT IndyCar Series season. The ‘Honda Indy 200’ at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course also saw the first ever 1-2 result for the organization in their history.

O’Ward and the team have had their fair share of struggles throughout the season, but a well-executed weekend in the buckeye state from practice to the checkered flag got the job done.

“It’s been a tough [year] for sure,” Pato said post-race. “I mean, today is just a perfect example of execution. I waited for the perfect time to pounce, and from there we just controlled it. The guys were amazing in the pits. I know they’ve been working really, really hard to give me that every single weekend, and this car’s been a joy to drive all weekend. So thanks to Team Chevy. Yeah, it’s the best result as a team that we’ve ever had a 1-2 [finish]. So glad to be a winner here in Mid-Ohio.”

For Lundgaard, this marks back-to-back podiums on road courses, previously winning at Road America. The Danish driver would fall from the top spot at Lap 42 with O’Ward sweeping by in Turn 3. The driver of the No. 5 Chevrolet drove away by a margin of 2.3 seconds at the time.

“We were very loose,” Lundgaard said. “He (O’Ward) was much stronger than I was, I had nothing to play with in Turn 1.”

Andretti Global’s Kyle Kirkwood drove all the way from the 10th starting position to earn his first career podium on a road course. A result that would leave the third place finisher happy as he now sits 56 points behind defending series champion Alex Palou.

Other notable finishers would come from fourth on back, with the No. 76 of Rinus Veekay of Juncos Hollinger Racing following behind Kirkwood, and Palou rounding out the top-5. Fellow Andretti teammate Will Power would rally to finish sixth in his No. 26 Honda with the Ed Carpenter Racing entry of Christian Rasmussen right behind in seventh.  Team Penske would only have two cars finish inside the top-10 with the No. 2 of Josef Newgarden and the No.12 of David Malukas finishing in eighth and ninth respectively.

Official Results: