Pato O'Ward eyeing $2.6M Indy 500 bet with Zak Brown for McLaren Supercar

Arrow McLaren driver Pato O'Ward wants to make an extravagant Indy 500 bet with his boss Zak Brown. The McLaren Racing CEO is known to make bets with his F1 drivers, be it Daniel Ricciardo, Lando Norris, or Oscar Piastri.

In 2021, when Ricciardo won the Italian GP, he could choose a tattoo for Brown to get, which turned out to be a tattoo of the Monza circuit on his upper left arm. The tradition continued in 2024 as Zak Brown got the layout of the Miami GP circuit tattooed on his right arm after Lando Norris took his first F1 win there. However, after those two instances, he was done with tattoos.

To commemorate Oscar Piastri's first F1 win, Brown made an unofficial bet to get a papaya-colored Mohawk. However, he backtracked on the bet and instead got a wig to commemorate the moment.

In Pato O'Ward's case, the IndyCar driver wants Brown to enter a bet to gift him a McLaren W1 Supercar, valued at $2.6 million (as per duPont Registry) if he wins the prestigious Indy 500. In a recent interview with duPont Registry, he said:

"Yeah, I’m going to make a bet with Zak. He doesn’t know about it yet, but I’m going to make a bet. I win the Indy 500, he gets me a W1. I think that’s totally fair!"

The McLaren W1 will be the fastest road-legal car produced by the automotive giant, with the power to scale 200 km/h in 5.8 seconds. It will have shapeshifting aerodynamics, which produces 1000 kg of downforce. McLaren unveiled the car on October 6, 2024, the 50th anniversary of its first F1 championship win. Production was set to begin in 2025, with only 399 units to be produced.

Pato O'Ward has come agonizingly close to winning the Indy 500 twice. The Arrow McLaren driver finished runner-up in 2022 and in 2024. The latter result was heartbreaking because he was leading the race on the final lap before defending winner Josef Newgarden made a late pass before the final corner, securing his second consecutive victory at the Greatest Spectacle of Racing. O'Ward was left in tears after the race.

Pato O'Ward sets an ambitious goal for the 2026 IndyCar season

Pato O'Ward celebrates on the podium after winning the 2025 IndyCar Ontario Honda Dealers Indy Toronto - Source: Getty

Pato O'Ward has high hopes for the 2026 IndyCar season, which will be his eighth in the series. The nine-time race winner has set a lofty goal for himself, which is to complete every lap of every race next year.

This year, O'Ward was the only driver with a 100% lap completion rate until Round 15 of 17. Unfortunately, he had a mechanical failure on his No. 5 Arrow McLaren Honda on a lap 21 restart, which forced repairs in the pit lane. He was down 10 laps when the car was repaired, and he returned to the track.

That issue also handed Alex Palou his fourth IndyCar title in Portland, with the points gap to O'Ward increasing beyond the maximum that could be achieved in the final two races of the season. While the championship loss didn't sting Pato O'Ward as much because Palou had been the better driver all season, not completing all laps did. For 2026, he wants to renew the goal.

"My personal goal is I want to finish every lap, which was my goal this year, but sadly, those dreams were crushed in Portland when I had an engine issue," the Arrow McLaren driver said. "And then I had the tire blowout in Nashville. That wasn’t amazing. I just want to finish every lap, and I feel like in doing so, I’ll be sitting pretty at the end of the year."

Pato O'Ward earned six podiums in the 2025 season, including two race wins in Iowa and Toronto. His Toronto victory was the first time Zak Brown witnessed Arrow McLaren win an IndyCar race in person.