INDIANAPOLIS — Pato O’Ward is well-versed in the hope and heartbreak of the Indianapolis 500.O’Ward, 27, has experienced everything from failing to qualify to coming within two corners of winning one of the biggest prizes in racing, suffering a late defeat at the hands of Josef Newgarden two years ago.Yet there’s no regret or frustration. His relationship with this iconic race is “all positive.”“It’s all been either a learning curve or some of the greatest memories that I have in my career,” O’Ward told The Athletic. “There are just challenges that you need to accept when you sign up for this.”O’Ward will go into his seventh Indy 500 on Sunday not only harboring his own hopes of success, but also as part of McLaren’s bid to replicate its recent Formula 1 success. The team hasn’t won the Indy 500 since Johnny Rutherford’s victory in 1976.Fifty years on, Rutherford will again be donning “McLaren orange,” as he called it, in his role as a team ambassador. The 88-year-old told The Athletic it felt “perfect” to have reunited with McLaren in recent years, and he will be watching closely on Sunday.“I’ve been there and done that, you know,” Rutherford said. “It’s an opportunity to relive it, and to enjoy the team company and the team.”McLaren last won the Indy 500 with Johnny Rutherford in 1976 (Michael Montfort/Getty Images)McLaren has four cars in the 33-strong field for this year’s race. O’Ward’s full-season teammates, Christian Lundgaard and Nolan Siegel, have been joined by Ryan Hunter-Reay, a 45-year-old veteran going into his 18th Indy 500, who won the race back in 2014 and led a chunk of last year’s race that only whetted his appetite for another shot.The McLaren IndyCar program has become the “baby,” to quote Lundgaard, of Zak Brown, McLaren Racing’s CEO.When Brown took the reins of McLaren at the end of 2016, the remit from his new bosses was very clear: get the struggling F1 team back to the top. But he was already thinking of success beyond F1. He knew of McLaren’s history in other series, including wins at the 24 Hours of Le Mans and the Indianapolis 500. And one of those races had an extra special place in Brown’s heart.“Indianapolis is kind of a second home,” Brown, who previously lived in the city for 20 years, told The Athletic. “The racing that I grew up with was Indy car racing.”As Brown worked to turn the F1 team around — culminating in winning both world championships last year — the seeds were already being sown to get McLaren back to the Indy 500. A one-off entry for Fernando Alonso in 2017, in collaboration with Andretti, offered a first taste ahead of McLaren eventually buying into the Schmidt Peterson Motorsports team three years later.In between, there was a miserable experience failing to qualify with Alonso in 2019, a “total disaster” that Brown now looks back on fondly due to how much he learned. But it didn’t shake his commitment to getting McLaren back into IndyCar.“And here we are, coming off the most successful year the team’s ever had under our ownership,” Brown said.O’Ward won twice en route to second place in the standings in 2025, while Lundgaard was a podium regular. Lundgaard then scored his first IndyCar win with McLaren two weeks ago in the road course race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.