Pato O’Ward makes his feelings clear on the ‘big teller’ for Thermal Race: “Whoever wins will be thanking his strategist”

IndyCar driver Pato O’Ward recently revealed the key factor that will decide the outcome of the IndyCar race at Thermal Club. The second IndyCar race of the 2025 season is on the horizon and the Mexican driver came out to detail how crucial the race strategy is going to be in deciding the winner.

The IndyCar driver will be taking to Thermal Club for the first time on March 23 to complete a full race distance. Although the driver raced at Thermal in 2024, it was just an exhibition race ($1 Million challenge) where the drivers ran for 20 laps and ran multiple seconds off the pace in the first 10 laps to preserve tires.

The teams don’t have any data on what the tire wear will be like on a high-fuel, high-speed run. What makes the matter even worse is that Firestone is bringing different tire compounds compared to the 2024 race. The hard primary tires will have a harder compound along with the softer alternate tires.

Formula 1 Testing In Abu Dhabi - Source: Getty

Pato O’Ward came out and detailed how the strategy will be crucial since the engineers will be making decisions based on the data procured during the practice sessions. He told the RACER,

“Whoever wins will be thanking his strategist. Strategy is going to be a big, big teller to how results end up playing out.”

“I think qualifying will be important, but I think strategy is going to have a way bigger sway in things, especially because we’ve never done a full race distance there. So everyone’s going to be just learning, learning, learning throughout the race.”

The track temperatures will also vary significantly during the day, with a 20°C difference expected between the warm-up session and the main race. Alexander Rossi also detailed how the use of the hybrid system will decide the varying performance since teams didn’t have the electrical systems the last time drivers raced at Thermal Club.

Pato O’Ward “confident” about a strong result at Thermal Club

Pato O’Ward was one of the standout drivers during the maiden 2025 IndyCar race. The Mexican struggled in qualifying on Alternate tire, qualified P23, and suffered a puncture caused by the debris of the Lap 1 crash. O’Ward was also on the verge of being lapped.

However, the Arrow McLaren driver fought through the field and finished P11 at the Grand Prix of St. Petersburg. Speaking ahead of the Thermal Club race, Pato O’Ward said via the mclaren.com,

“It's going to be cool going back to Thermal for the first-ever points race at this track. It's a unique and, honestly, fun place to drive, so I'm looking forward to racing there. We learned a lot from testing there the last two years, so hopefully we should be competitive this weekend.”

“I think we've got to nail qualifying to have a shot, but I'm confident that we've put together a package that will put us near the front.”

INDYCAR Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg - Source: Getty

Pato O’Ward’s teammate Nolan Seigel crashed out on Lap 1 at St. Pete and Christian Lundgaard finished P8.