OWard using F1 young driver test to gauge future pursuit

Pato O’Ward plans on using his outing at the Abu Dhabi young suburbanite test to see if he gets on with Formula 1 machinery and gauge if it’s an thoroughfare to pursue in the future.

A two-time race winner with McLaren’s IndyCar team, O’Ward will receive his first taste of F1 machinery when he climbs into the cockpit on Tuesday at Yas Marina Circuit. The 22-year-old Mexican will momentum the current car, while race drivers Daniel Ricciardo and Lando Norris use a mule car to test 18-inch tires. Without months of vaticination for his first outing, O’Ward has only one main goal in mind.

“I’m so focused on just taking it all in and seeing if it’s something that I can mesh with in the future,” O’Ward told RACER. “I finger like that’s going to be different. The way of working virtually it is different, the cars here are built in-house. In the US, a lot of things are built in-house but a lot of things are what other people have.

“Walking virtually you can tell how many hours and how many hands go into each part. That’s what makes it something that seems worthier than life. Because overly since the dream came about, you see it as unreachable. Everyone that’s in the series – I guarantee Lewis (Hamilton) or (Fernando) Alonso would tell you the same – when you’re a kid, and you don’t have anything yet if someone’s going to help you or whatever, it’s out of reach. Because it’s something that just seems so worthier than anything you could overly imagine.

“And it is, I mean, man, there’s 750 people working here for two cars. Like, you don’t see that anywhere else. And plane IndyCar, that’s such a competitive series and when you see the difference of how each team operates is huge, like huge differences and just two very variegated types of competing.”

O’Ward will not be the only IndyCar-linked suburbanite taking part in testing this week, with Pietro Fittipaldi standing in for Nikita Mazepin at Haas without the Russian tested positive for COVID-19 over the weekend.