Arrow McLaren

The story of today’s Arrow McLaren IndyCar Team begins with a tragic accident. On January 6, 2000, former IndyCar driver Sam Schmidt crashed during a test at Walt Disney World Speedway in Orlando and suffered a severe spinal cord injury that left him paralyzed. Just 14 months later, in 2001, Schmidt founded his own team, Sam Schmidt Motorsports, despite his disability, laying the foundation for what today operates as Arrow McLaren.

The path from a small private team to a McLaren factory outfit is at the same time a story of several name changes and changes in ownership, closely tied to its Indianapolis base. In 2012 Davey Hamilton came aboard bringing sponsorship money, and the team was renamed Schmidt Hamilton Motorsports. A year later, Canadian businessman Ric Peterson joined, creating Schmidt Peterson Motorsports. In 2019 title sponsor Arrow Electronics gave the team its name, before the partnership with McLaren Racing followed in 2020. Only in 2023 did the “SP” abbreviation finally disappear from the name; since January 2025, following a full takeover by McLaren, the team has belonged entirely to the British traditional manufacturer.

The most successful period of the pre-McLaren era falls between 2012 and 2019, when Simon Pagenaud and James Hinchcliffe combined for seven race wins under Schmidt Peterson, establishing the team as a fixture in the field. McLaren itself brings its own, far older success story in Indianapolis: as an entrant, the brand already won the Indy 500 in 1974 and 1976, and a McLaren chassis also won in 1972. After a comeback attempt with Fernando Alonso in 2017, McLaren Racing ultimately decided to enter the full IndyCar season permanently from 2020 in partnership with Schmidt Peterson.

Two wins with Pato O’Ward in 2021 convinced McLaren Racing to expand its stake to 75 percent, with group CEO Zak Brown serving as chairman. Today the team’s sporting side is overseen by team principal Tony Kanaan, who enters 2026 with a prominently staffed driver lineup: Pato O’Ward and Christian Lundgaard form the regular duo, while Nolan Siegel serves as a third full-time driver in the field, with Ryan Hunter-Reay listed as an experienced option in the roster.

For the 2026 season, Arrow McLaren is bundling its ambitions not only on track but also structurally: with the new McLaren Racing Center in Indianapolis, which nearly triples the team’s operational footprint, the organization underlines its claim to build on McLaren’s great success story in Indianapolis and to once again fight for wins and titles with O’Ward, Lundgaard, and Siegel.