The Arrow McLaren IndyCar Team heads back to the United States after its weekend in Toronto to race at Iowa Speedway in less than a week’s time.

On the streets of Toronto, Pato O’Ward and Felix Rosenqvist started inside the top five, ultimately finishing the race in eight and 10th, respectively. Alexander Rossi was involved in the multi-car pileup in the first lap, sustained minor damage, went down a lap and finished 16th.

For a team like McLaren, they’ll admit, that this isn’t good enough. They’re frustrated. They’re winless this season and have just 2 wins in the last 35 starts.

“It was a tough day for us,” O’Ward admitted after scoring his 7th top 10 finish of the season. “We just keep making the same mistakes that don’t help our races go forward. We need to look into what the issues have been and fix those because they’re obviously valuable points that we’re just throwing away. But Iowa is coming next, and we’re usually pretty strong there.”

O’Ward started third but that was all due to a nice strategy call in the second round of qualifying on Saturday. In the closing minutes, he was 12th out of 12. However, they elected to put on a fresh set of Firestone wet tires and propelled himself to the top of the round.

In the Fast Six, he was overshadowed on the final lap by only Christian Lundgaard and Scott McLaughlin. That still left him third.

He had a ho-hum race, but faded in the end in going from 5th at the start of the final stint to dropping back to eighth. While it was his third consecutive top eight finish and fifth in the last seven races, it’s no where near where he thought that he’d be.

He started 2023 off with a pair of runner-up results. He was overzealous in Long Beach but was fourth in Barber and runner-up again in the GMR Grand Prix.

To have three runner-up finishes and 116 laps led in the opening five races had him second in points coming into the Indy 500.

Unfortunately, a crash while running third and battling for second with eight laps remaining left him 24th. A crash in Detroit left him 26th.

That’s why being 3rd, 8th and 8th over the last three races is nice, it’s still not where he wants to be as he went from 3 points down in points entering the Indy 500 to now 143 points back in fifth.

For Rosenqvist, he was third in practice on Friday, third in the last street race at Detroit and third here a year ago too. Then he crashed on Saturday morning. The three teams thrashed on a backup car to get him back out in just enough time to qualify. He’d start 5th.

So, his hopes were higher too. He’d not do much and finish 10th.

“It was a bit of a tough day for us,” Rosenqvist admitted. “We were fighting tire degradation quite a bit. We kind of ended up on a strategy to save a bunch of fuel, and even with the fuel-save we were degging pretty hard. We lacked a bit of straight-line speed, which we’d done all weekend, but it seemed even worse in the race. We have to take a look at that and analyze it. The car didn’t have much pace, and I feel a top 10 was still pretty decent, but I’m not super stoked with the result.”

In the case for Rossi, he’s slipping. Bad luck in qualifying led to being in the wrong place at the wrong time at the start.

“We got a good start, and then there was a track blockage in Turn 1. I kept the engine running, but by the time the safety car got there and got everyone cleared out of the way, we went a lap down,” he said. “Then we were a lap down the whole day, trying to get our lap back, but it never came. You’re always subject to that kind of thing when you start in the back. From there, it was just a day of attrition, and we couldn’t really do anything. It’s unfortunate, and it feels like a lost weekend, for sure.”

Rossi entered Road America with four straight top eight finishes including results of 3rd, 5th and 5th consecutively. However, he’s since finished 10th, 10th and 16th respectively dropping him from 6th in points to 10th.

“Overall a pretty disappointing day. It could have been a lot worse,” said racing director, Gavin Ward. “The fueling issue on Pato’s car that we need to dig into to understand compromised his race. In the NTT INDYCAR SERIES, you need to be bulletproof, but you can’t change the past. All you can do is go from here. We are where we are, and we know we’ve got to be better. That’s what we’re going to focus on.”

Luckily there’s some strong tracks coming up for them.

O’Ward will be an instant contender at both Iowa and Gateway. He was second and first respectively at Iowa a year ago and 3rd, 2nd, 2nd and 4th in four career Gateway starts.

That’s 3 of the next 5 races.

In Nashville, Rossi and Rosenqvist are typically strong there. Then it’s to the return trip at Indy to where McLaren had 2 cars on the podium in May and all 3 in the top 5.

Then it’s to Portland and Laguna Seca to close out the season.