Pato O’Ward is sick of being winless. That’s not what he’s made of and not what he wants to be known for. He wants to be regarded as a winner and at the moment, he’s winless in over a year.

“A fricking win would be great,” O’Ward said the last time out at Indy after a third place finish on Aug. 12.

“I mean, I’ve been driving my ass off every single race. Like, there is nothing more than I want than to get wins. Obviously there’s been little things here and there that have got us out of contention and out of being able to kind of capitalize on that.”

O’Ward is pleased with how well his team is clicking again though and feels like a win is close.

“With like the performance of today, I’m very pleased,” he said on his Indy podium. “I’m just very pleased with today, very happy with how the team and I attacked because I was playing around with Graham in the warm-up, and he was just stronger than me. I know he was. I knew it was going to be a tall ask, just from outright pace, to try and beat them.

“But I was very happy with my car balance. I was very happy with every other call. Yeah, we just got to keep pushing.”

On natural road courses this season, O’Ward is thriving. He’s finished 4th, 2nd, 3rd, 8th and now 3rd again. It’s remarkably enough ovals that has had them down and he said they have work to do still heading to World Wide Technology Raceway in two weeks.

O’Ward has finished 2nd, 24th, 3rd and 10th on them. While I feel like he’s being hard on himself, he just wants to win so bad and frustrated that it’s been 20 starts now.

Maybe that ends on Sunday.

The Mexican driver has finished 3rd, 2nd, 2nd and 4th in his 4 Gateway starts. At Iowa, he was 4th, 12th, 2nd, 1st, 3rd and 10th respectively. In his last 16 oval starts in general, he’s finished 6th, 3rd, 2nd, 3rd, 1st, 4th, 2nd, 15th, 2nd, 2nd, 1st, 4th, 2nd, 24th, 3rd and 10th respectively.

“I like going back to St. Louis,” he said. “I’ve had a good amount of podiums there in the past, and we were really close last year, so hopefully we can get back on it this year. We’re going back to an oval, which always produces some good racing. This weekend, we have a different tire and a different extra tire, so I think that will keep everyone on their toes on strategy. It will be interesting to see who comes out on top.”