Pato O’Ward desperately wants to win an NTT INDYCAR SERIES race this season. He leaves Portland riding a 22 race drought. However, it’s not like he hasn’t been close this season either. Sunday’s BITNILE.com Grand Prix of Portland was the young Mexican stars ninth top five finish of the season as he brought his No. 5 Dallara-Chevrolet home in fourth.

O’Ward started the race from sixth but elected to start on the primary tires. With most thinking this would be a primary dominated race, which is completely different than every other year here, they swung for the fence in thinking so.

That proved to be the right move.

The top three starters were each on the alternate tires and pit on Lap 18 (Colton Herta), Lap 21 (Scott McLaughlin) and Lap 22 (Graham Rahal). O’Ward pit for his first time on Lap 29. The two cars in front of him, Alex Palou and Scott Dixon, pit on Lap 31 (Palou) and Lap 32 (Dixon).

They’d cycle to the top three with O’Ward’s Arrow McLaren Racing teammate of Felix Rosenqvist right there in fourth. Rosenqvist also pit on Lap 29 with O’Ward and the two battled for that third spot then.

O’Ward let Rosenqvist go and would ride in fourth the rest of the way. While he was in the top five, he was frustrated once again by lapped cars at the end.

“I wouldn’t have changed anything with the strategy,” said O’Ward. “I was very happy and comfortable with the car, and I felt like I drove a really good race.

” It’s just frustrating; it’s the same story every time. As soon as we get to lapped cars, it’s always a race to get by them. They really destroy and diminish your chances to fight for a better position. In this case, it was a podium position. We had the pace for that, but when someone in front of you is doing everything in their power to block you, blowing their push to pass so you use yours, that shouldn’t be happening in a series like this. I hope to see the rules change in the future. But for now, we’ll settle for a P4. I’m bummed, because the team deserved more today with the performance we had in pit lane, the strategy and lap times we were putting out.”

That allowed him to cut into Josef Newgarden’s gap to P3 in points to now being nine points down. Unfortunately for O’Ward, Newgarden rebounded from starting 12th to finish one spot behind O’Ward in fifth.

O’Ward was also 4th here last year and 4th, 2nd, 3rd, 8th, 3rd, 4th on natural road courses this season too.

Now, he’s only nine points back to being the best Chevrolet finisher in points which is a massive feat. He’s finished 4th, 3rd, 7th in points in his first three years and on the verge of a top 4 finish again.

He’s closing that gap to the big teams. The last 20 champions have hailed from the Penske, Ganassi or Andretti camps. Ganassi will make this 21 straight.

The last time a team other than the “Big 3” won a championship was Panther in 2002 with Sam Hornish Jr. 

His only issue is not having a win thus far with his crux this season has been being overly aggressive at times.

O’Ward had 3 runner-up finishes in the first 5 races of the season. He was 4th in 1 of the other 2 races. The one that he wasn’t was being overzealous in Long Beach.

The Indy 500 he was aggressive on the Lap 192 restart with Marcus Ericsson in Turn 3. He was first, slipped to third by time we got to Turn 1 and when trying to get back, he overstepped it. In Detroit, a bad pit stop while leading and pushing too hard to make up for it saw him catch the wall.

Take those three races out, his average finish on the season is 4.53.

He comes to the season finale with finishes of 3rd, 8th, 8th, 3rd, 10th, 8th, 3rd, 2nd, 4th in the last 9 races.