SALINAS, Calif — Pato O’Ward didn’t want to go through a winless season. Unfortunately, he’ll take with him a 23-race drought into 2024. If not for pit strategy, the Mexican driver likely was going to win Sunday’s NTT INDYCAR SERIES season finale.

With so much chaos early, O’Ward found himself running second to Alex Palou. While Palou had this race won, there was too much carnage to sign, seal and deliver it to him.

That’s exactly what happened on Lap 57. O’Ward hit pit lane. A caution flew while he was on it. Palou was already passed Turn 1 and was caught out in the danger zone.

O’Ward would inherit the lead when Palou pit under that caution. Just one problem. They put the primary tires on O’Ward’s car. He started on them and took them on his Lap 28 stop. He still had to use the Firestone alternates.

At that time though, they felt like everyone had to pit one more time anyways. But, with so much chaos after that included three more cautions, he could have made it to the end. However, he no matter what had to stop for the alternate tires.

Palou pit on Lap 59 and finished third. If O’Ward had the alternate tires on, he could have lasted. While the fall off would have been greater, it’s not like he would have had a ton of laps on them with green flag conditions as there was 12 caution laps on that final stint.

He’d restart 15th and come back to finish 9th on a day of what might have been.

“Our race was looking so strong, and that was a very disappointing end to what could’ve been a great result,” he says. “We kept our nose clean, did a nice job on track, and the team nailed it on the pit stops. It’s frustrating having our day thrown away by other people’s mistakes.

“It’s been a strong season for us and performance has been consistent. We still need to clean things up here and there, but I’m proud of the job that I’ve done. We’re going to come back next year even stronger and see where we can stack up, racing hard and pushing for wins.”

He still finished P4 in points and now has 3 top 4 points finishes in 4 years in the sport.

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 4.85.

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