Both Taylor Kiel, president of the Arrow McLaren SP squad, and McLaren CEO Zak Brown had been considering the notion of continuing with a third car this year, after Juan Pablo Montoya’s participation in the Grand Prix of Indy and the Indianapolis 500 alongside full-timers Pato O’Ward and Felix Rosenqvist.
However, Kiel told Motorsport.com that other commitments have taken precedence.
“We thought about it quite a bit as a way of preparing for 2023,” he said. “I think going forward you’ll always see us run an extra car in the Indy 500 to stack the odds in our favor a little bit.
“But I think undertaking a third car to dip our toes in the water in the ’22 championship to prepare for ’23 wasn’t a model we felt comfortable with. We’ve seen other people do it, and that’s good and fine, but it’s not for us. Our cars are going to be in it full time or not at all – with the exception, as I say, of 500. So I don’t think you’ll see the #6 car [to be used by Montoya in May] again after Indy. I mean, never say never, but I’d say it was unlikely.
“We feel it would be prudent to use the full amount of time that we have before 2023 to build up a program that will be ready to come out of the gate from the start of next year, rather than just toss something together now that could detract from the #5 and #7 programs of Pato and Felix.
“We’re also going to be doing a lot of the 2.4-liter hybrid testing [now scheduled for 2024], so we also need a group prepared for that. So looking at the team today, we’ve got two full-time cars, a third car for the Month of May, I’m trying to build a team to run a third car full-time next year and I need a test team that can go run the hybrid testing program. And there are other projects we’ve got going on, too.”
Kiel acknowledged that retaining a third crew over the past couple of seasons, even when running only two cars full-time, has paid off in an era when, due to IndyCar featuring a consistent 26-car grid and IMSA on the verge of a boom, so many rivals are scrambling to find good crew members.
“In the short term it has been helpful to us, yes, because it gives us flexibility,” said Kiel. “But it’s also important for the medium and long term when we scale up to the third car next year. I’m looking down the barrel of hiring 20-25 more people in the next six to eight months and I’m kinda concerned, just like everybody else.
“We’ve got a lot of openings, we’re trying to expand our operation because we have a lot of cool things on our horizon that we can’t really talk about just yet. I see great things for this team going forward.
“But the lack of qualified staff available out there is a real problem right now. We’re all just poaching from each other within the industry, because we’re all looking for people who are known quantities with experience.”
