LEXINGTON, Ohio — Late in Sunday’s (July 6) Honda Indy 200 at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, Pato O’Ward held fourth-place with a charging Colton Herta behind him.
Unfortunately for the Mexican racer, fuel became his main concern as he dropped to finish fifth in the 10th race of the 2025 NTT IndyCar Series season at the 13-turn, 2.258-mile road course.
“I had to go to emergency fuel, so I was basically coasting to the line,” O’Ward said. “We missed it there on the fuel number and it was going to be super tight, so I just had to let [Herta] go.”
O’Ward proved it was super tight on fuel by running out just after finishing over 10 seconds behind race winner Scott Dixon and walking back to the pits on foot after climbing from the No. 5 Arrow McLaren Chevrolet.
O’Ward started the 90-lap race in 14th after not having a good qualifying run in the first round of knockout qualifying. The defending race winner went off-sequence with an early pit stop on Lap 11 to go from the black sidewall primary compound tires to the softer red sidewall alternate compound.
Because O’Ward was out in the first round, he had multiple new sets of the red alternate tires that provide more grip at the cost of a reduced lifespan on track.
O’Ward was up to 10th on lap 30 when race control called for a full course yellow to retrieve Christian Rasmussen‘s stranded car after the Danish driver ran out of fuel on track.
The 2018 Indy NXT Champion went to pit road with several other cars to make his second pit stop. From there, the goal was to make it to the finish with only one more pit stop. The team called O’Ward in on lap 62 and he had to make his fuel last 28 laps as other drivers made their final stops on a three-stop strategy.
O’Ward did just that, barely. After moving up to fourth-place when others pitted, O’Ward didn’t have enough fuel to maintain his pace near the end of the race, running his final lap over four and a half seconds slower than his penultimate lap of the race to secure his fifth top-five finish of the season.
“It was hot, fought our way forward, aggressive, hard, made a lot of passes on track, and yeah,” O’Ward said. “You always want more, right? We would have loved to have qualified a little bit further up front because we definitely had the pace to repeat what we did last year, but we shot ourselves in the foot there a little bit in qualifying and put ourselves starting further back, but you always have fun doing that and I’m proud of the boys on the pits and guys and gals on the stand to fight our way forward and good points.”
Christopher DeHarde has covered IndyCar racing and the Road to Indy for various outlets since 2014. In addition to open wheel racing, DeHarde has also covered IMSA and various short track racing events around Indiana. Originally from New Orleans, DeHarde moved to the Indianapolis area in 2017 to further pursue a career as a motorsports writer.