Two iconic races, one day: McLaren takes on Monaco, Indy 500
The Monaco Grand Prix. The Indianapolis 500. They are two of motorsports’ biggest races, and for much of this century, they’ve been held on the same day.
That arrangement has made the final Sunday in May a holiday for race fans. In the U.S., gearheads can watch Formula 1 cars taking to the streets of Monte Carlo while enjoying some coffee and a croissant, with just enough time to fire up the grill for a lunchtime barbecue before the green flag drops at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway (IMS).
It’s a day to be celebrated by fans because, well, those two races take place some 4,500 miles apart. You might have heard of Double Duty, the feat of finishing the Indy 500 and NASCAR’s Coca-Cola 600 in the same day, but the Atlantic Ocean separating two of the most historic events in racing keeps any one driver from trying to tackle them both in one day.
But what about a team?
Since 2020, McLaren has taken part in both the F1 and IndyCar championships. And while the teams are separate, headquartered in Woking, England, and Indianapolis, respectively, they are connected by McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown — the 53-year-old Californian who can often be found fronting the papaya team’s efforts in both paddocks.
For the past three years, he’s faced a decision: where does he want to be on race day? Monaco or Indianapolis?
He won’t face that dilemma much longer. As part of Monaco’s deal with Formula 1 that runs through 2031, it was agreed that the Principality’s date on the calendar would be moved to June, meaning that Sunday was the last time for the foreseeable future that the Indianapolis 500 and Monaco Grand Prix would be contested on the same day.
So, to mark the farewell of the holiest day of hooning, ESPN sent writers to Monte Carlo and Indianapolis to spend significant time with the one team that is intimately familiar with both races. This is the story of McLaren’s attempt to tackle two of the most historic, iconic races in motorsports, that just so happen to take place on the last Sunday in May.
Bringing the F1 blueprint to Indianapolis
INDIANAPOLIS — A lot of work. A lot of sneaky glances at the TV. A lot of papaya orange.
At 7:45 a.m. Indianapolis local time on Sunday, the lights were going out 4,556 miles to the east along the French Riviera. As the Monaco GP roared to life, the garages of Arrow McLaren IndyCar had already been at full song for nearly two hours.
“We are certainly keeping an eye on things over there, where the boss is,” said Tony Kanaan, Arrow McLaren team principal and ranking officer at Indy while Brown was in Monte Carlo. “But only so much. There’s a lot of work to do in here. So, the TVs are on over there.”
What a day for this group, @ArrowMcLaren. They’ll be watching their teammates in Monaco, then fielding four cars at Indy, then sending Kyle Larson off to Charlotte for the 600. Racin’! pic.twitter.com/Ugks3S6ftu
— Ryan McGee (@ESPNMcGee) May 25, 2025
The 2013 Indy 500 champion pointed from the team’s series of concrete arches, situated on the very first row of Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s fabled Gasoline Alley, to an office door across the walkway, closed with a simple black sign taped to the glass: “ARROW MCLAREN INDYCAR TEAM. TEAM MEMBERS ONLY!”
Inside, there was an ever-rotating sampling of folks dressed in papaya, ranging from sponsor executives to crew members who’d just been thrashing on their four Chevy-powered Dallaras to another Indy legend, Johnny Rutherford, who earned two of his three Indy 500 wins driving for McLaren in the 1970s. All were seeking a cup of coffee, a few minutes off their feet, and a good long look at the goings-on in the streets of Monaco.
“We are always aware of what our F1 friends are doing, always,” Arrow McLaren driver Pato O’Ward said Sunday morning, hours before his sixth Indy 500 start. “What they do and what we do is very different, but it is also still auto racing. You see where they were not so long ago, and now there they are …”
On the TV screens all around him were the images of Lando Norris, who’d just made the first of his mandated two pit stops.
“They are leading the way in their situation and we are still chasing to be the best. We will get there. And they want us to get there.”
Yes, it would seem, they do. Kanaan, in between handshakes from fans shouting “TK!” and interruptions from crew members with questions about the machines in various states of deconstruction all around them, was quick to praise the cross-discipline efforts of those in the Star Wars backdrop that is the McLaren Technology Center in Woking.
“This is a 24-hour organization. While we sleep here, they work there, and vice versa,” he said. “The engineers work on F1 and Indy. If there is a car on a track anywhere, race control at McLaren and those engineers are watching and monitoring. Always.”
Especially on this day, with Earth’s two biggest open-wheel races running back-to-back.
“It’s pretty amazing to be a part of it, especially for a guy like me because I love all of it,” explained Kyle Larson, who, as Max Verstappen led Norris, stepped off his motorcoach and stood beside the McLaren he’d been loaned to steer around Indianapolis whenever he was in town for the fender-less half of his second attempt at the Indy-to-Charlotte IndyCar/NASCAR doubleheader. It even had a HendrickCars.com decal slapped on the door. “But what I have learned being around these guys with this team, they love it all, too. Racing is racing. And we all either want to be racing or we’re watching racing. If something from F1 can make the IndyCar team better or the other way around, Zak is going to do it.”
That hasn’t always been the case. Definitely the cooperation part, and even the watching part. For decades, anyone who asked to have the IMS media center TVs turned to F1 in the morning and NASCAR in the evening was greeted by the equivalent to one of those big red X’s and buzzer from Family Feud.
Even now, on Sunday, you had to do some searching to find Monaco on a TV. The monitors mounted to the walls of the Arrow McLaren garages showed only the in-house speedway pre-race show. As the F1 event reached the halfway point, the team’s four pit stalls were finishing their installations on pit lane, and even amid an endless number of screens, there were only a few with Norris’s run open in a window.
But inside that closed-door office and the massively modern McLaren hospitality center that towered over the inside of Turn One, the images beamed in from Monaco were everywhere.
“Used to be, there was no crossover, not at all,” said Rutherford, who started driving McLaren’s IndyCar effort in 1973 until the end of the decade. The only time that McLaren F1 and IndyCar won a race on the same day was 49 years ago this month, when Rutherford won in Trenton, New Jersey and James Hunt won the Spanish Grand Prix.
“They were Formula 1. We were Indy.” Rutherford added. “What exactly were we going to do for each other?”
This, despite the career of team founder Bruce McLaren, who died in 1970, which earned him four F1 wins, a pile of Can-Am victories and the 1969 24 Hours of Le Mans. Under Brown, that cross-series spirit is back, viewing and helping and all of it. Just last month, they came close to calling back to that day in May 1976, when Oscar Piastri and Norris finished 1-2 in China, but O’Ward and teammate Christian Lundgaard had to settle for 2-3 after starting on the front row at Thermal.
“People laughed when I said we just wanted to copy what they are doing in F1, but I was serious,” clarified Lundgaard on Sunday, standing in the space between the Arrow McLaren garages and the office-turned-Monaco-viewing-room. That room had recently erupted in cheers as Norris earned his second win the season, as had the hospitality center.
Now, the people from both were crowding around Lundgaard, O’Ward and rookie Nolan Siegel, still buzzing about Monaco and now amped for Indy. It was 11:15 a.m. in Indiana, 5:15 p.m. in Monte Carlo. Fans, sponsors, family members and crew all started clapping as they marched with their racers out of the garage, under the iconic Gasoline Alley sign and onto the front stretch, where Larson was already waiting.
McLaren did its job in Monaco. It was time to go to work in Indianapolis. — Ryan McGee
Sipping Champagne in Monaco
MONACO — Brown was in two minds Saturday morning about whether to hop on a jet that evening to fly from Monaco to Indianapolis. The conundrum facing McLaren’s CEO went away the moment Norris crossed the line to claim McLaren’s first pole at the Principality since 2007.
“I think Zak’s just glad he doesn’t have to go to Indy,” Norris joked in the TV media pen shortly afterward, when asked about being met by a jubilant Brown in parc fermé after climbing out of his car.
Walking down the paddock just after those celebrations with Norris, Brown had already decided he would be staying in Monte Carlo.
“Yeah, I just decided now,” Brown told ESPN as he strode toward McLaren’s harborside hospitality center, hand-in-hand with wife Tracy.
His logic had been pretty simple.
“Chance to win [Monaco], I’m staying. If we don’t have a chance to win, I’m going [to Indianapolis],” he said. “My worst nightmare is not being at one or the other for a win.”
Norris starting from pole, and Piastri starting directly behind in third, at a circuit with as contrasting of a reputation as you can get to the topsy-turvy and wildly unpredictable Indy 500 turned out to be a spectacle too tantalizing for Brown to miss. His McLaren team has given him plenty of winning moments in the past 12 months, and Norris delivered him another — one he and the CEO have dreamt of for a long time — on Sunday with a gritty and commanding victory in tense circumstances.
As is often the case in Formula 1, attention only really turned to the Indy 500 once proceedings at Monaco had finished and celebrations wound down. The contrast between the two events are numerous, but one is the buildup: Indy has an almost-month-long slow burn to the main event, wheres Monaco follows F1’s three-day, in-and-out race week schedule. In today’s Monaco paddock, following the race happening in Indianapolis can sometimes feel like an afterthought, even if many are desperate to watch it.
F1’s calendar did not lend itself to a straightforward viewing of the race to most rank-and-file McLaren team members. With Monaco sandwiched between Imola and Barcelona in a triple-header of races across three weeks, many of McLaren’s team were at Nice airport waiting to board as the 500 ticked into its final moments. A huddle around a phone or an iPad was what most had to make do with. While most ESPN spoke to wanted to sit down and enjoy the spectacle, time just does not allow — a Sunday evening flight offered an extra full day at home, a valuable and rare commodity in the middle of F1’s jam-packed schedule.
“I’ll watch it at the hotel,” Brown told ESPN.
Asked if he was a good spectator in those kind of circumstances, he laughed.
“No. No. Horrible.”
It probably wasn’t a particularly enjoyable experience. After second-place finishes in two of his past three 500s, O’Ward was Arrow McLaren’s first finisher in fourth, with Lundgaard and Siegel taking ninth and 16th, respectively, as Larson crashed out on Lap 92.
Making matters worse, it was Álex Palou who won his first 500. The three-time IndyCar champion is the subject of a $30 million lawsuit for breach of contract from McLaren.
play1:54Alex Palou: Winning Indy 500 is ‘the best day of my entire life’
Alex Palou reflects on winning the 2025 Indianapolis 500, saying it’s the best day of his life.
At least Brown can take comfort in the knowledge that his decision to remain in Monte Carlo was the right one.
Viewing the race taking place across the Atlantic was slightly easier for those who call Monaco home.
“I will probably be watching on my couch at home,” F1 championship leader Piastri said during Sunday’s news conference, before turning to Norris and Charles Leclerc, both fellow residents of the Principality, alongside him. “Unless I get an invite? You’re welcome to come, if you want, but yeah, probably on my couch. And I’ll keep my answer short because I want to go watch it.”
The Australian is happy to always be a spectator when it comes to the famous event. “Not for me,” he said to ESPN about ever attempting the Indy 500.
As for Norris, he said he had achieved a dream on Sunday night, proudly stating that one day his kids will able to say their dad won the Monaco Grand Prix. He doesn’t foresee them ever having anything to say about the Indianapolis 500, though.
“It is something I’ll never do, I can say it right now,” Norris stated on Sunday evening. “I’m not doing it. Just have no interest in doing it. Not my thing. It’s not what I enjoy. I have a lot of respect for these guys. There are a lot of incredibly talented drivers over there in America, and some of them could do very well in Formula 1.”
With a cheeky grin, he then added: “But, yeah, I like turning right as well. So, that’s the main thing.” — Nate Saunders
Source: espn.com