Pato O’Ward won both races at the Milwaukee Mile on the same day, the first IndyCar driver to pull off a same-day sweep since Rick Mears did it at Atlanta in 1981. His Arrow McLaren teammate, Nolan Siegel in the No. 6, finished 13th in Race 1 and 17th in Race 2. The results were secondary to what the team had just survived logistically.
Rain had cut Race 1 short on Saturday. By the time the schedule sorted itself out, Race 2 would run Sunday at 1 PM and the remaining 160 laps of Race 1 would follow at 6 PM. That created a problem the team had not planned for: a double livery designed for two separate days now had to execute on one compressed timeline, with a vinyl wrap crew starting work at 6:00 AM.
Arrow McLaren had conceived the double-livery concept well before Milwaukee. The No. 6 would run Race 1 in McLaren’s papaya orange with white accents and Kohler sponsorship. For Race 2, the same car would carry a blue scheme promoting Chevrolet and GM’s Future Techs workforce initiative, developed in collaboration with GM Design. Lauren Gaudion, Arrow McLaren’s VP of Marketing and Communications, had floated the idea at Portland in early August. The Race 2 design came together in three days. Under normal conditions, the plan was to rewrap Saturday evening. Rain made that plan irrelevant.
Three wrap specialists pulled the Race 1 vinyl, applied the Chevrolet and GM Future Techs scheme for Race 2, ran the car, then rewrapped it again for the Race 1 restart, all before Sunday afternoon. The team simplified the design mid-process to make the changeovers faster. They made the window.
The Future Techs program behind the Race 2 livery is a GM-backed recruiting effort aimed at drawing students into automotive service careers. The two-year associate’s degree program runs at 54 schools across the U.S., combining classroom instruction with paid on-the-job training through participating GM dealers. Gaudion framed the livery as a direct extension of the team’s relationship with its engine supplier. “We don’t run without Chevy power,
Source: Chevrolet. Images courtesy of Chevrolet.
