Former Arrow McLaren IndyCar team principal and Penske engineer Ward joins RLL

Former Team Penske race engineer and Arrow McLaren team principal Gavin Ward has joined Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing. The multi-talented Canadian starts his tenure with RLL in a somewhat open capacity and reports to team president Jay Frye.

“Gavin’s joined us in special advisory role for now and we’re excited to have him in the building,” Frye told RACER. “We already have him working on couple of projects and he’s been great. I’d known him for a long time; he’s a great guy and as we get through some of these first projects, we’ll look at defining more of what he’ll be doing for us down the road, but he’s already proving to be a big asset for us.”

Ward spent most of his career in Europe as part of the Red Bull Formula 1 engineering team before switching to IndyCar, where he worked with Josef Newgarden and won the championship in 2019. Ward stayed with Newgarden through 2021 before signing with Arrow McLaren, and with Team Penske’s enforcement of his non-compete clause, Ward waited until the halfway point of 2022 before starting with his new employer.

Arrow McLaren president Taylor Kiel left the team a few months later – shortly after the last race – and Ward, who arrived to hold an engineering leadership position, was promoted to team principal as the replacement for the Chip Ganassi Racing-bound Kiel.

Ward’s time at Arrow McLaren lasted through October of 2024 after McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown and current team principal Tony Kanaan decided to make a change. Having cleared the non-compete with Arrow McLaren, Ward was pursued by a number of IndyCar teams before ultimately choosing RLL.

As the latest ex-Arrow McLaren recruit by the team owned by Bobby Rahal, David Letterman and Mike Lanigan, Ward will be reunited with Brian Barnhart, RLL’s new Sr. VP of Operations, pit stop manager Kyle Sagan and chief mechanic Heath "Keto" Kosik.