Photo: Paul Hurley
Theo Pourchaire will make a surprise return to McLaren’s IndyCar line-up on the streets of Toronto this weekend to replace the injured Alexander Rossi.
The relationship between the team and its drivers has been one of the hot topics of the season, with McLaren initially signing David Malukas to drive its #6 car. He never actually raced for the team though, as an injury meant Pourchaire and Callum Ilott stood in for him through the first five races.
After that, Malukas’s contract was terminated and Pourchaire was signed for the rest of the season. But his contract only lasted 40 days before he too got dropped for Indy Nxt graduate Nolan Sieigel, who with budget to bring to the team got signed on a multi-year contract that led to him taking over the car immediately.
A month after being dropped, Pourchaire finally opened up about the ordeal but said he had left “on amicable terms”. And just a day after making that remark, he is now back in the team after Rossi broke his right thumb in Toronto practice and McLaren needed a replacement driver for the rest of the event.
Although Pourchaire now lives in the USA, he is currently in Europe and so will miss the next practice session as he travels over to Canada to make his IndyCar return.
During his five-race stint in IndyCar earlier this year, the 20-year-old Frenchman’s best race result was a 10th place and his best starting position was seventh.
Rossi has almost a month before the next IndyCar race to recover, and while he plans to be back in the cockpit for the race on the Gateway oval he will be back out of it just another month after that as he will leave McLaren at the end of the season.