Senior trio to leave Arrow McLaren
The infrastructure of the Arrow McLaren IndyCar team will have a different look when it returns next season.
In the days leading up to last weekend’s race on the Indianapolis road course, competition director Billy Vincent, who also calls race strategy on Felix Rosenqvist’s No. 6 Chevy, informed the team that he will be leaving after the season finale on September 10. Vincent was announced in October of 2022 as one of the key team leaders to help steer Arrow McLaren as it reorganized its team structure under new race director Gavin Ward.
According to a spokesperson, Vincent’s exit will be preceded by Jeff Darks, Arrow McLaren’s head of marketing operations, who has been with the team since 2009 and rates among the most respected members of the team. Darks has Sept. 1 listed as his final day, and he’ll be joined by Mark Myers, Arrow McLaren’s director of partnerships.
It’s believed Darks and Myers have already departed the team, and reasons for the exits of Darks and Myers were not provided. Vincent, who was on Rosenqvist’s timing stand last weekend, has curtailed his day-to-day activities with Arrow McLaren, but will return for the last three events to finish the season with the coveted free agent from Sweden.
For Vincent, who worked his way up through the sport as a mechanic at Newman/Haas Racing, Team Penske, and Andretti Autosport, the decision to leave coincides with the growth of his karting team, MPG Motorsports, where he’ll focus his energies and continue to develop young drivers and crew members for junior open-wheel racing and IndyCar.
“It’s something that started in 2019 with a team I formed called MPG Motorsports, which stands for ‘My Parent’s Garage,’ which is where it all began,” Vincent told RACER. “And it’s literally just doubled or tripled in size year over year for the past three years. It’s been insane. And throughout that, I’ve developed a love for teaching these kids and we started with one or two customers, and now we’ve got 19.
“So being able to watch those kids grow and have an effect on them is a big passion of mine. And I just want to take the opportunity to continue that because racing takes 100-percent commitment. And I’ve been battling a little bit in the last year or so with missing those guys when I’m out racing with his team.”
Vincent plans on adding a sports car program within MPG’s offerings, and to place talented karting mechanics within the open-wheel community, just as he’s done within Arrow McLaren.
“We’re looking at some GT programs like a Porsche Cayman GT4, and different cars for SRO or IMSA,” he added. “We’ve got a couple of families that are on board and that’s gonna take my full commitment to do that so I felt like the time was right to try to make this change,
“My end goal for all these guys and girls is maybe five or six years from now, I can run to the podium [here at Indy] and there’s a driver that’s been through my team spraying milk around and three or four mechanics and engineers that have all come up through my program. That’s the real dream.”
Given the right opportunity, Vincent says he could appear at a major race at some point next year and lend his decades of expertise to a quality program.
“I could maybe come back here and help with an extra entry at Indy or at Daytona with IMSA or something like that,” he said. “That’d be number one on my list, and [Arrow McLaren] would be the first place I’d call if I wanted to [do a one-off event], but we’ll see.”
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