Pato O’Ward didn’t mince words following Sunday’s Indianapolis 500 presented by Gainbridge at Indianapolis Motor Speedway as the often-candid driver doled out criticisms around the race’s finish, overall dynamic and even how Marcus Ericsson squandered the victory.

The 26-year-old of Monterrey, Mexico, who’s grown into the biggest star of the NTT INDYCAR SERIES crossed the finish line fourth of the 200-lap spectacle and eventually was awarded third Monday afternoon when runner-up Ericsson failed post-race technical inspection.

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Unlike last year’s Indy 500 where O’Ward tantalizingly lost the Indy 500 in a heartbreaker to Josef Newgarden on the final corner, he wasn’t in contention for his first Borg-Warner Trophy outside of leading laps 9-10.

"Pretty crap race I would say. Just kinda sucks that it went down to — the switcheroo was for the last position of the race and Ericsson actually kinda choked there and let (Alex) Palou by and just kind of, he just had to pedal it there," O’Ward told FOX after the race. "I don’t think it’s a finish anybody here would of wanted to see.”

O’Ward hovered inside the top-10 most of the day and found himself sixth by halfway. He crossed the finishing line two seconds behind Palou the winner on a day the six restarts throughout the 2-hour, 57-minute running seemingly shuffled him out of true contention.

In essence, “you either got screwed or you made like 10 positions” and “we got hosed there a couple times.”

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"I just feel like there was a bunch of non-experience in the front of the restarts and I think some of those restarts were pathetic,” said O’Ward, alluding to the statistic that 14 drivers led the race, some because of not pitting under caution. “Those were not of the level (of restarts) that we should be seeing at the Indy 500.”

O’Ward leaned into his criticisms of the frenzied restarts as if it “was like playing roulette, pick black or red, and then apparently it was zero.”

“You’re playing a coin flip for what lane you were going to choose,” O’Ward added away from the FOX broadcast. “If someone in front of you was gonna have an issue or gonna touch, like yeah — probably the worst Indy 500 I’ve been a part of. But we fought hard, we made our way up in that last pit stop to maybe give us a little bit of a chance. I think those lappers really helped the leaders. … I mean, it’s just how the race played out.”

O’Ward now has three podium finishes his last four Indy 500s. In six total Indy 500s, his resume ledger looks like this: runs of 15th-to-sixth, 12th-to-fourth, seventh-to-second, 24th (crash on lap 192 in 2024), eighth-to-second and third-to-third.

“We made it back up a little bit after being in the middle,” O’Ward said. “Fought my way as hard as I could, that’s all you can do sometimes.”