The way coverage of IndyCar is going around here, you’d think Nolan Siegel was the sport’s new protagonist.

In my last opinion piece, I touched on why Siegel wasn’t going to replace Agustín Canapino full-time at Juncos Hollinger, citing his pre-existing commitments for the year.

Then, earlier this week, I covered Siegel’s class victory at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and mentioned how it would likely intensify an upcoming IndyCar bidding war for him.

Little did I know that, by the time I wrote those words, the decisive shot had already been fired.

Just five days before the Grand Prix of Monterey, Siegel went from an Indy NXT driver making occasional visits at the top level to Arrow McLaren’s full-time #6 driver, leaving the Dale Coyne #18 vacant for Toronto and replacing Théo Pourchaire effective immediately.

In hindsight, maybe we should’ve seen this coming. After all, Siegel’s seat at Le Mans was with United Autosport, a team founded and co-owned to this day by McLaren CEO Zak Brown.

Eurosport even showed Brown hanging out in the garage during their coverage of that race. Perhaps Siegel defending the lead like mad in his final driving stint was the final confirmation Brown needed to see before offering the contract.

Besides, Siegel was never going to stay in NXT beyond this season anyway.

He’s too poised on track with too much Silicon Valley money backing him for IndyCar teams to ignore, and if this McLaren deal was for 2025 onward, it would have been a pretty easy pill to swallow.

But the fact that it kicks in starting at Laguna Seca makes this a whole other can of worms.

As controversial as dropping David Malukas for Théo Pourchaire a couple of months ago was, I at least saw an angle where it made sense.

There was an explicit injury clause allowing McLaren to release Malukas after a set number of races, and with his recovery timeline at that point unclear, following the letter of the contract and cutting him to snap up Formula 2’s latest champion was a logical, if cutthroat move.

But consider what Pourchaire has done in his time with McLaren. He came to Long Beach having never driven an Indy car in his life and still finished 11th, well ahead of Pato O’Ward and just behind Alexander Rossi.

In Detroit, Pourchaire out-qualified both teammates, then stayed high enough on race day to earn his first top-ten finish.

At Road America, he beat Rossi by five places and picked up a third top-half finish out of five appearances. He broke off his original gig for the year in Japan to come race with McLaren for what was supposed to be a rest-of-season commitment.

When he was faced with harassment and death threats after Detroit, McLaren torched their partnership with Juncos Hollinger in his defence.

Yet in the span of about two weeks, and despite solid results given his circumstances, Pourchaire went from receiving one of the loudest shows of support a team can possibly give a driver to getting stabbed in the back and thrown out on the street for someone with stronger financial backing.

That kind of move has a chilling effect.

By pretending, as the team did in their press release announcing Siegel’s signing, that Pourchaire was always meant to be a temporary hire and not a full-time member, they’re effectively declaring that the stated length of an Arrow McLaren contract means nothing if a richer or more talented driver catches Zak Brown’s eye.

The obvious way to avoid that, of course, is to earn your job security on the track.

But that’s exactly what Pourchaire seemed to be doing for the past few races, and it clearly wasn’t enough to stop Siegel from taking his place.

So if Daniel Ricciardo can’t keep his spot at VCARB, or Carlos Sainz can’t find an F1 team willing to pay him what he’s worth- and McLaren pulls up promising a race-winning Indy car, giant sacks of cash, and rockstar treatment from the ‘Drive to Survive’ generation of American racing fans – who’s to say Siegel won’t get dropped just as abruptly as Pourchaire and Malukas before him?

In fact, why should any driver on the market who isn’t already a megastar trust a contract offer from Arrow McLaren, knowing they could be left out in the cold as fast as they were welcomed to sit by the fire?

The more moves like this they make, the more people seem to understand why Álex Palou cancelled his contract with these guys to keep winning with Chip Ganassi.

Maybe, somehow, this will all go perfectly for both drivers. Maybe Siegel will turn out to be McLaren’s missing piece, and Pourchaire will fall directly into a better situation.

But I have a sinking feeling that somebody here’s going to suffer, potentially both in the short and long run.

So I’d like to take this opportunity to say I hope Théo finds his way back into an IndyCar seat as soon as possible and to wish Nolan all the luck in his home race at Laguna Seca this weekend.

For better or worse, this has been the biggest week of his young career thus far.

The ball is officially in his hands. The only question now is how far he’ll run with it.