McLaren sacks driver after one-minute phone call leaving him 'disgusted'

The 2023 Formula 2 champion Theo Pourchaire has been left "disgusted" by how McLaren handled his summer IndyCar exit. Pourchaire made his IndyCar debut this year at Long Beach, where he impressed, earning a multi-year contract.

However, last month, Pourchaire was informed that he would not be staying with McLaren. The team had decided to swoop and sign American hot prospect Nolan Siegel to a multi-year deal and allegedly informed Pourchaire of the decision via a one-minute phone call.

"To be 100 per cent transparent, McLaren had signed me to a multi-year contract to drive with them in IndyCar," Pourchaire told Auto Hebdo. "And then, on the Tuesday morning before Laguna Seca, I learned from my manager that they had decided not to have me drive at Laguna Seca, as well as for the rest of the season.

"At first, I was very surprised, I didn’t understand, I thought it was fake. We had only signed a few weeks before. I was disgusted. The team ended up calling me for a minute, around 11 am that same day, the day before my planned departure for Laguna Seca, to tell me that I was excluded from the program. They didn’t give me the specific reasons.”

McLaren’s sporting director Tony Kanaan has since insisted the brutal dropping was nothing personal. "He didn’t do anything wrong,” Kanaan confirmed to Motorsport.com. "It was just a situation. It was a call that we had to make. It wasn’t personal. It wasn’t because of his performance. He’s done whatever he could do. He wasn’t happy, but he understood.”

Kanaan also admitted that Arrow McLaren's saga with lead driver Alex Palou played a part. “It started back last year with that driver [Palou] that decided not to come over and breach his contract,” Kanaan said.

“Then we decided on continuity, and it’s been quite a few six months for me. I did not sign up to have to choose four drivers. And then every option we had, because we had to make a decision quick, a lot of them had schedules already.

"I just told the guys out there, ‘You change race cars all the time. You come in, you make a change.’ Not that we want to do that with drivers, but we’re here. I’m in this to win races. That’s all I care [about]. And then I think eventually we look for continuity.”

Pourchaire didn't manage to break into Formula 1 despite his F2-winning exploits in 2023. The 20-year-old has the support of Sauber team representative Alessandro Alunni Bravi. Pourchaire had to settle for a reserve driver position at Sauber with Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu still on the books for 2024.

Bravi told Autosport: "We cannot be happy, mainly because Theo has lost the opportunity to have a strong racing programme. This is something that can happen in motorsport, we cannot blame McLaren."

Express Sport has contacted Arrow McLaren for comment.