Sauber reserve driver Pourchaire sacked by McLaren IndyCar team, but returned again to replace Alexander Rossi

F1 Grand Prix, GP Hungary, Hungaroring

Sauber reserve driver Theo Pourchaire has been ousted by McLaren IndyCar team despite having signed a multi-year contract with the Woking-based outfit.

Pourchaire started racing in single-seaters in 2018, and proceeded to win the Junior French F4 Championship. The following year, he moved up and won the 2019 ADAC Formula 4 Championship, scrapping with Dennis Hauger to the title.
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The Frenchman joined ART Grand Prix for the 2020 FIA Formula 3 Championship and ended the season as runner-up behind Oscar Piastri by three points. The team promoted him to the FIA Formula 2 Championship in 2021, ranking fifth in the standings during his rookie year.

Pourchaire was runner-up in 2022, and claimed the title in 2023. In 2024, he serves as reserve driver for the Kick Sauber team, and has been handed the opportunity to race in IndyCar with Arrow McLaren, substituting for the injured David Malukas.

However, Pourchaire was released from Arrow McLaren just after five rounds, and was replaced by Nolan Siegel. There was another twist to the story as McLaren gave Pourchaire another replacement appearance by letting him replace an injured Alexander Rossi in the Grand Prix of Toronto.

"To be 100 per cent transparent, McLaren had signed me to a multi-year contract to drive with them in IndyCar,” Pourchaire explained in an interview with 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 11am 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," said Pourchaire.

Speaking of the Woking-based outfit's decision to swap Pourchaire for Siegel, Arrow McLaren sporting director Tony Kanaan noted: “It started back last year with that driver [Palou] that decided not to come over and breach his contract.

“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.”

“He [Pourchaire] didn’t do anything wrong, it was just a situation,” Kanaan added.

“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 said, quoted by Motorsport.com.

In the meantime, Pourchaire finished in P14 in last weekend's Toronto round.