Qualifying for the race last weekend was a battle for pole between Chip Ganassi Racing, McLaren and Ed Carpenter Racing – with cars from each team filling the front row on Sunday.
But even though the highest-placed Penske is 12th, with Will Power, and Andretti car is 15th, with Kyle Kirkwood, O’Ward believes they will still be a threat in the race.
"It’s going to be a dogfight for sure, I think the Penskes are going to be there,” said O’Ward. “They’re going to have very strong race cars.
"It’s one thing to have a strong qualifying car but I think there’s more than a handful of cars that are very, very strong [in the race].
"There are so many strong cars that there’s not really one car you can pick and say ‘they look the best’. So many people look somewhat similar, so I think it’s going to be a really tight race, I really do.
"We can’t count the Penskes out, we can’t count the Andrettis out. And [Rinus] VeeKay in the Carpenter car, that’s going to be very strong.
"All four of our Arrow McLaren cars have been just very solid, I don’t think we’ve been the best, but we haven’t been bad, and we’ve just been working hard on making them better.
"I think we’re very conditioned for when the green flag drops on race day. We wanna win, you’ve got to be there at the end and capitalise on it."
Source: Autosport