Chip Ganassi Racing’s Linus Lundqvist is cruising to the Rookie of the Year title and making a strong case for potential employers in the NTT IndyCar Series field after producing his second top six performance in a span of three races.
The 2022 Indy Lights champion has had a typical rookie season in some regards – making and learning from mistakes – and as the championship has accelerated towards its finish, Lundqvist has also proven to be one of the great surprises with a road course podium at Barber and an oval podium at World Wide Technology Raceway.
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Add in his strong qualifying at the first Milwaukee race, passing Team Penske’s Scott McLaughlin and leading 19 laps, and coming home sixth, and the 25-year-old has been showing the kind of growth and pace that should have him on a number of teams’ radars for 2025.
“We had a good day, but I’m not gonna lie, I’m almost a little bit disappointed with a P6 because I felt like we drove a good race and were real fast,” Lundqvist told RACER. “For the first time, I properly led an IndyCar race, which was fun. So I’m taking a lot of positives from it. We had a couple of things go wrong as well, both on my end and elsewise, so there are things still to polish up for the second race, but we’ll take a P6 today.”
Although it’s unconfirmed, his Ganassi team is expected to trim two of its five cars from the program next season, which would make Lundqvist a free agent. Sitting 16th in the drivers’ championship, Lundqvist has Graham Rahal and Romain Grosjean directly behind him and Rinus VeeKay and Marcus Ericsson, the former driver of his No. 8 Honda, right in front of him with two races left in the season. It’s heady territory for a rookie.
“It’s not a bad time to start ramping up the pace here,” he said. “I want to be here, and I do believe that I deserve to be here, too, and all I can do right now is try to focus one race at a time, one qualifying session at a time, and try to prove and do my best on track. I’m trying to work on opportunities.”