Felix Rosenqvist loves the new home he’s made for himself at Meyer Shank Racing.
Based on how their first race weekend went from start to finish, the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg was filled with success as the Swede and his No. 60 Honda crew were fast in every practice session, qualified second, and raced in the lead pack throughout Sunday to start the year with a seventh-place finish.
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It’s the team’s best start to an IndyCar season since the program debuted in 2017, and with rookie teammate Tom Blomqvist showing promise as well, the retooled team is feeling positive about its chances in 2024.
“Me and Jim Meyer and Mike [Shank] talked a lot before the season, and they’re like, ‘Hey, fellas, don’t put pressure on yourself. We need a solid finish in St. Pete to get the season rolling, and if that’s a P3, or P5 or a P12, we don’t care. We just want to get going well here and have something good to build from,’” Rosenqvist told RACER.
“So objective number one was obviously completed to finish and to get good points. Did we believe we were going to be as quick as we were? We surprised ourselves a little bit. And obviously, for me, it was a new position to be in as the team leader, and there was a lot of little things in the background that people can’t see on TV, with some technical issues that were out of our control, but we didn’t panic and we did get P7. Overall, I think that was a super good weekend.”
In typical fashion for the Swede, the highlights were acknowledged and briefly celebrated before turning to the business of making MSR better for the next event.
“We did really good in St. Pete, but it could have been a lot more than it was, which leaves us with a lot of hunger,” he said. “If we did these things a little better and just put together a more polished race, I think we can really be contenders. It’s not that we feel like we nailed it and this is all we can do. It is actually the opposite.
“We’re firing in the same direction and I think we’ll have a good year, but there’ll also be for tough times. We know we have challenges coming at us that will test us, but we’ll have more time together like at Thermal and will have more mileage together so we will be a lot more prepared coming back for the points races at Long Beach and after. We’re all still really new together, but we’re really pumped for where we can take this team.”