Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing’s Danish ace Christian Lundgaard says his third career podium finish and second on the Indy road course was “the minimum” that he and the team were seeking from the 2024 Sonsio Grand Prix. Lundgaard took the lead from …
Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing’s Danish ace Christian Lundgaard says his third career podium finish and second on the Indy road course was “the minimum” that he and the team were seeking from the 2024 Sonsio Grand Prix.
Lundgaard took the lead from polesitter Alex Palou at the start of the race, went on to lead 35 laps, and finished third behind Palou and Will Power but ahead of Scott Dixon. He described his post-race mood as, “Happy to be disappointed, I would say. Yeah, I think that’s becoming an expression in the RLL engineering truck. Sometimes we’re just happy to be disappointed.
“I’m proud of the team. We qualified well at Barber, and I think considering how we handled Long Beach in terms of strategy — trying to get too much out of what I think we could have hurt us on the pure result. Going into Barber, it was a pure strategy of just get through the race and make sure that we get a good result, and coming here, there was a minimum, which was a podium. We got it, but I wanted it to be a win.”
[lawrence-auto-related count=3 category=1408]
The Dane said he was wondering about his choice of a second set of primary Firestones on a day in which the alternate compound was faster and surprisingly durable. But he explained that the only set of alternates he had available before taking fresh ones for the final stint were well worn, and he doubted they would last.
“I think today on our performance we really did the best job that I think we could on the first two stints,” he said. “We were a little bold trying to put on another sticker set of primaries for the third stint, but the alternative was a very used alternate tire that we had to [run] a long way, and I preferred the primary tires there.
“The red tires were the preferred tires today, but going into the race, I think everybody was in the unknown. Everybody had a question mark — is it going to be 50/50 or 70/30 in terms of one compound being preferred? …I chose the sticker primaries because we were one of the most competitive cars in qualifying on blacks, on the primary tires. I didn’t see a reason why not to use them.
“But I think Alex was just fast today. He was fast here last year in May, in August. He’s fast wherever we go, really.”
Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing’s Christian Lundgaard led second practice for Saturday’s Sonsio Grand Prix of Indianapolis, ahead of Team Penske’s Will Power and Chip Ganassi Racing’s Scott Dixon. The first 12 minutes of the session were dominated by …
Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing’s Christian Lundgaard led second practice for Saturday’s Sonsio Grand Prix of Indianapolis, ahead of Team Penske’s Will Power and Chip Ganassi Racing’s Scott Dixon.
The first 12 minutes of the session were dominated by former winners on the Indianapolis road course — Power, Alexander Rossi of Arrow McLaren and Rinus VeeKay of Ed Carpenter Racing.
Then they were deposed by Marcus Armstrong’s Chip Ganassi Racing Honda, Pato O’Ward’s McLaren and then Lundgaard was the first to crack 70 seconds. The Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing Honda lapped the 2.439-mile road course in 1m09.9476s, an average speed of 125.528 mph.
Another improvement from O’Ward and Agustin Canapino — Juncos Hollinger Racing’s star in this morning’s first practice session — both edged ahead of Lundgaard.
[lawrence-auto-related count=3 category=1408]
Turn 10 produced spins for Marcus Ericsson (Andretti Global) and Tom Blomqvist (Meyer Shank Racing), but it was Jack Harvey of Dale Coyne Racing who spun and stalled and brought out the red flag.
Penske’s Barber Motorsports Park winner Scott McLaughlin jumped to the top with 20 minutes to go, turning a 1m09.8648s effort on his 14th lap, with Meyer Shank’s Felix Rosenqvist falling just 0.0317s short of displacing him. Power was 0.0464s short yet only fourth, two thousandths behind O’Ward.
With less than five minutes remaining, Dixon shot to the top with a 1m09.8565s, but was immediately eclipsed by Power, who produced a 1m09.6899s, just outside the 126mph bracket. That looked like it might be it, but Lundgaard trimmed 0.1311s off Power’s benchmark to end the session on top.
McLaughlin retained fourth ahead of Rosenqvist and O’Ward, while Armstrong made it three New Zealanders in the top seven.
Canapino hung in with an impressive eighth, ahead of Graham Rahal, who bounced back from zero flying laps this morning to set ninth with his new engine. Josef Newgarden completed the top 10.
Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing’s Christian Lundgaard flirted with being the fastest driver across the first three test sessions at The Thermal Club, and in the fourth and final outing, the Dane clinched first-place as the field of 27 drivers spent …
Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing’s Christian Lundgaard flirted with being the fastest driver across the first three test sessions at The Thermal Club, and in the fourth and final outing, the Dane clinched first-place as the field of 27 drivers spent the latter part of the two-hour window performing qualifying simulations.
Lundgaard’s 1m38.220s run, the fastest of the event, came amid huge gusts of wind and sand storms that caused a delay to the start of the session. Well behind Lundgaard was the Chevy brigade of Team Penske’s Will Power (+0.420s) and Scott McLaughlin (+0.504s), and the Arrow McLaren trio of Alexander Rossi (+0.591s), Pato O’Ward (+0.658s) and Callum Ilott (+0.669s).
“The wind actually helps you in all [the] really fast stuff,” Power told RACER. “Obviously going down the back straight you get a big tailwind, but then it’s not as good under braking. It seems like it should be slow, but it’s actually quite fast.”
The rapid-fire day concludes with qualifying for Sunday morning’s heat races starting at 5 p.m. PT on Peacock.
Christian Lundgaard topped the second NTT IndyCar Series practice session at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca on a morning where preparations were again interrupted by red flags. Lundgaard’s best of 1m07.6154s in the No.45 Rahal Letterman Lanigan …
Christian Lundgaard topped the second NTT IndyCar Series practice session at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca on a morning where preparations were again interrupted by red flags.
Lundgaard’s best of 1m07.6154s in the No.45 Rahal Letterman Lanigan Honda came with 20 minutes still on the clock, and to some extent was insulated against further improvement by a stoppage that ate up a large chunk of the remaining time. Ed Carpenter Racing’s Rinus VeeKay came closest with a 1m07.6548s that put the Dutchman on top for about 10 seconds before Lundgaard completed his lap.
VeeKay was a little fortunate to have simply been on the track long enough to set his time after he spun in Turn 5 during the opening minutes and came to rest in the middle of the track perpendicular to the approaching cars. Some quick hands from Romain Grosjean saved VeeKay from being T-boned by the Andretti Honda, and VeeKay was able to get himself going again.
The late red came courtesy of Santino Ferrucci, or more specifically, a component in the back of his car that began blowing white smoke as he exited Turn 9 with 11 minutes remaining. By the time the No. 14 Foyt Chevy had been retrieved there was just under four minutes remaining, and the track was too congested after session returned to green for any meaningful improvements.
Alex Palou wound up third fastest ahead of early session leader Alexander Rossi, leaving Kyle Kirkwood to complete the top five.
The low grip level away from the racing line, along with the sharp contrast between the grip level on the track surface and the painted curbs, continued to cause problems, and the 60 minutes were loaded with cars running off and into the gravel.
Most continued unscathed, however Pato O’Ward’s No. 5 Arrow McLaren Chevy needed a new left-front corner after he went off and hit the wall at Turn 3 10 minutes in. Later, Will Power’s No. 12 Team Penske Chevy snapped around at the entry to the Corkscrew and sent him into the gravel backwards. He required help from the AMR Safety Team to get the car pointed in the right direction again, but there was no apparent damage.
Rahal Letterman Lanigan’s Christian Lundgaard topped the first practice session for the BITNILE.COM Grand Prix of Portland ahead of Kyle Kirkwood and championship leader Alex Palou. With their extra set of primaries, the rookies hit Oregon’s …
Rahal Letterman Lanigan’s Christian Lundgaard topped the first practice session for the BITNILE.COM Grand Prix of Portland ahead of Kyle Kirkwood and championship leader Alex Palou.
With their extra set of primaries, the rookies hit Oregon’s 1.964-mile 12-turn Portland International Raceway first, but 12 minutes into the session, it was last year’s fourth-place starter Christian Lundgaard who first cracked the 1-minute barrier with a 59.4934s effort. He then improved on this marginally, then significantly, getting down to 59.0588s.
Ganassi’s Marcus Armstrong and Foyt’s Benjamin Pedersen then joined him in the sub 1-minute category, before this pair were split by Rinus VeeKay (Ed Carpenter Racing Chevrolet).
After 18 minutes, Felix Rosenqvist set fourth fastest time, then understeered off at Turn 12, his Arrow McLaren Chevy making gentle contact with the tire barrier and bringing out the red flag. For that, he would be put in the sin bin for five minutes.
Teammate Pato O’Ward, a winner here in Portland in Indy Lights, moved up to second when action resumed four minutes later, then set a 58.9334s on his eighth lap, while Ryan Hunter-Reay – who will suffer a six-place grid drop for an early engine change – dropped his Ed Carpenter Racing Chevy at Turn 12 but found enough asphalt to get the car slowed down and resumed without a session stoppage. However, a second red flew when Santino Ferrucci ran wide out of Turn 6 and spun into Turn 7 and stalled his Foyt car there.
[lawrence-auto-related count=3 category=1408]
With 37 minutes of the 75-minute session to go, Ganassi’s title contenders made their presence felt, with Palou – 2021 Portland winner and IndyCar champion – going top with the first 120mph lap of the session, a 58.9168s, while Scott Dixon slotted into third, 0.13s behind.
Tom Blomqvist, the IMSA champion in his second outing in the Meyer Shank Racing team, had a wild moment through the Turn 1 chicane but after knocking a sign aside, he kept it all together and continued, just before Hunter-Reay spun exiting Turn 12 onto the main straight and stalled, bringing out the third red.
Will Power did a 180 degree spin exiting Turn 2 and used the Turn 1 runoff to resume, while Indy road course pole-winner Graham Rahal emphasized RLL’s pace with sixth fastest, before Armstrong improved to third, while Devlin DeFrancesco was quickest of the Andretti Autosport Hondas.
Lundgaard was the first driver to switch to Firestone’s alternate rubber, but it was VeeKay on old primaries who climbed to P1 with a 58.8474s, then trimmed it to 58.7843s. Lundgaard made his soft compound count with a 58.1776s – 121.531mph – and Kirkwood used the reds to slot into second, 0.1470s behind him.
Palou’s first flyer on reds also put him into the 121mph bracket in third, while Rosenqvist and Alexander Rossi ensured all Arrow McLarens were in the top eight, with Romain Grosjean (Andretti) in the top six. When attempting to join his teammate, Colton Herta hit the grass out of Turn 6.
With under three minutes to go, David Malukas jumped his Dale Coyne Racing w/HMD Honda into sixth, after annoying both Josef Newgarden and Scott Dixon by slowing down.
Newgarden finished the session in 10th, but his teammates Scott McLaughlin and Will Power were 16th and 17th, although they were ahead of Dixon.
IndyCar debutant Juri Vips finished the session in 15th, 0.8441s off his pace-setting teammate Lundgaard and 0.01s ahead of Rahal. Blomqvist was focused on clocking laps – 35 – and finished around 0.75s behind MSR teammate Helio Castroneves.
Christian Lundgaard, IndyCar’s newest winner, is optimistic that Rahal Letterman Lanigan Honda will be in the frame in the battle for pole position and for victory this weekend at Portland International Raceway. The 22-year-old Dane was a …
Christian Lundgaard, IndyCar’s newest winner, is optimistic that Rahal Letterman Lanigan Honda will be in the frame in the battle for pole position and for victory this weekend at Portland International Raceway.
The 22-year-old Dane was a significant threat to Team Penske’s dominance in qualifying and the race last year at the 1.964-mile road course in the Pacific Northwest. Only a bad pitstop and a late-race mistake undid his chances of a second career podium, and since then he has savored his first IndyCar victory at Toronto this year, and a couple of pole positions.
[lawrence-auto-related count=3 category=1408]
No less significantly, he’s seen the Bobby Rahal/David Letterman/Mike Lanigan-owned team improve its form on road and street courses throughout the year, so he believes this weekend’s BITNILE.COM Grand Prix of Portland is another chance to take on Chip Ganassi Racing and Team Penske as equals.
“Sure, the potential is there for us,” he told RACER. “We were a little surprised by our pace here last year, even though [teammate] Graham Rahal was fifth quick in 2021. And now the step forward we’ve taken on road courses this year – and on street circuits, we’re getting there, too – and because we were fast here last year, I think this is now one of the tracks we come expecting to fight for the pole and the win, along with Indy road course.”
One of Lundgaard’s most impressive drives this year – at a time when RLL’s fortunes were at a very low ebb – came at Barber Motorsports Park in April, qualifying and finishing sixth. He believes the team has made a step forward even since then.
“I would say so, yes, because we were definitely more competitive at Road America and Mid-Ohio than we were last year,” he said. “Now we have another two road courses to finish this season, so that’s good. As you say, we were very competitive here last year.
“But I think we’ll be competitive at the last two races – Laguna Seca as well.”
Last year at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca, Lundgaard clinched Rookie of the Year honors with a storming drive from 16th on the grid to finish fifth, beaten only by one Ganassi car, two Penskes and an Arrow McLaren.
Lundgaard has earned much kudos this year for appearing always able to wrangle speed out of his car, his onboard footage suggesting that extracting the requisite pace is a struggle. In short, he is overachieving.
But the Dane rejected that notion, saying: “A race car shouldn’t be easy to handle. An easy car is never a fast car and that’s been proven. Only the Penskes look like they’re driving on rails while also being fast, but it’s all about extracting the time from the car, and I think I have been good at that this year at certain tracks, whereas at other tracks it’s been slightly tougher.”
Bobby Rahal didn’t want to hear it. Nearly two months of intensive work to find his IndyCar teams’ competitive shortcomings were starting to bear fruit, and behind the scenes, the 70-year-old was lighting a fire under Rahal Letterman Lanigan …
Bobby Rahal didn’t want to hear it.
Nearly two months of intensive work to find his IndyCar teams’ competitive shortcomings were starting to bear fruit, and behind the scenes, the 70-year-old was lighting a fire under Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing’s managers and chiefs and engineers and mechanics to get creative in solving its speed deficiencies.
Privately, the three-time IndyCar champion and 1986 Indianapolis 500 winner was said to be putting in an extreme number of hours to help the organization turn itself around, and not with a soft target for “as soon as possible.” He wanted it now. But in typical Rahal fashion, he didn’t want to take any credit for the newfound strength the team he co-owns with Mike Lanigan and David Letterman has demonstrated since weathering a brutal month of May.
“You need to talk to Mike Lanigan, for starters, because he’s pushed as hard as anybody to get us to where we are,” Rahal told RACER. “Give him the credit. Go talk to (new COO) Steve Eriksen, who’s been huge for us since he came onboard. Steve’s brought a lot of things managerially and perspective-wise that we needed, and we’re better off for having him. Go talk to (veteran RLL team manager) Rico (Nault), who’s been with me for longer than I can remember, because he’s been getting his hands full this entire time trying to get us moving in the right direction. There’s a lot of others, also, because they’re the ones to talk to instead of me.”
Bobby Rahal, Steve Eriksen, Ricardo Nault and David Salters of HPD — the brain trust that’s helped Rahal Letterman Lanigan go from zero to hero in the span of mere weeks. Michael Levitt/Lumen
Fresh off the team’s first win since August of 2020, RLL’s in-season efforts were rewarded by first-time IndyCar winner Christian Lundgaard, a native of Denmark whose pursuit of Formula 1 stalled and subsequent rerouting to America with RLL proved transformational for the team and the 21-year-old.
Rahal’s son Graham, who was in tears after failing to qualify for the Indy 500 in May, nearly earned pole for the July 2 race at Mid-Ohio, and put on an epic performance on Sunday in Toronto that started in 27th-place and finished in ninth.
And as his father suggested, speaking with Ricardo Nault revealed the rest of how RLL overhauled itself through fixes in engineering and internal culture.
“We felt we had the basis of a good car, but we just got lost for a while — a year and a half, really,” said Nault, the former IndyCar mechanic who ascended upwards to a leadership role many years ago. “And it just got worse. Then had a little bit of restructuring and started by trying to get some buy-in from everybody to help contribute to the process. We had a bunch of people come up with ideas on what to do and we just started pushing together a little bit more than we have in the past.”
Going through RLL’s darkest days helped the group to rediscover its fighting spirit and improve its chemistry as the men and women who comprise the entries for the Rahal’s No. 15 car, the No. 30 for Jack Harvey, and Lundgaard’s No. 45 banded together in the same quest for success.
“We were all down, and everybody had to come together to help each other,” Nault continued. “And Graham, Christian and Jack, they all work really well together to try to make the cars better; nobody holds back. Nobody’s got any secrets. If one guy learns something, he brings it to everyone and it goes around in circles so that way, it helps to elevate the whole organization.”
With Graham’s strong form at Mid-Ohio and now Lundgaard’s practically dominating performance in Toronto, RLL’s spirits are…undampened, and for good reason. Perry Nelson/Lumen
Another area under development for RLL has been with its damper program. Gains made through exhaustive efforts at Indy helped the beleaguered team to acquire more pace through its damper builds, and whether it was Rahal qualifying second on the rolling Mid-Ohio road course or Lundgaard earning pole and dominating on the wickedly bumpy Toronto street circuit, the team has erased a sizable shortcoming in a short amount of time.
“The whole team has been working our damper program for some time and we are really starting to see it pay off,” Nault said before applauding the work done by former Andretti damper specialist Mike Cicciarelli who joined RLL during the offseason.
“Mike brought a lot of new understandings and new ways to look at our damper program, which helps. He’s been a big help, and with a few tweaks, we’re going from nowhere to sitting on poles and winning races.”
Nault closed by sharing his appreciation for the mercurial Dane who, thankfully, will finally shave the awful mustache he committed to wearing until he clinched his first win. Like his driver, Lundgaard’s race engineer Ben Siegel also delivered on the immense talent and promise he’s shown since joining the team in 2022.
“Obviously, Christian is a great talent, and so is Ben — a first-time race engineer with Christian last year who is really coming into strides now,” he said. “Ben does a great job of understanding what it takes and working well with Christian to give him a car that he really likes. And to be fair, I don’t think we had the fastest car out there all weekend, but the whole team played the strategy right in qualifying, and then in the race as well. Everything just fell our way, and you need that sometimes. But this result comes from all the preparation that everyone did along the way.”
Welcome to the pantheon of first-time NTT IndyCar Series winners, Christian Lundgaard. Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing scored its first win since 2020 and its young new star delivered on the promise he’s shown since making a one-off debut in 2021 …
Welcome to the pantheon of first-time NTT IndyCar Series winners, Christian Lundgaard.
Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing scored its first win since 2020 and its young new star delivered on the promise he’s shown since making a one-off debut in 2021 with a flawless and dominant run to victory lane. The Dane was in a class of his own, charging to a 11.7s win over Chip Ganassi Racing’s Alex Palou and 15.0s over Andretti Autosport’s Colton Herta as Honda-powered drivers swept the podium at the packed Honda Indy Toronto event.
The achievement was the culmination of RLL’s incredible turnaround efforts after the team got off to a slow and largely uncompetitive start to the season.
“I said it before the race that we had a car that was fast enough win, and we did it by 10 seconds,” Lundgaard said. “This team, they do deserve this. If you look at where we were at the end of last season, we were nowhere near this.”
Behind Lundgaard, it was a messy day for some and a strange one for others.
The luckiest driver in the field was undoubtedly Palou, who started 15th, charged forward, used smart race strategy applied by his team to improve more positions, but also had to save gallons of fuel to make it to the finish while taking a different line around the 1.8-mile street circuit. Why was Palou forced to alter his line? It was a necessity to avoid the major curbs and bumps due to a broken front wing caused while trying to miss the spinning car of Helio Castroneves that resulted in a meeting with the wall that broke his front wing’s attachment to the nose.
Dragging the right-front down the long straights as downforce increased, the problem progressively worsened and with only a few of the 85 laps left to go, it looked as if it might break off the No. 10 Honda’s nose altogether, but it held on — as did the last few drops of fuel — to complete a 13-position improvement and increase his championship lead.
“I don’t know how we made it with this wing,” Palou said. “The car was still handling OK, but we just had to save a ton of fuel and a ton of tires, but we made it.”
For Herta, who secured his first podium of the year, barely holding on to his position was an achievement as his engine sputtered and fell silent after crossing the finish line. Like Palou, he started deep in the pack — 14th — and went for a wild ride to third.
“Luckily we were able to save enough and we made the strategy work,” said a relieved Herta. “Some guys didn’t make it work.”
Another big mover was RLL’s Graham Rahal whose craftiness netted an improvement from 27th to ninth. A few corners away from starting the final lap, Team Penske’s Will Power and Ganassi’s Marcus Ericsson were chasing Herta hard for his position, but both disappeared from his mirrors as they had to do the most gut-wrenching thing a driver can do: pit on the last lap for a splash of fuel and surrender quality finishes.
Ericsson would emerge from the pits to take 11th and Power was a frustrated 14th.
Toronto was a race to forget for Team Penske as all three of its entries suffered from mistakes made by its drivers or on its timing stands.Josef Newgarden lost numerous positions after running long in his pit box, but recovered to take fifth. Power said he should have saved more fuel. Front-row starter Scott McLaughlin could have shadowed Lundgaard and likely finish behind him if it weren’t for a colossal strategy error that left the Penske machine out when the RLL driver and others in his vicinity stopped. Forced onto a strategy that held no hope of getting to the finish line, he pitted halfway through the final stint, gave up the lead, and resumed in 14th. Dixon and Power were also forced to make the same late stop, but they weren’t in contention for the win.
To their credit, and with help from the last-lap dramas for Power and Ericsson, Dixon climbed to fourth and McLaughlin made it to sixth at the checkered flag.
The greatest beneficiary was Palou, who started behind Dixon and Newgarden, yet finished ahead of them and increased his championship lead on his teammate from 110 points to 117, and pushed his pre-Toronto 116-point margin over the Penske driver out to 126 with seven races to go. Thanks to his fuel issue, Ericsson’s gap to Palou grew from 122 to 142 points, but he held onto fourth in the standings. Lundgaard’s big result propelled him from 10th in the championship to seventh as Power’s misfortune moved him rearwards to eighth.
Only 15 of the 27 cars finished on the lead lap, with seven drivers parked and done well before all the laps were completed. Andretti’s Romain Grosjean crashed again on his own, and Dale Coyne Racing’s David Malukas also met the wall in a late solo incident. Castroneves was hit from behind by Andretti’s Kyle Kirkwood on the restart after his teammate’s crash, and was forced to retire. Kirkwood was duly penalized.
And to start the race off with carnage, Lundgaard’s teammate Jack Harvey induced a multi-car crash that left a number of drivers fuming, including Meyer Shank Racing rookie Tom Blomqvist whose IndyCar race debut only lasted a few seconds.
“This is the last thing I wanted to happen,” Blomqvist said. “Someone hit someone… You’re at the mercy of people on the other side and I was pushed into the wall. I’m pretty furious, devastated, and gutted. To not even get one lap is frustrating.”
AS IT HAPPENED
Polesitter Christian Lundgaard got a great jump into Turn 1 and Scott Dixon climbed to P5 but behind them, a caution was required when a big pileup exiting Turn 1 saw Jack Harvey, Tom Blomqvist, Ryan Hunter-Reay, Santino Ferrucci, Benjamin Pedersen, Alexander Rossi and Graham Rahal get tangled in a track-blocking mess triggered by Harvey.
Going three-wide on corner exit, Harvey veered left into Hunter-Reay, knocking him into Blomqvist on the outside, who was sent into the wall. Hunter-Reay, Blomqvist, and the rest of the drivers were collateral damage as a result of Harvey’s move, and only Rahal — last on the grid and last to arrive on the scene — was able to select reverse and drive away using the escape road that runs behind Turns 1 and 2.
With considerable damage to the cars of Harvey, Hunter-Reay, Blomqvist and Pedersen, the four drivers were done on the spot. Ferrucci and Rossi were able to continue, but suffered body work damage, as did Rahal, who hit the back of Ferrucci’s car and stopped for a new front wing assembly. The other two would follow suit under the extended caution and resume at the back of the field.
By the flag, even this sight was hard for second place Alex Palou to see. Richard Dole/Lumen
Having burned nine laps to clear the crash, Lundgaard led the restart and behind him Kyle Kirkwood took sixth from Felix Rosenqvist. Alex Palou, starting P15, was up to P12 but lost it to Colton Herta the next lap after an unsuccessful attempt to demote Romain Grosjean from P11.
Herta took P11 from Grosjean with ease the next time around. Lundgaard started lap 13 with 2.5s over Scott McLaughlin, and behind them, Pato O’Ward was 3.5s down in P3 and Marcus Ericsson was 4.5s back in P4.
Marcus Armstrong was next on Herta’s hit list and by lap 14, he was up from a P14 start to P10. Lundgaard, on alternate tires, put another second on McLaughlin, on primaries, to push the lead out to 3.5s. Grosjean and Palou moved Armstrong back to P13, who pitted at the end of the lap to take the alternate tires off his car. Rosenqvist was in the next lap — lap 18 — for the same alternate-to-primary change. Kirkwood and Josef Newgarden arrived on lap 19 for the same swap.
Only Lundgaard and O’Ward continued lapping on alternates, but Lundgaard pitted at the end of the lap for primaries, but lost time with a long change to the left-front tire. O’Ward was in on lap 21 as the leaders, barring McLaughlin, completed their first stops. Team Penske’s call to have the Kiwi go long and try an overcut to leap past Lundgaard wasn’t looking good as the gap from P1 to the polesitter in P9 was 16.1s after 25 laps. With a pit stop taking at least 24-25s, his advantage over McLaughlin doubled.
The strategy was starting to play to McLaughlin’s favor by lap 30 thanks to Rinus VeeKay, who fought Lundgaard at every turn, and despite being faster, the RLL driver was 17.7s back. Palou finally got by Grosjean on the same lap and checked out to chase Herta in P5. The top 7, from McLaughlin to Grosjean, were still going on their first set of tires and had yet to pit.
Palou cleared Herta by lap 33; Grosjean pitted moments later. The gap from McLaughlin to Lundgaard was 17.5s. Herta followed, taking alternates as well, on lap 34. McLaughlin was in on lap 35 to take alternates. What can he do on faster tires with Lundgaard 6s up the road?
Dixon, Palou, and Will Power pitted on lap 38 and Power overtook Dixon on pit lane.
Lap 41 and Lundgaard’s lead over McLaughlin was 6.3s, 8.1s to O’Ward, and 15.5s to Kirkwood.
The second caution of the day was required on lap 42 when Grosjean fired into the wall at Turn 10, telling his crew that the steering wheel slipped out of his hands. He was running 12th at the time of his crash.
[lawrence-auto-related count=3 category=1408]
A mess of cars stopped on lap 45 to get off of alternate tires, led by Kirkwood, Palou, Herta, and Rosenqvist, with the group hoping for plenty of caution laps to make it to the finish, and the return to green happened at the end of the lap with Lundgaard leading McLaughlin, but another caution was required when Helio Castroneves spun entering Turn 11, tried to flick the car around, and stalled.
Kirkwood was shown to have hit Castroneves, who was unable to restart his car and climbed out. While avoiding Castroneves, Palou made decent contact with the wall with his right-front wheel and wing; the wing was hanging low and questionable to last the rest of the race.
Most of the leaders, barring McLaughlin, pitted under caution on lap 49 with Lundgaard, O’Ward, Ericsson, and Power diving in for fuel and primary tires.
The lap 52 restart featured McLaughlin leading into Turn 1 and a penalty issued for Kirkwood who was ordered to pit and stop. His race was effectively over. Lundgaard passed Herta for P5 on lap 53 and the running order going into lap 54 was McLaughlin, Dixon, VeeKay, Palou, Lundgaard, and Herta.
The top three were on the faster alternate tires and needing to save fuel while those in pursuit were less affected by that need and had the more durable primary tires on their cars. VeeKay pitted from third on lap 60 and lost a ton of time waiting for the car to be lifted.
McLaughlin surrendered the lead on lap 61, taking primaries and a full tank of fuel. Palou also gave up P3 to Lundgaard and Herta was closing. Dixon was in on lap 63 for fuel only, and resumed ahead of McLaughlin in P14. Power took P4 from O’Ward with a daring move into Turn 5.
Lundgaard was leading once again with 2.4s over Palou on lap 64.
David Malukas clipped the wall with 15 laps to go and retired as Lundgaard’s lead was out to 7.0s over Palou after 74 laps. Herta was 8.3s back and had Power in his draft. Ericsson was 11.3s back in P5, Newgarden was 12.7s down in P6, and Marcus Armstrong was 14.0s arrears in P7. Dixon was up to P10 and McLaughlin was in P13.
Lap 79 and Dixon was up to P8 and McLaughlin took P11 from Rahal. Herta took a strong look at Palou under braking for Turn 3 as his front wings were wobbling more than ever as the right side dragged hard at top speed. Lap 82 and Dixon was up to P7 and McLaughlin was in P10.
Power and Ericsson pitted at the start of the last lap for fuel as Dixon got by Newgarden for P4. Lundgaard, Palou, and Herta are your podium for the Honda Indy Toronto.
Rahal Letterman Lanigan needed to make major improvements on street circuits, and with his second pole position in hand of 2023, Christian Lundgaard confirmed RLL has made big strides since it undertook sweeping changes to improve its fortunes. …
Rahal Letterman Lanigan needed to make major improvements on street circuits, and with his second pole position in hand of 2023, Christian Lundgaard confirmed RLL has made big strides since it undertook sweeping changes to improve its fortunes.
Lundgaard’s lap of 1m04.1567s in the No. 45 Honda was well clear of his rivals as the Firestone Fast Six was reconciled using dry tires on a damp track. Team Penske’s Scott McLaughlin was second-fastest in the No. 3 Chevy (+0.3223s), Arrow McLaren’s Pato O’Ward was third in the No. 5 Chevy (+0.3933s), Marcus Ericsson (+0.7524s) was fourth for Chip Ganassi Racing in the No. 8 Honda, O’Ward’s teammate Felix Rosenqvist was fifth in the No. 6 Chevy (+0.7856s), and Penske’s Will Power was sixth in the No. 12 Chevy (+0.9136s).
As he so often does, the 21-year-old Dane worked miracles for RLL and captured a surprise pole for the team owned by Bobby Rahal, Mike Lanigan, and David Letterman.
“I have a history — at least in go karts — of being fast in the rain, and I’ve only driven in the rain once with this car and we weren’t competitive, but the car today was just there and I can’t thank this team enough,” said Lundgaard, who was 18 positions ahead of his closest teammate.
“Looking at where we were on street circuits, even last year, we made progress and I can only thank the team at this point.”
Drama at the start of qualifying with the arrival of rain in the final minutes of the opening session favored those who got their best runs in early and penalized those who were waiting until the last moments to register their best time. Championship leader Alex Palou was the biggest name to suffer, but he lacked significant speed prior to the skies opening and didn’t lay blame on the changing conditions for his starting position of 15th, his worst of the season.
Kyle Kirkwood in eighth, Romain Grosjean in ninth, and Colton Herta in 14th—all contenders for pole for Andretti Autosport coming out of the morning session—missed by a lot, as did Penske’s Josef Newgarden in 11th.
Andretti Autosport will be going back to the drawing board after all the speed they had Saturday morning simply vanished by qualifying. Michael Levitt/Lumen
Dale Coyne Racing’s David Malukas was also quick in the morning session and had designs on transferring into the Fast 12, but he managed to block CGR’s Dixon on his first flying lap on alternate tires and was duly penalized by the series which left him two spots behind Palou in 17th.
The end result was a qualifying result that has some of IndyCar’s hardest chargers mired many rows behind their usual starting spots which, for racing fans, should make for 85 laps of unpredictable action starting Sunday at 1:30 p.m. ET (available only on Peacock).
AS IT HAPPENED
The first half of the field fought over the six transfer spots available in the 10-minute opening session, and with a dry track at their disposal, Kyle Kirkwood was the first to post a significant lap on Firestone’s primary tires. With the switch to the faster green-banded alternate tires, the assembly of 13 drivers were split with the top six led by Kyle Kirkwood, Rinus VeeKay, Christian Lundgaard, Will Power, Scott Dixon, and Scott McLaughlin.
Those who failed to transfer were Helio Castroneves (who starts P13), Alex Palou (P15), David Malukas — who was judged to have blocked Scott Dixon and had his two fastest laps deleted — (P17), Jack Harvey (P19), Ryan Hunter-Reay (P21), Sting Ray Robb (P23), and Benjamin Pedersen (P25).
With the second half of the field using rain tires for their 10-minute session, improving conditions in the final minute saw the top six change repeatedly and once the checkered flag waved, the transferring six were led by Romain Grosjean, Marcus Ericsson, Josef Newgarden, Felix Rosenqvist, Pato O’Ward, and Marcus Armstrong.
Spinners, visitors to the runoff areas, or wall hitters included Agustin Canapino, Colton Herta, Romain Grosjean, Tom Blomqvist, Graham Rahal—who broke his front wing against the barriers, Grosjean again, Alexander Rossi, Herta again, and Marcus Armstrong.
[lawrence-auto-related count=3 category=1408]
Those who were finished with qualifying were headed by Colton Herta (who starts P14), Callum Ilott (P16), Agustin Canapino (P18), Tom Blomqvist (P20), Devlin DeFrancesco (P22), Santino Ferrucci (P24), Alexander Rossi—whose car was unable to drive away from the runoff (P26), and Graham Rahal (P27).
“Electrically, the car just died,” Rossi said. “Sucks. I’ve never seen that before. We should have been easily P1 and transferred.”
After a long delay due to race control’s confirmation of the results from the previous session, the Fast 12 took to the wet circuit on rain tires, but the rain was no longer falling. Each lap was decidedly faster than the last as water was evacuated from the track and it was the two who pitted for fresh rain tires at the end of the session who were rewarded, led by O’Ward, Lundgaard, Rosenqvist, McLaughlin, Ericsson — who half spun across the finish line and tagged the wall with his left-rear tire, and Will Power, who made his first Fast Six of the year.
Big surprises were led by the Andretti team which led every session up to qualifying but failed to place any of their four drivers in the Fast Six. The field was set behind the Fast Six with Dixon (P7), Kirkwood (P8), Grosjean (P9), Armstrong (P10), Newgarden (P11), and VeeKay (P12).
The track dried enough for the use of slicks to settle the pole, and with five solid minutes of lapping to complete while some sections were rather wet, the last round of qualifying became a thrilling a battle of car control.
McLaughlin was the first to lose that battle with a half spin that also turned into the blocking of Ericsson with 2m30s left on the clock. Almost every driver took a turn at the top, and on the last lap, Lundgaard flew to his second pole of the season.
McLaughlin, O’Ward, Ericsson, Rosenqvist, and Power rounded out the top six.
IndyCar is racing outside the United States for the only time this season with this weekend’s Honda Indy Toronto. Although the contract for the event is set to expire this year, recent signs point toward a new deal that will keep Toronto on the NTT …
IndyCar is racing outside the United States for the only time this season with this weekend’s Honda Indy Toronto. Although the contract for the event is set to expire this year, recent signs point toward a new deal that will keep Toronto on the NTT IndyCar Series calendar — which is just fine with Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing’s Christian Lundgaard, who also says he’d like to see IndyCar expand its footprint further outside the USA.
“I do think it’s important. Not necessarily just Toronto or Canada, but in my opinion, we need to go to South America,” said Lungaard. “We need to go more international. We need to do more fly-away races because that’s what we see in F1 right now — moving more and more over here and there. They’re sort of exploding because of that, just because there’s more people around that are aware. That’s a problem with this racing series being a national racing series. But at the same time, we do have the best racing product in the world.
[lawrence-auto-related count=3 category=1408]
“Obviously, not having raced an IndyCar before last year, every track was new. I had to understand the history of the races, the history of the circuits and all these kinds of things. I’m still trying to catch up on all of that but, after having done Toronto last year, it’s a beautiful city — I really enjoy going there. My best friend will be there for the race as well. He kept asking me which races should he come to, and I picked out a few that were better than others.
“I think that’s why it’s great that it’s on the calendar, and I actually didn’t know the contract was going to be up at the end of this year. I definitely hope they figure something out. If we need to go somewhere else in Toronto, move the track, I think I’ll be up for that as well, but [the current circuit] is a cool track for sure.
Where else would he like the series to go? The Dane admits that, selfishly, he’d love to see a Scandinavian IndyCar race.
“I definitely think we should,” he said. “There’s me and Benjamin [Pedersen]. We’ve actually got Josef [Newgarden] as well, who’s a half-Dane. We’ve got two Swedes. So I think we’ll have to fight over where it’s going to be!
“I know there were plans of actually building a proper racetrack in Denmark. I don’t know what’s happened to it but that would definitely be something that I would be up for and would definitely push for it.”
In the nearer term though, Lundgaard sees South America is a more realistic option for international expansion.
“Right now I don’t think it’s the right time for the series to move to Europe,” he said. “Obviously now with [Agustin] Canapino, I don’t think know if they’re looking for a race in Argentina or not. That would be a starting point. We’ll take it slow, but I do think we definitely need to move somewhere as well.”
More international drivers obviously help drive the push for international races for IndyCar, but Lundgaard feels the rationale goes deeper than that. Motorsport Images
IndyCar’s international contingent will be further bolstered at Toronto with New Zealand-based, Britain-born Swede Tom Blomqvist making his debut for Meyer Shank Racing, filling in for Simon Pagenaud. Lundgaard reckons the Canadian street circuit is a good place for an IndyCar premiere, especially for someone with Blomqvist’s racing résumé.
“With his experience in the [IMSA] LMDh car, they do run Long Beach and run the faster racetracks and longer racetracks as well. I think with his experience, he’ll be fine,” Lundgaard said. “I think he’ll be as competitive as the car will be. I do think it’s a tough track, but he has the experience and the talent to execute with his opportunity.”
Rather than a new circuit, the Dane thinks tires will be the biggest challenge for Blomqvist to overcome.
“I think it’s the difference in compounds,” he said. “We all hear that when you come into a racing series that has different compounds. It’s always difficult to know what extra you’ve got, when you put a softer compound on.
“I think he’ll do well, but it is a tough championship to just jump into and be competitive — even though I feel like the guys that are here now that have [had] a one-off race were all very competitive in their first race.”
While there are obviously special circumstances surrounding Blomqvist’s appearance — one Meyer Shank driver replacing another — the trend of young European racers looking at a future in IndyCar continues to gather steam. Lundgaard thinks it’s a natural word-of-mouth process.
“When I spoke to Callum [Ilott], after I did my first [IndyCar] race in 2021 and I came back to finish my season in F2, I said I just really liked the environment of the series and everything that the series does for the sport. It’s just fun. It reminds me a lot of go-karts. It’s a fun racing series, where I do feel like some of the racing series in Europe can be very political. You get to the point where you’re like, ‘OK, am I really enjoying this? Is this what I really want to do?’ I’m not going to say that you’re doubting yourself, but I think when I came here, I kind of got the spark for the sport again and it made racing fun. I would only say this series has become more competitive since then, so it’s only more fun now.”
