Surprising start offers Christian Lundgaard chance to prove he's IndyCar title contender
Through three races at Arrow McLaren, Christian Lundgaard has rattled off a pair of podiums and sits three spots higher in points than teammate Pato O'Ward.
The next two races on the IndyCar calendar, Barber and the IMS road course, are spots where Lundgaard has thrived earlier in his career.
Among the surprises to the start of the 2025 IndyCar season — Team Penske drivers all sitting outside the top 7, Alex Palou finishing first or second in all three races and a top 10 for both Kyffin Simpson and Sting Ray Robb at Long Beach among them — finding an Arrow McLaren driver not named Pato O'Ward sitting third in points with a pair of podiums and two Fast Six appearances may top the list. But that's the season Christian Lundgaard is having with races he's performed well at on deck.
Though it's not as if top-level success has been impossible for those driving a car other than the No. 5 Chevy — Felix Rosenqvist and Alexander Rossi combined for five podiums and four poles during their combined five seasons at the team — we've yet to see a win from O'Ward's various sidekicks, and he's otherwise yet to be seriously challenged, something the 25-year-old Mexican driver said earlier this year will be vital to both his and the team's future success.
'I strive to be better, and I really hope that everybody on the team also is in that same attitude, because yeah, OK, it's fine to be the lead car or whatever, but it's always good to have that benchmark. Whenever maybe you're not the best, you can always look over and say, 'Hey, the car can do this, so let's go out and explore,' O'Ward said minutes after qualifying on pole at The Thermal Club earlier this year, while sitting next to his newest teammate who helped Arrow McLaren lock out the front row. 'I'm happy to have strong teammates, and I'm happy to have people that are very fast, because that's just going to make me better.
'We need multiple cars at the front. We can't just have one that's fighting up there. All three Penskes are always fighting at the front. All four Ganassis (including two affiliated Meyer Shank Racing cars) are always at the front. It's what you need in IndyCar.'
After this month, one set to include three races, including Barber Motorsports Park this weekend, the IMS road course and the Indianapolis 500, along with a weekend of 500 qualifying, we should have a great sense of just how serious Lundgaard's challenge toward Arrow McLaren's No. 1 spot and being more than a fringe title contender will be.
Following a respectable run to eighth at St. Pete while on an alternate strategy, Lundgaard started on the front row at Thermal and put up a valiant fight to fend off a hard-charging Alex Palou, who would eventually weave his way past the front-running Lundgaard and O'Ward and storm off into the distance for a dominant win. Arrow McLaren's newest driver would follow up that third-place finish three weeks later with another, this one sealed by a closing laps pass of Rosenqvist to seal a second consecutive podium.
Through three races, Lundgaard is one of just five drivers to have finished in the top 10 all three starts – O'Ward has just that runner-up finish at Thermal, along with finishes of 11th (St. Pete) and 13th (Long Beach). Along with points-leader Palou, Lundgaard is the only other IndyCar driver with more than one podium to start the year.
'I was very vocal in the offseason that I wanted to get off to a strong start with Arrow McLaren, and I think we've clearly done that. I've never been higher in the championship than where I am now,' Lundgaard said in the minutes following Long Beach, sitting next to Palou at the media center podium. 'I think today, we showed what we really can be and where we're supposed to be fighting.
'Two back-to-back podiums, unlike this guy, who decides to either win or finish second in every race. But we'll beat him someday, I hope.'
Who will win IndyCar race at Barber?: Schedule, TV coverage, expert prediction, streaming
The problem for the rest of the IndyCar field not named Palou is this: outside the ovals, where he has four podium finishes but no wins, the two-time defending series champion has at least a pair of top-2 finishes at six of the eight remaining road and street course venues, and at least one at all of them. He's won at seven (all but Toronto), too, and he has multiple wins at four of them.
Though his lead isn't yet insurmountable, 34 points over second-place Kyle Kirkwood and 46 over Lundgaard in third, he has few, if any, weak tracks. And as Palou proved a year ago, when he only won twice and none through the back half of the year, his affinity for rattling off top-5s and podiums with relative ease makes overtaking him in points an utterly tall task.
That's where this next stretch for Lundgaard comes in.
You'll find no more successful tracks on the calendar for the 23-year-old Dane than Barber and the IMS road course. Of his 22 top-10 finishes during his three seasons at Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing, seven of them have come in nine combined starts at those two permanent road courses, including back-to-back sixth-place finishes at Barber (both of which have featured Fast Six appearances) and four consecutive top-4 finishes at IMS (one of which came with aid from one of his two career poles).
Barber has proven to be a strong track for O'Ward, too, including a season-opening pole in 2021, a 2022 win, fourth place in 2023 and a top-4 start in 2024. Though results at the IMS road course have been more erratic for Arrow McLaren over the years, their drivers have snagged a pair of poles on the road course and seven top 5s since 2020.
With the added resources and higher overall performance of late from his new home compared to RLL, there's reason to think Lundgaard should have a chance at even a bit better results at the next two stops on the calendar this year. What stands in his way, perhaps, could be both his own front-running teammate and a two-time defending series champion with a history of success at both.
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The challenge to prove his worth and stamp his name firmly among those who should be considered title contenders moving forward is one Lundgaard embraces.
'I don't think this is what I expected (to start the year), but it's what I hoped for. I said several times that I was vocal in the offseason that I wanted to start strong, and I feel like we've done that, and we're going into one of the strongest stretches I have from a track standpoint,' Lundgaard said at last week's Indy 500 open test. 'The team's been strong there, too. We've just got to continue the journey we're currently on.
'I wouldn't be in this situation if I wasn't confident. (The team) sees I have what it takes, and I love pressure. The more pressure, the better. I put enough pressure on myself to perform, and so far, it's working, so I'm not going to stop now.'
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Indianapolis Star
3 hours ago
- Indianapolis Star
10 drivers to watch in up-for-grabs primetime race at World Wide Technology Racewawy
MADISON, Ill. — If ever there were a weekend for pseudo-IndyCar title contenders Pato O'Ward, Kyle Kirkwood, Christian Lundgaard and Co. to take a chunk out of runaway points leader Alex Palou, there may be no better time than the Sunday primetime stage at World Wide Technology Raceway. Yes, Palou finally turned a corner last month and won on an oval for the first time in his career at the Indianapolis 500, but the egg-shaped 1.25-mile oval just outside St. Louis is a different beast entirely — a track many drivers say is almost as similar to running a couple of high-speed road course corners as an oval. And despite Palou's road course prowess across his five-plus IndyCar seasons that feature three titles and 16 victories, WWTR is a track that hasn't been kind to him. If you can believe it, across his 37 career IndyCar podium—s, none have come at WWTR – one of two tracks (along with The Milwaukee Mile, where he only has two starts) where he's never logged a podium. It's one of just three tracks where Palou's never even led a single lap. Last year's fourth-place finish remains his only top-5 finish in his six starts at the venue and one of three top 10s. With seven wins across the five remaining road and street course venues on the 2025 IndyCar calendar and podiums each of the last two years at Iowa Speedway, if Palou's rivals wish to take a meaningful bite out of his championship cushion, which stands at 90 points to O'Ward and more than 100 to the rest of the field, Sunday's battle under the lights may be the best opportunity to get it done. 'You've got to win races. That's the only way you can answer back at Alex at this point. He's just flawless, and the only time that he hasn't finished well this season is a track where someone else crashed him completely out of his control,' Kirkwood, IndyCar's only other race-winner in 2025, said. 'The only way I can catch back up is either a) winning a ton of races, or b) him having a lot of back luck, and I don't see him having a lot of bad luck.' The potential for a title fight swing along makes IndyCar's first primetime Sunday night race on network TV in recent memory a compelling battle to be fought under the lights, but here are 10 other drivers to watch. Blame it in part on Palou's other-worldly dominance in 2025, including wins in five of the season's first six races on all three types of IndyCar tracks, but it's not often we see such a lengthy absence of Team Penske drivers in victory lane. Following Kirkwood's second win of the year at the Detroit Grand Prix, that stretch has extended to eight races, dating back to last season's finale at Nashville Superspeedway. It's only the team's fourth such dry spell in the wins category since the start of the 2015 season. And the arrival of WWTR on the calendar couldn't come at a better time. The team has now snagged pole each of IndyCar's last six trips to the track — with Will Power taking the latest Saturday to go with ones from 2020, 2021 and 2022 and Scott McLaughlin's from 2023 and '24. Newgarden has won four the last five races at WWTR, and five of IndyCar's nine races at the track since it returned to the calendar since 2017. Power also won at the track in 2018, and McLaughlin has finishes of second, third, fourth and fifth in his four career starts. Newgarden famously isn't one to dwell on past performance, good or bad, when theorizing about his team's potential for an upcoming race, typically offering up a version of his quote from Friday afternoon's bullpen to IndyStar: 'I feel good everywhere we go.' Still, it's hard to look past the fact that only one other time in his nine seasons with Team Penske has the two-time series champion gone this deep into the year without a win. In that 2021 season, Newgarden still totaled three runner-up finishes in his first eight starts, only suffered one finish outside the top 12 in that stretch and would go on to finish runner-up in the championship. Heading into Sunday night's race, Newgarden sits a colossally disappointing 12th in points in 2025 with just a single podium, two finishes outside the top 20 and four top 12s. 'It sorta just is what it is,' Newgarden said. 'That's the simplest way to deal with it. You've just got to go to the next one and put your best foot forward.' The motivation for McLaughlin, who grabbed his first two career IndyCar wins on ovals last year at Iowa Speedway and The Milwaukee Mile, is somewhat similar to Newgarden, as a driver who opened the 2025 campaign with serious title aspirations after a pair of back-to-back third-place championship finishes, but who after crashing out of the Indy 500 on the parade laps and suffering a mechanical failure at The Thermal Club has two finishes of 27th or worse this year. Unlike Newgarden, McLaughlin otherwise has had solid performances throughout the season with four top-6s, though a 12th-place finish at Detroit earlier this month after a stop-and-go penalty for avoidable contact with Nolan Siegel piled on a second consecutive disappointment on top of the debilitating one at the 500. 'I don't believe that it's not my year yet, but I certainly need to get on the train and start winning races and getting some consistency back,' McLaughlin said. 'I guess you can't dwell too much on the fact we haven't won a race yet. We go to strong tracks, and I think we showed really good pace. We just haven't put it together. 'I feel like we've been there or thereabout, pace-wise, but we just haven't quite executed, and that's on us.' 'I'm very good at it': Will Power has unshaken confidence in contract year with Team Penske Power sits three spots higher than McLaughlin in the championship standings in fifth and has logged Team Penske's best finish at five of the seven races, and yet he lacks a contract beyond the end of this season in a ride he's manned full-time since 2010. The 44-year-old told IndyStar this week he's focused on not pressing the issue in on-track situations and yearning for a win any more than normal, though Sunday's polesitter also admitted a victory would continue to build himself 'little bits of credit' as he politics for an extension. 'Anytime you're P1, in any session, it's just little bits of credit, and one race win would be one chunk of credit," Power said after grabbing pole Saturday. 'You just have to keep doing that. Just the nature of this series. It's very competitive right now. Teams are looking for top-level drivers. It's come down to that. People that can execute week in and week out. You've got to keep putting runs on the board.' Perhaps one of the biggest threats to Team Penske's bounce-back weekend is a driver manning a sister car also starting in the top 5. AJ Foyt Racing's David Malukas, who starts fourth Sunday, has quickly become a folk hero around this short oval with two podium finishes, the first two of his IndyCar career, coming in his first and second starts at WWTR with Dale Coyne Racing in 2022 (second) and '23 (third). Famously, that stellar rookie performance came in a rain-delayed evening final sprint of the race where he shot like a rocket through the front of the field, passing McLaughlin in the process and finished second only to Newgarden, the proverbial king of the track of late. Last year, though, the record books show a DNF in 21st place, Malukas seemed to be on the winning strategy and attempted what at the time looked as if it might be the race-winning pass on Power with 21 laps to go up the inside into Turn 1. With a car ahead, Malukas, who was racing for Meyer Shank Racing at the time, had nowhere to go, and as the pair rounded the Turn 1-2 complex side by side, Power inched up to try and take the position back and pinched Malukas with a tiny tap that sent the MSR car into a slide into the wall and ended his pursuit of his first IndyCar victory. Saturday, Malukas finished third fastest in the afternoon practice before his top-5 qualifying performance and turning the fastest lap in Saturday night's final practice, only further solidifying the 23-year-old as a legitimate favorite come Sunday, something Malukas almost blushed when asked about. 'IndyCar always posts about (my record) every time we come here, and I think last year, we really had that opportunity,' Malukas said. 'But we'll go at it again, and as long as we get a good result up around there, I'm happy.' 'Nothing in front of me': Will Power won his IndyCar-best pole despite near-2-year drought Perhaps other than the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, there may be no other race track on the IndyCar calendar that Conor Daly looks forward to more than the short oval just outside St. Louis. Though he's not always qualified all that superbly — Daly only has one top-10 start at WWTR in eight previous races — the Hoosier has an affinity for carving into the top 10 by the checkered flag with four such finishes and others of 11th and 13th. And as Daly looks at Sunday, the driver who sits fifth all-time in IndyCar history in starts without a win (122 and counting) thinks he and the No. 76 Juncos Hollinger Racing crew should, at minimum, be fighting for a top-5, if not a podium to match the one they earned together last year at Milwaukee. This race, too, offers the first time the team and driver return to a track where Daly ran for JHR last year in his end-of-the-year fill-in role, giving them an opportunity to improve upon a car that despite damage incurred early in the race could still make passes and carve through the midfield. Daly was admittedly irked to have qualified 15th, but he still held firm on his belief the No. 76 can be a dark horse challenger come Sunday night. 'We were already excited (coming to WWTR) because of what we could see in where we were a little down last year,' Daly said. 'I love this track. I've wanted to win here ever since I started coming here. Obviously, it's really tough to beat the Penske cars here, and it always has been, but we're going to put up a fight I hope. 'We have to aim high. It's important to, and there's no reason for us to not be confident. We just have to execute. To win one of these races, you just have to be perfect.' How to watch: IndyCar Bommarito Automotive Grand Prix near St. Louis qualifying, lineup, time, TV, radio Neither Kirkwood (third in the championship, 102 points back) or Lundgaard (fourth, 106 points back) have logged a top-10 at WWTR in their full-time careers that include three previous visits each. Power, back in fifth place with that one win in 2018, holds a 136-point gap to Palou. It puts all the brighter spotlight on O'Ward to capitalize at a track where up until last year he done just about everything up front but win. The No. 5 Chevy driver bowed out of the 2024 race with a mechanical failure after finishes of third, second, second, fourth and second in his first five starts that began with the 2020 doubleheader. He starts third Sunday, and with a win and a finish from Palou outside the top 5, O'Ward would cut at least 20 points off that deficit still before the season's halfway point. Though he's well outside the championship conversation down in 19th with just a single top 10 in 2025, there may be no legitimate race-contending driver more sorely in need of a pick-me-up than Marcus Ericsson, who last year was running comfortably in the top 5 until a hybrid failure ended his day. In six starts at the track, the Andretti Global driver has logged four top-10s with a best finish of fifth. Ericsson lost 10 spots in the championship when his runner-up finish in the 500 last month was thrown out for a post-race tech inspection failure. The 2022 Indy 500 winner has taken to oval racing during his seven years in the sport, and even if it's not a win Sunday, a finish toward the top of the field could begin to inject some much-needed momentum into the No. 28 Honda crew as it begins this strenuous summer stretch. Though his second qualifying performance (18th) with new race engineer Michael Cannon wasn't nearly as stellar as his first at Detroit (seventh), there's reason to wonder if Rinus VeeKay might be able to put on a show from the back half of the field. In the car that Malukas drove to his pair of podiums while at Coyne, VeeKay, a strong oval racer, makes his first short-oval start with an engineer on his timing stand he's called "the Albert Einstein of IndyCar" and who helped turn AJ Foyt Racing from a relative afterthought into a race-contending program in a couple years. You need look at nothing more than Indy 500 polesitter Robert Shwartzman's qualifying results (24th) to know that Sunday's race and this weekend is unlikely to be much like the superspeedway the rookie excelled on at times last month. With just a brief, segmented practice to get up to speed before hopping in for qualifying, Shwartzman said he struggled to find the same comfort he rode to his surprise 500 pole earlier this spring. His teammate Callum Ilott will slot in 16th, giving the young British driver a legitimate shot to deliver the first-year Prema Racing team its best finish to date, should he best Shwartzman's 16th-place performance from Detroit.
San Francisco Chronicle
6 hours ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Mexico overcomes slow start to defeat Dominican Republic 3-2 in Gold Cup group stage
INGLEWOOD, Calif. (AP) — Defending champion Mexico overcame a slow start to defeat the Dominican Republic 3-2 on Saturday night in a CONCACAF Gold Cup group stage match. West Ham midfielder Edson Álvarez opened the scoring in the 44th minute, Fulham striker Raúl Jiménez added a goal in the 47th and defender César Montes got another one in the 53rd. Jiménez now has 40 goals with the Mexican national team and is six away from Jared Borgetti, in second place on the career scoring list for El Tri. Javier Hernández is Mexico's top scorer with 52. 'It was a good win to start with. I congratulate my team, who maintained their emotional balance. It was a hard-fought, but fair victory," said Mexico coach Javier Aguirre. 'Our rival did a lot of merit, they demanded us, they did a good job.' Mexico leads Group A with three points while the Dominican Republic is at the bottom. Costa Rica and Suriname, the other countries in the group, will face off on Sunday in Snapdragon stadium in San Diego. 'We were patient, we scored three goals and it was an attractive match for the fans, although there are things that need to be corrected,' Aguirre added. Peter González in the 51st minute and Edison Ascona in the 67th scored for the Dominicans, who earned their first qualification as one of the four group winners in League B of the CONCACAF Nations League. The match was played at SoFi stadium before 54,309 fans, most of them rooting for Mexico. There was uncertainty on how many Mexican fans would attend the match. On Friday, Mexico's President Claudia Sheinbaum urged U.S. officials not to target individuals attending the game. Dozens of workers have been detained by federal immigration authorities in a series of raids in LA's fashion district and at Home Depot parking lots in Southern California. More than 100 people have been detained. Mexico will try to qualify for the next round next Wednesday when they play Suriname while the Dominican Republic will play Costa Rica. Both matches will be played at the AT&T stadium in Arlington, Texas.
7 hours ago
Mexico overcomes slow start to defeat Dominican Republic 3-2 in Gold Cup group stage
INGLEWOOD, Calif. -- INGLEWOOD, Calif. (AP) — Defending champion Mexico overcame a slow start to defeat the Dominican Republic 3-2 on Saturday night in a CONCACAF Gold Cup group stage match. West Ham midfielder Edson Álvarez opened the scoring in the 44th minute, Fulham striker Raúl Jiménez added a goal in the 47th and defender César Montes got another one in the 53rd. Jiménez now has 40 goals with the Mexican national team and is six away from Jared Borgetti, in second place on the career scoring list for El Tri. Javier Hernández is Mexico's to scorer with 52. Mexico leads Group A with three points while the Dominican Republic is at the bottom. Costa Rica and Suriname, the other countries in the group, will face off on Sunday in Snapdragon stadium in San Diego. Peter González in the 51st minute and Edison Ascona in the 67th scored for the Dominicans, who earned their first qualification as one of the four group winners in League B of the CONCACAF Nations League. The match was played at SoFi stadium before 54,309 fans, most of them rooting for Mexico. There was uncertainty on how many Mexican fans would attend the match. On Friday, Mexico's President Claudia Sheinbaum urged U.S. officials not to target individuals attending the game. Dozens of workers have been detained by federal immigration authorities in a series of raids in LA's fashion district and at Home Depot parking lots in Southern California. More than 100 people have been detained. Mexico will try to qualify for the next round next Wednesday when they play Suriname while the Dominican Republic will play Costa Rica. Both matches will be played at the AT&T stadium in Arlington, Texas.
