Christian Lundgaard edges Felix Rosenqvist for IndyCar's tightest Fast Six qualifying ever
In a way, Christian Lundgaard was disappointed his first IndyCar podium came on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course last July – because as hard-fought as his first top-7 finish had been with Rahal Letterman Lanigan, the Danish driver was worried about being labeled a one-trick pony.
His first full IndyCar season with the recently expanded team, after starting 4th in his debut race on the IMS road course in August 2021 in a one-off appearance, had been underwhelming to say the least. A midsummer test seemed to change the tides, and then an 8th-place finish at Toronto – his best IndyCar finish to date at the time – beamed as a small ray of sunshine.
And then, after finishing runner-up to Alexander Rossi last July at IMS, he started practice off on the streets of Nashville the fastest in the field. Momentum, he started to realize, could indeed be a meaningful thing.
Now, he’ll see what his first pole-position can do, after coming out on the winning end of IndyCar’s tightest 1-2 margin in a Firestone Fast Six in the road and street course qualifying format’s history. Lundgaard, the driver of RLL’s No. 45 HyVee Honda, edged fellow Scandinavian driver Felix Rosenqvist by 0.0029 seconds to earn the right to lead Saturday’s GMR Grand Prix field to green.
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“Now, we’ve had this performance a lot earlier in the season. I remember last year how much momentum can help, so to get it this early in the season could be a big benefit for us,” Lundgaard said Friday evening after a qualifying session where RLL placed its three drivers all in the top-8 on the grid. “We shouldn’t rely on it too much, but it’s a good thing to keep in mind.
“We expect to be here, but we also need to reward ourselves and understand all the hard work and that it does pay off eventually. At this point, I think we’d be pretty disappointed in 2nd-place tomorrow – especially just a podium. I think we’re absolutely going for winning the race. We’ll see what happens.”
Rosenqvist knows just how hard that task will be, having sat on pole twice on the IMS road course and coming away 8th as a rookie in 2019 and 9th a year ago. Overall, the Arrow McLaren driver has logged four poles across his career and never finished better than that 8th-place as a rookie – the other two ending as DNFs at IndyCar’s last two races at Texas.
After a run where four of the first five polesitters on the IMS road course came away victorious, it’s only happened once in the series’ last eight races on the 2.439-mile road course. Two of the last three and three of the last six victors have started on the outside of the first row.
“This is just IndyCar. You need to put yourself in position as many times as you can in the season and see if you can just get on a roll,” said Rosenqvist, who like Lundgaard, has had a rough start to the 2023 campaign only made mildly better with recent results.
Said Lundgaard, who credits the road course’s European flair with his ability to find comfort here immediately and build upon a setup he himself began crafting in his 2021 debut: “I think I can finally call this place home. Waking up this morning, I knew we’d have a chance to get into the Fast Six, and I could hope this (pole) would happen, but now I an say it’s a reality, which is pretty god-damn cool.
“It’s awesome getting your first pole, but to have Jack 4th and Graham 8th, that’s the best qualifying we’ve had in the two years we’ve been teammates. That shows the road we’ve on, and it’s taken a little longer than we would’ve liked, but now we’ve got to finish it off tomorrow. All the resources that have been put into this team hasn’t been rewarded up until now. To not be able to continue (last year’s late success) annoyed me a lot. I’m asking what we’d done differently (to start 2023), and there wasn’t anything dramatic that should’ve drastically changed as much as we’d seen from the end of the season. But we set a benchmark in Barber (where he started and finished 6th), and now we’re starting on pole.”
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The rest of the field
Lundgaard and Rosenqvist edged out a bit of a hodge-podge group that in many ways are also in need of a breakthrough performance to kick off their respective Months of May. Alex Palou, who sits 3rd in points with three top-5s but just one win in his last 23 starts following his 2021 title, will start 3rd Saturday, sharing the second row with Lundgaard’s teammate Harvey, who currently sits 23rd in points and who has just one finished better than 13th in his 20 starts with RLL while in a contract year.
Pato O’Ward, currently 2nd in points, will start 5th Saturday and has a pair of runner-up finishes in 2023 but has yet to reach the top step. Kyle Kirkwood, who starts 6th Saturday, grabbed his first win in Long Beach this year but only has one other top-12.
Friday’s Fast 12 saw several IndyCar big-hitters bow out earlier than they’d hoped, with points leader Marcus Ericsson dropping from 6th in the session, where he sat when the checkered flag fell, to 7th with Kirkwood’s fast lap. The Chip Ganassi Racing driver remained positive, though. “I’ve always struggled at this track, so 7th for me is still a really good result today,” Ericsson said. He’ll share the fourth row with Rahal, trailed by Scott Dixon (9th), Alexander Rossi (10th), rookie Marcus Armstrong (11th) and Will Power (12th).
Further back in the midfield sits a slew of drivers hoping they can replicate Colton Herta’s win from 14th a year ago, with Josef Newgarden again finishing relatively disappointed in road or street course qualifying without a Fast Six appearance in 2023. During his run on alternate tires, he briefly sat inside the top-6 but had Benjamin Pedersen spin in front of him just as he began his second lap. Had run normal through a local yellow flag and improved his time, it likely would've been disallowed.
After the checkered flag had flown, Rosenqvist jumped all the way up from 12th in Group 1 during Round 1 up to 3rd to knock the Team Penske driver out of the group moving on.
"It was unfortunate. That was the lap to really put it together," Newgarden said. "I don't know what to say, other than it's just bad timing. It's not anybody's fault, outside Benjamin, but you can't predict that stuff. If he doesn't spin, we're in an okay position."
He’ll start 13th, alongside none other than Herta in that 14th starting spot. Scott McLaughlin, the winner of the series’ last race at Barber Motorsports Park last month, will start 16th, trailed by 2021 GMR GP winner Rinus VeeKay (17th), double IMS road course runner-up Romain Grosjean (18th) and three-time IMS road course race winner Simon Pagenaud (19th).
"We just missed the balance completely," said McLauglin, who finished 4th and 7th in Friday's pair of practices before his final Round 1 qualifying lap couldn't quite boost him into moving on. "Things felt pretty good all day, and we changed things a little after Practice No. 2, and we just missed the ballpark. At a track like this, you just can't do that.
"It's just tight. IndyCar is just so hard, and that's why you love it when things go good, but you hate it when things go bad."
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: IndyCar: Christian Lundgaard edges Felix Rosenqvist for GMR Grand Prix pole
