Mike Shank on Tom Blomqvist's IndyCar debut: 'I want to see how he reacts. I want to test him.'
TORONTO – Tom Blomqvist logged a win with Mike Shank’s IMSA team 60 miles away from where he’s set to make his IndyCar debut. And yet, when the team owner called his 29-year-old sportscar ace to offer an injury replacement run for Simon Pagenaud in Sunday’s Honda Indy Toronto, Blomqvist had to luck into a standby flight from London late Wednesday night to ensure he wouldn’t miss a wall-to-wall afternoon of meetings and a seat-fit for his temporary ride.
Staring at nearly a month off from racing before IMSA’s GTP field returned to the track at Road America the first week of August, Blomqvist had plans to get back to his home in Monaco and recharge before MSR’s final title push.
“I’d been in contact with Mike, as well as Simon, and he’d been struggling, but he was feeling better and better every single day, so I was like, ‘That was two weeks ago!’ But no one understood the extent of his injury – not even him – so I played the odds game,” Blomqvist told IndyStar on Thursday. “I don’t really want to hang in Canada for three days, when I feel like the odds of me driving are lower than not.”
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So he flew back to London from Toronto late Sunday night after his run to victory with teammate Colin Braun that afternoon and treaded water for 36 hours or so with a ticket toward relaxation taking off Tuesday night. By that afternoon, he’d yet to hear anything.
“So I’m on my way to the airport, had literally just gotten there, and Mike calls. ‘Dude, you’re in’,” Blomqvist said.
That began a chaotic 24-hour travel nightmare for what he’s calling the most daunting race weekend of his 15-year professional career. He sped home, unpacked his vacation bag and haphazardly threw things together for a race weekend in a car he’s never driven at a track he’d never seen.
“And then I start looking for a flight, and I don’t know why, but every single flight to Toronto (for Thursday) is sold out. I ended up with the most expensive economy ticket of my life (for Wednesday) to get here, and then I go to check-in, and it was saying I couldn’t choose a seat,” he continued. “It says ‘There aren’t any seats available. You can’t check-in until you get to the airport.’
“And they tell me I’m on (expletive) stand-by. ‘You’re kidding me!’ And it’s the last flight of the day to get to Toronto. Everything Thursday was all sold out.”
As he was frantically scrolling and pounding away at a keyboard, looking for flights into New York or Boston, just to get on the right continent, he was told a spot had finally opened up.
Now, for the really hard part.
Shank on Blomqvist: 'I want to test him'
Ironically, Shank says Blomqvist landed what the driver has called a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” because of his ability to comb through the chaos. The British-born driver, who grew up in New Zealand idolizing Scott Dixon, has raced nearly two seasons with MSR in IMSA’s top prototype class. He’s run more than a half-dozen endurance races for Shank and Jim Meyer (among the rest of his IMSA starts since 2022) but two of his untold thousands of laps are ingrained in his owner’s head:
>>Blomqvist’s stole pole for this year’s Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona after a single flying lap straight out of the pits as time expired.
>>Last October in his lone day in an IndyCar before Friday, he spun so bad the MSR crew had to nurse the car back into alignment. Then, Blomqvist logged his fastest lap of the day his very next flying lap.
“He’s got really good speed, and he believes he’s the fastest guy out there,” Shank told IndyStar on Thursday. “And I want to see how he reacts to all of this. I want to test him, and this is truly a test. Our expectations are very managed, but this is an incredibly difficult series – let alone track.
“I think he deserves it, and if he wants it like he says he does, then we want to give it to him.”
A last-minute IndyCar debut: Tom Blomqvist to sub-in for injured Simon Pagenaud in Toronto
Growing up, Blomqvist’s ultimate goal, like so many, was Formula 1, but even after winning the 2010 Formula Renault UK title and taking 2nd-place in Formula 3 European championship in 2014, sandwiched by currently Alpine F1 driver Esteban Ocon and two-time defending F1 champ Max Verstappen, the young Brit’s open-wheel career stalled. A switch to DTM – the European series where Robert Wickens made his name – followed, along with dalliances in WEC and Formula E through the end of 2021.
That summer two years ago, Shank was searching through driver lineups “in every series in the world” for his sportscar lineup and Blomqvist’s runner-up in class in the 24 Hours of Le Mans that summer caught his eye. His other results sealed a test.
And during a gong show of a group tryout at Road Atlanta that fall, Shank says, “He just destroyed everyone, just killed it, and I understood exactly what we needed.”
Nearly two years later, that talent has Blomqvist believed to be on the brink of – or even perhaps already signed to – an IndyCar ride for 2024. When asked Thursday if Blomqvist’s future was already earmarked for IndyCar, having told IndyStar earlier this month that one of his two IndyCar rides for 2024 was set and would be announced in August, Shank said, “We’re working on it, debating it. That’s the only reason we’re here, and we’ll see.”
Blomqvist, to his credit, leaned into the rumblings Thursday, telling reporters, “In a way, this is a good opportunity for me, getting thrown right into the deep end. You don’t get many opportunities like this. I know there’s a lot of rumors going around about what’s happening for me in the future, but this is obviously an extremely big shot for me to learn as much as possible.
“I’ve packed my floaties, and I don’t know if I’m going to be drowning or not, but we’ll see.”
Asked what he sees as his biggest challenge to secure Shank’s hope of transferring onto the second round of qualifying and landing a top-15 finish in Sunday’s 85-lap race around the tight 11-turn, 1.786-mile street circuit, Blomqvist was rather frank. There’s the ‘racer’s mindset’ that has gotten him to the brink of an IndyCar career and wants – even expects – to flash the speed that wowed Shank, but that half will be sparring with a realism that, at least outwardly, is trying to shun any level of pressure anyone might place on his shoulders.
“I don’t know the car or the track, and that’s probably the worst combo you could possibly have (in racing) because everything’s so much more foreign – and yet, I have all the data. I should have all the information I need to make my life as easy as possible,” Blomqvist said. “I’m a racing driver, and this is what we do for a living. I understand how to drive a racecar, so at the end of the day, I just need to figure it out quick – certainly a lot quicker than I ever have.
“And this isn’t a championship where you have 10 good guys and 15 half-decent ones. There’s 27 of some of the best racing drivers in the world, and if I’m last, I can’t be unrealistic about it. This is definitely going to be my most difficult race weekend to date, and I just want to make the most of it. I want to thank Jim and Mike, though I might be hating them after this weekend.”
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Tom Blomqvist flew standby to Toronto for IndyCar debut. Now the real test begins.
