Yahoo Autos Rookie of the Year-elect Lundqvist making strong case for 2025 seat
Chip Ganassi Racing’s Linus Lundqvist is cruising to the Rookie of the Year title and making a strong case for potential employers in the NTT IndyCar Series field after producing his second top six performance in a span of three races.
The 2022 Indy Lights champion has had a typical rookie season in some regards – making and learning from mistakes – and as the championship has accelerated towards its finish, Lundqvist has also proven to be one of the great surprises with a road course podium at Barber and an oval podium at World Wide Technology Raceway.
Add in his strong qualifying at the first Milwaukee race, passing Team Penske’s Scott McLaughlin and leading 19 laps, and coming home sixth, and the 25-year-old has been showing the kind of growth and pace that should have him on a number of teams’ radars for 2025.
“We had a good day, but I’m not gonna lie, I’m almost a little bit disappointed with a P6 because I felt like we drove a good race and were real fast,” Lundqvist told RACER. “For the first time, I properly led an IndyCar race, which was fun. So I’m taking a lot of positives from it. We had a couple of things go wrong as well, both on my end and elsewise, so there are things still to polish up for the second race, but we’ll take a P6 today.”
Although it’s unconfirmed, his Ganassi team is expected to trim two of its five cars from the program next season, which would make Lundqvist a free agent. Sitting 16th in the drivers’ championship, Lundqvist has Graham Rahal and Romain Grosjean directly behind him and Rinus VeeKay and Marcus Ericsson, the former driver of his No. 8 Honda, right in front of him with two races left in the season. It’s heady territory for a rookie.
“It’s not a bad time to start ramping up the pace here,” he said. “I want to be here, and I do believe that I deserve to be here, too, and all I can do right now is try to focus one race at a time, one qualifying session at a time, and try to prove and do my best on track. I’m trying to work on opportunities.”
