How did “confused” Lundgaard win from last at Road America?
- Archie O’Reilly
- 5 minutes ago
- 8 min read
“I don’t know,” Christian Lundgaard conceded with a chuckle.
Frankly, he was just about as miffed as the rest of us at how, at the end of 55 laps at Road America on Sunday, he had quite found himself in Victory Lane for a second time in 2026.
“A confusing weekend,” he uttered. “To end with a win I would say confuses me even more.”
Since joining Arrow McLaren last season, the Dane has emerged within a class of two on road courses in IndyCar, alongside Chip Ganassi Racing (CGR)’s Álex Palou. He scored five podiums in the seven road-course rounds last year, albeit with Palou winning four of those and Will Power victorious when Lundgaard finally ousted the four-time champion in Portland.
That stellar form continued into 2026, with a runner-up result at Barber Motorsports Park - denied a fight with Palou for the win due to a botched pit stop - before an eventual first victory in papaya in May’s Grand Prix of Indianapolis.
But for a driver on a five-race rostrum run on road courses, the Road America weekend proved challenging.
Lundgaard was a team-low 13th place in opening practice, despite having tested at Road America in a private, five-team outing the week prior. That regressed to 24th in Practice 2, before the driver half-responsible for the current road-course duopoly failed to follow suit to his teammates and was knocked out in the first round of qualifying.
The woes of a mid-pack start were only compounded on the run down to Turn 1 on the opening lap of the race, when Lundgaard made contact with the rear of CGR’s Scott Dixon, damaging his front wing and front-left tyre. By the end of Lap 1, he was pits-bound and down in 25th. Plum last.
“Actually, [team principal Tony Kanaan] said not to do exactly what I did: ‘Don’t make life harder on yourself,’” Lundgaard recalled post-race. “I’m not quite sure what exactly happened. In the moment, I thought it was my fault - basically just ran into the back of Dixon.
“Obviously at that point, I know how long the race is. It was really to try to stay on the lead lap - that was the main goal. It wasn’t very easy with the tyre missing, basically. It’s super important to come out in front of the leaders at that time. [But] when you’re driving on three wheels, I rather want to just get it to the pit lane than anything else.”
Naturally, marginally hanging onto lead-lap status ahead of race-leading Palou, owing to his team’s swift repairs, Lundgaard knew salvaging a result in line with his ordinary expectations was a tall order. Even before the incident, he had felt that way. But the importance of simply staying in the game and having the chance to gamble was not lost on him.
Immediately, he was able to harness one of a rocky weekend’s rare positives, which was being forced to turn to the softer alternate-compound tyres after damaging his starting primary set. And with that, some of the mystifyingly elusive speed started to return.
“I think a lot of drivers had been negative, never really knew what [the alternates] were going to do. I was very happy with them,” Lundgaard explained. “It sounded like everybody was degging a little more. I was having a great time driving around. I wasn’t really full, full push. Just trying to maintain.
“It’s such a long race. One caution brings you back in the game. You’ve just got to take it from there after that. I knew we were going to be fighting for a top 10 regardless, just from the pace that we had. [But] I didn’t really expect it to be a win…”
Even before any stark progress was necessarily made visible by his position in the order, Lundgaard had found a comfort level in the car. From the beginning right through to the climax, scarce tweaks were necessary to his No.7 machine.
But having to recover from the rear, there was an acknowledgement that it would take being adventurous on strategy - not merely trying to cut through the field with overtakes - to salvage more than a damage-limiting result.
So even with the threat of an ill-timed caution dropping him right back down the order, come crunch time, Lundgaard extended his final stint as late as possible. He knew it was a risk - but his strategist Kyle Moyer, formerly of Team Penske, is esteemed for his bold approach to races.
“In terms of making passes, there were certainly times in the race where I thought: ‘Why am I able to just drive through people?’” Lundgaard reflected. “Then I kind of got stuck, couldn’t really do anything, specifically to [Ed Carpenter Racing’s Alexander] Rossi. I was actually quite fast at that time in the race.
“The one thing I have learned with Kyle is he’s not afraid of taking risks [on strategy]. I’m sure it’s going to bite us someday. The more races we can win until then, the better. If we’re ever in contention at the [Indianapolis] 500, I just hope it isn’t that day that it bites us.
“He’s very aggressive, but he also knows exactly what he’s doing. There’s no question in his mind. Whenever he makes a mistake, he’s honest about it, raises his hand. I think it helps the group move forward. There’s never any unanswered questions.”
By Lap 43, Lundgaard had cycled to the race lead before his final stop - with over a 10-second buffer to Meyer Shank Racing (MSR)’s Felix Rosenqvist on the same late-stopping strategy. Crucially, with the existing leaders having stopped much earlier in the final pit window, Lundgaard had created a pit stop’s gap to net-second-place David Malukas.
From seemingly a non-factor, such was his pace out front, Lundgaard was in the game.
As he finally bit the bullet on Lap 45, able to execute a slightly shorter stop given not a whole-fill of fuel was necessary, Lundgaard cycled out ahead of Malukas. On cold tyres, he was promptly overtaken by the Penske driver on the out-lap, though that was soon reversed on his quicker alternate rubber.
A masterful strategic manoeuvre had been expertly executed. Suddenly, what had appeared a straightforward run to a maiden victory for MSR’s Marcus Armstrong out front was jeopardy-laden. Lundgaard was scything into his multi-second lead. And quickly.
“Throughout the whole race, I knew I had a car, if we were in the front, we would be pretty competitive,” Lundgaard assessed. “When I came out in front of Malukas on the last stint and then got past, that was the moment I realised we were fighting for a podium.
“I never thought I was going to catch Marcus. I was going to give it my best shot to get close to him and put him under some pressure. But it wasn’t really obvious [that a win was in play] at any point until then.”
At points earlier in the closing 10 laps, Lundgaard was making inroads of a half-second per lap. Then just as it appeared his gap to Armstrong had started to plateau at still over two seconds, the cruellest of fate struck for the race-leading New Zealander, losing power and pace and within a matter of corners going up in smoke.
Lundgaard’s extraordinary surge had taken him right to the point. But not executing a pass for the lead on merit, the circumstances were bittersweet.
“I was trying to drive around and do some math of the speed that I was faster than him and still the gap that I had to close,” Lundgaard said of the laps before Armstrong’s car failure. “I think Kyle told me at this pace we were going to catch him on the last lap… but I still have to get by him.”
The job was not done when Lundgaard inherited the lead on Lap 52, though. The ensuing caution to recover Armstrong’s stricken car left time for a one-lap dash of green-flag running to the finish, on which he was required to hold off Malukas as his softer tyres started to fade. But he was flawlessly composed and came under no great duress.
As anticlimactic as the final seizing of the win may have been, it was to take nothing away from Lundgaard’s drive. And having possibly lost a win of his own through the blunder in pit lane at Barber, maybe it was retribution of sorts.
“I feel like this one today is a little bit of a cheat code,” Lundgaard admitted of his third career win, having also won in Toronto with Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing (RLL) in 2023. “I think Marcus should have won this race. It is racing; we’ve all had that. It happened to me in Nashville last year, which cost me P3 in the championship. I’ve been there. Most of us have.
“Ultimately, we made the right moves at the right time. Staying out on that last pit sequence is what really gained us the win. But that’s also the riskiest thing we could do because we’re exposing ourselves to a yellow. That was ‘win it or finish last’ at that time.”
There was almost a sense of bemusement over the radio and within the jubilation of the audible Arrow McLaren celebrations. “How did we do that?” Lundgaard instantly exclaimed. Telling, probably, of how the event had been going.
“We’ve been so confused this weekend,” he again emphasised in the aftermath. “This is not where we expected to be.”
But while this was victory on a day where such success was not anticipated, the nature of the win was entirely calculated, even in its elements of fortune. The focus from here is for the same standard of execution to be repeated from races spent more regularly at the one of the field.
“It was a very eventful day, very long day,” Lundgaard divulged. “Not quite what I had on my bingo card waking up this morning. Obviously this is what you hope for. I know on road courses, didn’t really matter where we would start, we would always get good results. We produce very good race cars.
“We need to still figure out how to qualify better. That will help our weekends tremendously. Obviously this weekend has been a little bit of an outlier for me. Not felt comfortable, not had the pace in Practice 1 or Practice 2, even though we tested here two weeks ago. Maybe I just need to be confused.”
While still fourth in the standings, Lundgaard has closed to within 77 points of Palou’s lead and lies only 17 points behind second, now held by Malukas.
He finished fifth in points last year - the best finish of a teammate to Pato O’Ward - but with two wins and a total of four podiums through 10 rounds, compared to O’Ward’s podium-less slate, he has had the measure of the Mexican driver so far in 2026. That form is reflected in the championship, where O’Ward currently sits 40 points behind Lundgaard.
“Everything is going according to how I thought it would,” Lundgaard declared. “First year in the team, obviously Pato is very established in there; it’s try to learn as much as possible together, make the package better. I feel like I’ve evolved a little bit. I think he’s gone a little bit backwards, unfortunately, in terms of results. [But] I know how good he is.”
Down the stretch this season, with a best result this term of 10th at World Wide Technology Raceway, Lundgaard continues to have more to prove on ovals, where he has had to undergo something of a re-education since departing RLL. But he continues to prove himself as one of the series’ best on road and street tracks, including heading his own team’s ranks.
In a contract year, he has a new deal to secure in the closing half of the 2026 campaign. But Lundgaard insists he would rather be nowhere other than his current situation, where his two wins for an organisation vying to disrupt the regular title contenders certainly help his cause.
“Well, it never hurts, does it?” he posed. Quite the opposite, as whether he leaves a race confused or preferably otherwise, Lundgaard continues to place himself in IndyCar’s top bracket. And Arrow McLaren will not want to lose such a budding superstar.
