McLaren on the front row at Mid-Ohio: "this is what you want when you have a teammate"

Credit: Bella Rosen

The McLaren pair of Christian Lundgaard and Pato O'Ward qualified on the front row at Mid-Ohio in a delayed qualifying session.

Qualifying was set to take place at 2:35 local time in Ohio, but right before the session could begin, lightning was detected in the vicinity and a lengthy weather delay followed. The session finally began almost two hours later, and at the end of a lengthy day for the drivers it was two McLarens at the front of the field.

Lundgaard, who secured pole position ahead of his teammate O'Ward, has the best average finishing position on road courses this season of 1.33. Coming off the back of his win at Road America, everyone expected him to be fighting near the front all weekend.

"Yeah, we've been fast all weekend," said Lundgaard after qualifying. "So I feel like it was just the goal at the end of the day. Obviously we qualified second here last year, and to do it any better, it was one position.

"To have it as a team, too, at the end of the day, if it's one way or the other, I don't think it really matters. We're leading the show tomorrow, and we can dictate the pace. So I think that will be at least our strongest benefit tomorrow."

Credit: Dominic Loyer

This weekend has been busy in terms of silly season, with Scott Dixon's shock announcement that he was leaving Chip Ganassi Racing at the end of the year sparking rumours that Lundgaard would be out of a seat at Arrow McLaren. As the team's current best-performing driver and someone who seems to be an integral part of the team, this news came as a surprise for the Danish driver, but he's continuing on without letting it affect his performance.

"Well, at the end of the day for me it's just noise," said Lundgaard, speaking about the recent news. "Once you're in the car, I don't really think anything matters. The talk is for next year, not this year. I still have a job to do and a job to finish."

With the news just having broken, and word on the street being that part of Lundgaard's contract with McLaren doesn't allow him to negotiate with other teams yet, no one knows where he might go next year.

"I mean, there's a lot of talks back and forth," Lundgaard said. "At the end of the day, I still have a job to do now. What next year brings, at the end of the day, I still don't know. My guess is as good as yours is from that regard. But as long as I keep doing the best that I can and keep winning races, I feel like those results speak for themselves."

Lundgaard currently sits fourth in the championship standings, behind Álex Palou, David Malukas and Kyle Kirkwood. Palou may be running away with what would be his fourth consecutive title (though he'll start tomorrow's race from eighth on the grid), but Lundgaard believes he has a leg up on Malukas and Kirkwood.

“Well winning would be great," Lundgaard told DIVEBOMB at the start of the weekend. "Well [Palou] is strong, he’s strong everywhere he goes, so it’s tough. I feel like I’m in many ways in a better position than Kyle and David are, even though I’m behind them in the championship. But we just need to have a strong ending to the season where Álex has a more unfortunate end to it. But we have to keep doing what we’re doing, win races, and we just have to finish ahead of him.”

Qualifying on pole is a good start to that statement, especially with Palou starting further down the field.

O'Ward on having Lundgaard as a teammate

Credit: Bella Rosen

Lundgaard has been with the Arrow McLaren outfit for one and a half seasons now, where he's been teammates with O'Ward and Nolan Siegel (who qualified 15th today at Mid-Ohio, if anyone was wondering) the whole time.

Despite the fact that it's looking more and more like the pair won't be teammates in 2027, O'Ward believes that they've been able to push each other well the past season and a half.

"I think we've had a very strong pairing, to be honest, in the last two years," commented O'Ward after qualifying. "This is not the first time that we're sharing a front row, and I think what we strive to do every single weekend is just this, right? Like this is what we want to be doing. This is where we want to be positioning our race team and our engine manufacturer, which it was good to see this qualifying session was quite strong for Team Chevy, so thanks to them for bringing a good package for us this weekend for all of us to try and get it done.

"Yeah, this is what you want when you have a teammate. You want to be able to push each other. You want to be able to keep striving for the ultimate ceiling, right, which a lot of the times you don't know where it is."

O'Ward is chasing his first podium of the season, the Mexican driver having now surpassed his total of most consecutive IndyCar races without a podium. Second place is his best qualifying result of the year, so he's not in the mood to risk what could be a much-needed good result.

"I mean, I don't think we're in a position to be rolling the dice, to be honest," said O'Ward after qualifying. "We have a good position. There's a lot of things that can happen. I've started in the front row other times this year, and we've had some happy pedalers behind that pumped us or take us out. You cannot control that. I cannot control that. I also cannot control if we have a hiccup in the pits. I cannot control that.

"All I can do is maximise what I've got inside of the race car, and I truly believe that's what I've been doing this year. I don't think I've driven as well as I have this year. Sadly, the results I don't think are well correlated with that, but I think there's a lot of little things that have been costing us a lot of just much better results in certain areas.

"My hope for tomorrow is just to have a clean race. I don't need the fastest pit stops. I don't need the best strategy. I don't need extremely lucky yellows. All I need is a nice smooth race, and I'm more than skilled enough to get the job done."

Lundgaard and O'Ward will lead the field to green on Sunday afternoon at Mid-Ohio in a race that, barring any further weather disruptions, will begin at 12:30 local time.