Christian Lundgaard secured a second P2 finish in a row, this time at Portland, and a sixth seasonal podium in IndyCar 2025.
The Arrow McLaren driver, who is yet to win with the papaya team, had achieved pole position on Saturday but was forced to start from P7 because of an engine change on Friday.
Nevertheless, Lundgaard managed to put up a good fight with eventual race winner Power as well as early leader Pato O’Ward. In fact, his gap to the Penske driver was even less than a tenth of second at times.
Not completely satisfied
Understandably, the Dane is not pleased with missing out on another potential race win, as he said afterwards:
“Yeah, it sucks finishing second twice. No, at the end of the day I’m happy to be in the situation that we’ve been in on the 7 car this weekend. We’ve shown so much pace all weekend. We’re fastest in practice one, seventh in practice two, pole on the race. Obviously had our grid penalty, still raced our way up to second.”
Overall there is plenty of positives to take away from the strong overall weekend Lundgaard had in the Portland IndyCar race.
He was also greatly pleased with the great steps forward made by his team compared to the past season, which have allowed him to achieve six of his nine career podiums.
“I think there’s only things to be proud of considering where the team was last year. We were first and second in qualifying. Last year none of the cars transferred through Q1. The trajectory the team is on is only upward and I’m excited for the years to come.”
Negative highlight
An unfortunate moment of his race happened towards the final laps. Championship winner Alex Palou tried a move on the outside of car no. 7 while Lundgaard steered him off track in order to defend his position.
Lundgaard didn’t comment extensively on the matter of the incident happening in Portland ‘s IndyCar race, as he just recounted briefly.
“I mean, in all honesty, I don’t think there’s much to say. He goes around the outside. There is a kerb, then there’s gravel.”
Good potential for the end of the season
Asked about his actual race winning odds, Lundgaard admitted he didn’t have too many hopes because of the actual on track conditions which made rather difficult to pass.
“Yeah, we were worst on fuel of all three of us, right? Obviously, we were also worst on tires as we were worst on fuel.
“I mean, essentially this track is so difficult with dirty air, you really can’t do much. I think that’s why no positions were really exchanged at the end of the day.”
Ultimately Lundgaard has to be satisfied with the additional points to his name after the Portland race in the IndyCar championship standings, which have allowed him to reach P4 overall.
“Alex caught us. We were having trouble with the back markers, Will and I. That’s really the only opportunity you have. At the end of the day if it’s a train, no one can really do anything. We all had to save some fuel. We managed to get there, which is really nice.”
IndyCar will race again next week in Milwaukee.
