Can Christian Lundgaard Play Nice?
Good morning from the Florida panhandle! This was literally a last-minute trip we just decided to take last week. Susan got her work schedule and through a quirk – they left her off for this week. She came home from work last week asking if we could head to Destin, FL for a mini-vacation. She said she needed a break. We got a good deal on a condo, drover the 6.5 hours it takes to get here and here we are.
Destin was is the usual beach destination for Tennesseans. I used to frequent Destin in the 80s and 90s, but have not been here since 1997. I know that because I watched the Portland race that had the famous three-way blast-lap battle between Raul Boesel, Gil de Ferran and winner Mark Blundell from our condo in Destin. Little did I know it would be almost thirty years before I returned. The food in Destin is some of the best seafood you will find anywhere. That and the beach is what brough me here for years. I’m finally glad to be back.
But I did feel the need to interrupt my trip to comment on the worst kept secret in IndyCar, as Christian Lundgaard was finally announced as driver of the No. 9 car that Scott Dixon drove for a quarter-century. If you’ve read many of my posts over the summer, you have probably gathered that I am not the biggest Lundgaard fan out there. I admire him as a driver, but I think his people skills and his ability to mesh well with teammates could both use some polishing.
Chip Ganassi and Mike Hull are probably not very concerned with how he gets along with the general public, although PNC Bank would probably like for him to interact well with fans. But if he is be successful at Ganassi for the long-term, he will need to figure out how to work well with teammates Alex Palou and Kyffin Simpson, as well as technical alliance drivers Marcus Armstrong and Mick Schumacher at Meyer Shank Racing.
A Road America this summer, I was told by a crew member of a team not named Arrow McLaren or Chip Ganassi Racing that Lundgaard’s McLaren teammates flat-out didn’t like him. Later on, we heard that Pato O’Ward had a very strange preference for car set-up. If that didn’t suit your driving style, you were out of luck. I heard the same thing about the strange car set-up when Alexander Rossi was driving for them, though I never heard it was the way Pato wanted it.
Lundgaard seems to have a somewhat crusty personality anyway. Give him a reason to be unhappy – justified or not – and I can see where he wouldn’t be real pleasant to deal with. When the news hit that Lundgaard would not be retained after the season, Team Principal Tony Kanaan told anyone that would listen that he wanted to improve the culture among teammates. My guess is that Pato O’Ward handpicked former teammate Felix Rosenqvist to fill one seat, while Kanaan picked his former teammate Scott Dixon – both drivers known for being excellent teammates.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to read between the lines, when you know Lundgaard was not let go for performance – he won two races this season and finished third in points for the season. It was framed as poor performance on the ovals, yet he finished on the podium at Milwaukee. Maybe I’m trying to connect dots that aren’t there, but it seems like Lundgaard simply did not fit in at Arrow McLaren and that was eventually translated to he couldn’t get along.
It will be interesting to see how he gets along at Ganassi. When Alex Palou joined Ganassi in 2021, Scott Dixon was fresh coming off of his sixth championship season in 2020. Dixon was clearly the No. 1 driver, but Palou won the championship that season and has won the championship each season since, except for 2022. Somewhere in there, the mantle was passed within the team where Palou was the top driver.
In a sense, you want Lundgaard to come in with the mindset that he wants to eventually be the top driver on the team. But you also want him to earn it – just like Palou did. If he does – great! The team wins. But if comes in with an entitled attitude that he is the top driver with only three race wins to his credit – that’ll be a problem.
Chip Ganassi has a good thing going. He has a loyal sponsor in PNC Bank, a driver (Palou) that seemingly cannot lose and a driver (Simpson) who is becoming a decent driver in his own right, while his father is footing a big part of the financial load for the entire team. He just lost a driver who is the consummate professional and the ultimate teammate. He does not need his replacement to come in and stir the pot. Can Christian Lundgaard be the good teammate in 2027 and beyond? For his sake, I hope he can. If he goes about things the right way, perhaps he can give Palou a run for his money. That’ll be one of the main storylines going into 2027.
For now that’s going to do it for me. The weather is not great today, and Tuesday is not going to be much better. But after that, it’s supposed to be warm and sunny. With that in mind, I doubt you will hear from me anymore this week – unless something major happens that I feel the need to interrupt our trip in order to comment on it. So unless something major happens in the IndyCar world, check back here sometime next week.
George Phillips
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