He had to come to terms with not being the “chosen one” he says you need to be to make it to Formula 1 - but now Christian Lundgaard is McLaren’s top pick in IndyCar.
After three seasons at Rahal Letterman Lanigan, Lundgaard finally has a car to take the step his form has deserved, but it’s a fascinating team to step into and it contains IndyCar’s team-mate equivalent of the grim reaper.
Lundgaard left his Alpine F1 junior role sensing the writing was on the wall for his F1 chances - if you're not the "chosen one" you need a hefty budget, he reckons, and that's something he doesn't have. Instead, he took on IndyCar with aplomb.
He’s matured incredibly since his first full season in 2022, won a race with the peaky Rahal team, bagged podiums and became one of IndyCar’s hottest properties.
Now officially wearing the McLaren papaya - and in the factory almost every day at the moment, such is his enthusiasm, when other drivers are resting and holidaying - Lundgaard sat down with The Race to discuss his new home, his 2025 prospects and more.
Perfect Pato
Bagging a seat that almost guarantees the chance of race wins and a top-six championship finish is a big plus for Lundgaard, and learning from the driver that has spearheaded that team since 2020 is also gain.
But you have to measure the weight of how much Lundgaard will learn against the fact that Pato O’Ward has now comfortably beaten two team-mates with extremely high reputations, each over multiple seasons.
O'Ward's a brilliantly supportive and fun team-mate, and it’s not his fault he’s so good, but he’s a terrifying prospect as a team-mate for most drivers, in a team that has naturally coalesced around him.
Both Felix Rosenqvist and Alexander Rossi came to McLaren after being clearly marked as the number two driver in their previous outfits (to Scott Dixon at Ganassi and Colton Herta at Andretti respectively), so being numero dos to Pato might not have been a dealbreaker for them.
But Lundgaard has regularly had teams built around him - even Rahal went that way as it became clear he was capable of better results than Graham Rahal more consistently. He's never been the number two.
Pato made some errors earlier in the year but faced reliability issues, too, and was fifth in the championship. He's only finished outside of the top five once in five years.
Unsurprisingly, when asked his key goals for next year, Lundgaard brought up O'Ward.
“Pato obviously is the guy to beat, but for the two of us to excel and push each other will be more beneficial for the both of us,” says Lundgaard, pausing some home DIY to chat. His tone is a lot more relaxed than this writer's when faced with tasks like putting up shelving units.
“We're in the state where he's established, in a team where I come in with, let's say, the hunger, and I think that's going to push him, and I'm obviously going to learn as much as I can from him in terms of how the car responds and reacts.
“But I'm just excited to see how we can evolve, and ideally to see how many championships we can win.”
Lundgaard reckons it’s a good thing McLaren has been built around Pato because he is its best-performing driver. That means the team is not wasting time and has championed its fastest race horse in the stable.
“You’ve got to give that car the possibility to finish first over second when it counts,” he says, “I think we're now going to have two cars that at least have the possibility to finish on the podium every single time.”
It’s funny because, although absolutely everyone will identify this move as a step up for Lundgaard, as an RLL driver he had a better average finish on road courses than O’Ward this season.
What he’s been able to do at Rahal has been nothing short of exemplary. Now he has to convert that into beating Pato in the latter's own back yard.
Will the car suit him?
“In terms of set-ups, we've spoken a little bit about it, in terms of what I'm used to, what they're used to, and there's a lot of it that's surprisingly different, considering we know how close the IndyCar field is,” Lundgaard says.
“Knowing some of the set-up differences and the approach and the philosophy of two different cars [McLaren and RLL], how interesting it is that it all comes down to such little speed [difference].”
It’s a bit concerning that Lundgaard sees such a difference between how Arrow McLaren and Rahal are set up, especially when McLaren drivers coming in during the past have often found they’ve had to drive a car on a knife edge, the kind that Pato tames like a roman gladiator but which will rip the face off a lesser challenger.
But Lundgaard has his own process. He wants to go out and just drive the McLaren car first, before he builds up any misconceptions about how to drive it. Instead of saying ‘I like a car with a strong front end’, he wants to go in and feel, adapt. That will be music to his engineers' ears.
This approach doesn’t mean he and the team are sat twiddling their thumbs until the first race weekend. Lundgaard and the engineers have had deep discussions about possible directions and being as prepared as possible.
Part of that is because the goal is simple: “I'm not here to spend two race weekends getting up to speed with the team, getting up to speed with the car. We want to be competitive from day one.”
Risk versus reward
Part of what makes O’Ward such a fun driver to watch and analyse is that he leaves everything out there. Sometimes you feel he takes big risks - even though to him, they are calculated - and sometimes they don’t pay off.
But in driving this way - and McLaren allows and supports him doing so - he is able to unlock another level of performance.
On the surface, Lundgaard is the polar opposite, but part of that is because Lundgaard hasn’t been in the positions as often as Pato where those high-profile risks very publicly come off or very publicly don't.
More often than not at Rahal Lundgaard was “just trying to survive and get the car over the line”, but now he should be in those top positions Pato is. What approach will he take?
“I want to take the risk, but at the same time it's also high risk/high reward,” he says.
“You need to get the car home, and I would rather take a second at St Pete than take a last. But again, it depends on how chaotic the race is, and I think that also shows in the car.
“Last year [at St Pete] we had the big accidents going through Turn 3, where basically half the field was out of the race. In that kind of race you can take more risk, because you won't finish 26th, you'll finish 15th if you do crash it at the end of the race.
“Being in IndyCar for a number of years, you start to understand when you can take the risk and when you can be more aggressive.”
The prospect of a Lundgaard totally off the leash and free to attack is a novel one for IndyCar - despite his already-impressive results in the category.
What motivated the move
As we pointed out earlier, Lundgaard was ahead of O’Ward on average road course results this year.
The Rahal team is also ahead in terms of having a massive new factory while Arrow McLaren is still working in an old one built for a two-car operation - and will be doing so until at least mid-way through next year. But Rahal has a dearth of engineering staff, it’s struggled to understand its car issues on all types of tracks and specifically its oval form has been awful.
McLaren offers almost a guarantee of wins, podiums and oval performance that Rahal simply couldn’t. It's more consistent and better-staffed. Heading in the right direction, with much bigger resources.
“The organisation of the Arrow McLaren racing team is bigger than what I'm used to at Rahal," Lundgaard says.
"I think there is a lot more opportunity for me, but not necessarily just for me, but for all of us as a package, for all of us to excel.
“Looking at where we were as a team the past three years at Rahal - yes, we had competitive races, but I would also say, as competitive as we were at some races, as slow we were at other races.
“I think I did well showing my potential in those opportunities that presented themselves, where the car was good enough. We got some podiums.
“Obviously at the Speedway [Indianapolis], [we were] not going the fastest way.
“As a team, McLaren, they're so fast on these types of tracks, and they're always competitive on road courses and street circuits as well. It's the missing piece of the puzzle for me. And obviously them wanting me to come there as well.
“It was almost a no-brainer from me.
“But I also wanted to see how Rahal was performing throughout the Month of May this year, if we were going to take a step forward.
“We didn't. And I think that just made my own decision a lot clearer from from my perspective.”
Just what Lundgaard could do in this McLaren team makes this move such a fun one to watch.
He could be another relatively disappointing O'Ward sidekick there primarily to score top-10s; he could match Pato and help drive the two of them forward; he could come in and do something extraordinary and take a leap ahead of Pato. It's hard to tell.
What we do know is he excelled in machinery that hasn't deserved his talent so far. The next chapter is going to tell us just how good Lundgaard really is.
