The 2024 Summer Olympic Games indirectly had a helping hand in the career best-tying third-place finish Linus Lundqvist scored in last Saturday night’s Bommarito Automotive Group 500 presented by Axalta and Valvoline.
Lundqvist came to World Wide Technology Raceway for the Aug. 17 race on the heels of a three-week soul-searching session. The break in the NTT INDYCAR SERIES schedule for the Olympics in Paris provided ample opportunity for Lundqvist to halt the speeding snowball of bad finishes from rolling downhill and devise a plan to get his season headed in a different direction.
“I haven't had a proper time to go back and look through everything I learned,” he said. “It was all preparation for the next weekend. It was good to get a bit of a break and kind of let everything settle down.”
Being a first-year driver in a competitive racing series isn’t an easy feat. Unrealistic expectations creep in with past success like Lundqvist had with eight wins in 34 INDY NXT by Firestone starts, including winning the 2022 championship.
Last season, Lundqvist made three NTT INDYCAR SERIES starts, all with Meyer Shank Racing. He set the fastest race lap in two of the three and produced a best finish of 12th in the Brickyard Weekend road course race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, in his second start.
Retaining his rookie status and driving for Chip Ganassi Racing in 2024, a team that produced three of the last four series champions, the sky was the limit for the talented Swedish racer. He encountered early-season success with a sixth-place finish in The Thermal Club $1 Million Challenge exhibition event March 24 and a third-place result at Barber Motorsports Park on April 28. But that may have thrust Lundqvist into the limelight maybe a little prematurely.
The early-season gaps in the schedule allowed Lundqvist to learn and adapt, which created success on the racetrack. As the schedule picked up, the results dropped.
Beginning from the May 11 Sonsio Grand Prix on the IMS road course until the July 21 race on the streets of Toronto, the NTT INDYCAR SERIES was on track nine of 11 weekends.
Lundqvist had an average finish of 10.75 through his first four starts, which dropped to 18.22 during that nine-race stretch.
With a break in the schedule, Lundqvist put everything under a magnifying glass.
“I learned many, many things, both about the series, about myself, about the team,” he said. “I think more so about myself. Every now and again you kind of need to decompress and not think about racing for a little bit.
“I think the biggest thing was, the feeling that I had almost across the season was, you left one race weekend, and it was straight into the new one. You could never take a bit of time to reflect and digest everything that you learned, try to apply it in the next race weekend. Now I actually had time to go through all my notes, all the notes that the team made. This was good, this was bad, this is a setup change in the car, things like that. You had a little bit more time to sit down, relaxed environment to focus. I think that was one of the kind of things that helped us going into (last) weekend, as well. We went in with an idea of what I needed to do, what I needed from the car to be able to have a good race day.”
The first race out of the break, Lundqvist tied a career-best finish with his third place at WWTR. But this race sparked another busy stretch, to the finish line of the season, with four race weekends over the next five weeks. What can Lundqvist do differently this time around to avoid that dreaded slump creeping back?
“I was actually able to work a little bit ahead,” he said. “Preparation for Portland already started during the summer break. Now it doesn't feel I dive straight into an unknown weekend. I kind of already know what to expect. It's a place I have been to before, which is nice, obviously never in an Indy car. I look forward to it. Especially now when we've got a good feeling on the ovals, I look forward to Milwaukee and Nashville, too.”
The confidence is back, which could change the trajectory of how the final four races pan out for Lundqvist. He admitted mental health is one of the more important aspects to being a good race car driver, and the podium at WWTR allowed him to feel good and energized again, allowing the days to go by a little bit easier.
That’s why this weekend’s BITNILE.com Grand Prix of Portland (3 p.m. ET Sunday, USA Network, Peacock, INDYCAR Radio Network) is so significant.
With momentum on his side at a track where Lundqvist finished third in all three INDY NXT by Firestone starts, he can’t revert backward.
Portland is also a great track for Chip Ganassi Racing, with Alex Palou winning two of the last three years and Scott Dixon finishing third in all three races, too.
That could set up a scenario where Lundqvist is battling with Ganassi teammates and title contenders Palou and Dixon for another top-five finish. Palou leads the championship standings by 59 points over Colton Herta. Dixon is third, 65 points back.
“There's always a certain amount of respect that goes into racing with your teammates, especially when your teammate is the points leader,” he said. “You definitely have that in mind.
“But at the same time, I'm a racer: I want to win races. I knew that I wasn't going to make anything foolish. When you can get a sniff of that podium champagne, everything is on the cards.”