Insider: Why Arrow McLaren surprisingly chose Christian Lundgaard over Alexander Rossi
If you turn the calendar back one month, neither side saw this coming. Alexander Rossi was coming back to Arrow McLaren for 2025 – and quite possibly longer – after running up-front nearly all day during the Indianapolis 500 and securing his sixth top-5 in nine starts in the Greatest Spectacle in Racing.
“We’re there,” one source said at the time.
And then at Detroit? Another top-5 – and the team’s best finish of the weekend. Road America? Potential podium pace – at minimum top-5 – wasted on a mechanical failure out of Rossi’s hands.
The next time out? His first podium of the year, marking the fourth time in eight starts in 2024 beating Arrow McLaren teammate Pato O’Ward. Take away the Road America part failure and another possible top-5 at Barber lost due to a loose wheel during a pitstop, and Rossi has beaten O’Ward four of six times this year. Across the eight-race campaign thus far, the No. 7 sits just 10 points back of the No. 5, 6th and 7th overall in the championship.
And yet, O’Ward has a contract that extends through 2027 worth roughly $4 million per year. Rossi? Out of a ride at the end of the season, his team unwilling to match his wish of a two-year deal through 2026. For the second time in three years, following protracted negotiations, Rossi and his team have amicably parted ways. Rossi is looking for a team willing to buy into the future of a 32-year-old who owns one of the most curious career arcs of the last six years and appears to be the strongest overall driver outside the three with a serious shot at the Astor Cup.
“We just couldn’t reach on terms. It went on for a long time, but at the same time, a lot has changed,” Pieter Rossi, his son’s manager, told IndyStar on Tuesday shortly after news of Arrow McLaren signing Christian Lundgaard to replace Rossi starting in 2025 became public. “The performance was there. The No. 7 crew was happy. Alex was happy. The team was happy. We just couldn’t get there, and they went in a different direction.”
The news: Arrow McLaren signs Lundgaard to replace Rossi for 2025
The turning point: Nolan Siegel's signing
The line all through the start of June was that getting Rossi’s contract done was the “priority” for Arrow McLaren officials. Theo Pourchaire had been announced as running the final 12 races in the No. 6 Chevy, seemingly giving Arrow McLaren team principal Gavin Ward and sporting director Tony Kanaan time to hammer out Rossi’s deal and then with Pourchaire having run half-a-dozen races, decide between the 2023 Formula 2 champ and 2020 F2 runner-up Callum Ilott for the No. 6 moving forward.
If only it could be so easy at Arrow McLaren.
Indy NXT title contender Nolan Siegel quietly made it known to multiple teams in the IndyCar paddock that he was willing to forego the final eight rounds of the development series season and start his full-time IndyCar career immediately, Kanaan, who had worked directly with Siegel during 500 Bump Day after the 19-year-old asked for help, rolled the dice.
Kanaan saw something in those few hours in May that the rookie team executive believes to be that ‘it factor’ you can’t coach.
Arrow McLaren brass went from prioritizing Rossi’s new deal and planning to make a decision on the No. 6 in July, to hashing out a deal over the phone with Siegel’s representatives. Suddenly, Rossi’s No. 7 ride had a couple intriguing options.
Insider: Why Arrow McLaren replaced Theo Pourchaire, signed Nolan Siegel to multi-year deal
After Siegel was signed and announced, and Pourchaire cast aside, both sides began to realize that a two-month negotiating period that many thought would be a foregone conclusion after Rossi’s stronger start to the year wasn’t going anywhere.
Arrow McLaren's choice for the future: Potential over experience
As a driver who won five times in 2018 and 2019, and looked every bit the fierce title contender but then at just 32 years old won a single race over his last 79 starts, Rossi’s place in this paddock is peculiar.
Of the nearly two-dozen full-time drivers, only four – Dixon, Newgarden, Graham Rahal and Will Power – both are older and have as much IndyCar experience as the California native.
One could argue – as Rossi’s camp understandably did in recent weeks and months – that that kind of experience, for a team still trying to find its footing to seriously take a title fight to Penske and Ganassi and who hasn’t taken a checkered flag as a team in nearly two years, is invaluable. Rossi was hired by ex-team president Taylor Kiel in the early days of McLaren Racing’s ownership of the team in early 2022 with the understanding that the team had a five-year project.
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With O’Ward the central focus of the team since it hired him in 2020, but also not a driver with a strong presence at the Indianapolis shop or with a reputation of taking an oversized role in the development lead of the car, Rossi was seen as a suitable Robin to O’Ward’s Batman during the messy nearly two years the team took to figure out whether Felix Rosenqvist, Alex Palou, David Malukas, Ilott, Pourchaire or Siegel would inherit the No. 6 long-term.
And yet, once that was hashed out, for a reason that hasn’t been fully explained publicly, Arrow McLaren seemed no longer to value Rossi’s leadership, experience and race craft as much as it did the prospect of missing out on the next young talent waiting in the wings (Lundgaard) or the potential of a big free agent in a year.
Among the unsettled pieces of their negotiations – including salary – sources have indicated Arrow McLaren’s unwillingness to offer a deal beyond a single season, along with an additional one-year option, played an outsized role in the parties realizing within the last two weeks that they had reached a stalemate.
Both positions are somewhat understandable.
From 2023: The makings of Alexander Rossi's next chapter at Arrow McLaren
From the driver’s side: Rossi’s resurgent 2024 campaign, where he’d be 4th in points if not for two team/parts failures and within a puncher’s chance of the championship, is a sign this five-year project, two years in, is working. Even without the consistent speed of O’Ward in qualifying, there are few who perform better on Sunday’s than Alexander Rossi, and as the team refines how it unloads to kickoff race weekends, Rossi’s No. 7 program has consistently improved with time.
From the team: The first eight races of this year represent the peak of where Rossi could take them as a mid-second-tier title contender who’s won once in four years and who’s only getting older. The 32-year-old, they believe, represents a solid role player on a team looking for a second superstar to push its cornerstone O’Ward in every facet in order to, ultimately, make the face of the franchise even sharper.
Arrow McLaren, instead, is rolling the dice on youth, speed and potential. Lundgaard beat Rossi by 15 points in the championship a year ago to finish 8th and now is seemingly hitting his head against the ceiling at RLL with a consistent run of top-12 and -15 finishes in 11th. That’s someone, the team believes, who could take the No. 7 a step further. Amazingly, O’Ward now becomes the team’s veteran leader at 25, paired with a 22-year-old single-time race-winner and a 19-year-old rookie.
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The move bears some resemblance to the gambles Michael Andretti took on relatively unproven talents in 2003 at Andretti Green Racing and put together one of the most talented lineups the sport has seen in recent memory. Though they’d all go on to different homes within a decade, Tony Kanaan (2004 title, five top-4 championship finishes in six years), Dario Franchitti (the 500 and the title in 2007) and Dan Wheldon (2005 500 and top-2 in the championship in 2004-05) would soon become the sport’s best.
But that team’s backbone while his teammates took most of the spoils? Veteran Bryan Herta. Without Rossi, who hoped to be able to put together a Will Power-like tenure at Arrow McLaren and build a foundation for years to come, they’re missing what many see as a key piece to that puzzle.
It may work, and it may fail spectacularly, but one thing’s for sure: After two years of tinkering, the Arrow McLaren machine is now complete. For all the talk, headlines and opining about potential and contracts left on the cutting room floor, it’s time to add something new to the fold.
Win.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Why Arrow McLaren chose Christian Lundgaard over Alexander Rossi
