Mustache is gone. Christian Lundgaard made a bet with his friend this offseason that they won’t shave their mustaches until Lundgaard reaches victory lane. Pretty bold move considering the team had 1 race win in their last 48 races.

Especially for a driver entering just his sophomore year.

Well, 10 races into the season, get the razor ready. Lundgaard stomped the field on the streets of Toronto to score his maiden NTT INDYCAR SERIES victory.

“I think today we had the better car in the race today, and I wasn’t really expecting it,” said Lundgaard. “I knew we had a fast car, but I wasn’t expecting to be this fast and just kind of just drive around and be there.

“Today fuel mileage was just too easy, so I have to thank Honda for that. They made this win easy for me today, especially on the last stint making sure I got the file mileage and Hy-Vee for supporting this team.”

The 21-year-old made some bold comments this past week and had the mic drop at the end when he topped points leader Alex Palou by 11.7893-seconds after leading a race-high 53 of 85 laps.

Lundgaard was right and wrong with comments that he made this past week. He felt like they had the pace to contend here and didn’t agree with his teammate Graham Rahal’s pessimism for the street course.

He felt like his success this year and even for this weekend in Toronto was due to past European experiences.

“I think, because I’m so young and I’ve driven a lot of cars in Europe that’s, in my opinion, quite difficult to drive and I’ve also driven some easy ones and just my experience with the F1 team back in a few years ago when I was doing a lot of simulator work, you’re just very involved and you drive a lot of different cars, a lot of different — I wouldn’t necessarily just call it setups, but the evolution of different cars, and you understand the differences and how you need to drive certain cars,” he said on Wednesday.

“I wouldn’t say you develop the skill, but you sort of do. You just get a better understanding, and you improve your talent. I guess that’s why on certain occasions Graham will complain more about the car than I will because we kind of just get on with it.

“We saw the car this weekend was in a good window for him at Mid-Ohio, and he was fast. There’s no question that Graham is a good driver, same for Jack, but I just think I can do things they can’t do just because of my previous experiences.”

Boy did he ever.

He credited his pole in the wet on Saturday to his European background.

“When we grew up in mini-karts, in Denmark we don’t have wet tires, and as we all know, we develop our skills when we are in a very young age,” he said.

“I was driving around on the slicks in the wet, and I’ve just always been fast in the wets. Especially in go-karts. Yeah, I guess it comes from there.”

However, he also didn’t feel like despite a pole on Saturday, that he’d be able to hold his main competition off either.

“I do think we will be fast tomorrow. I just don’t think we’ll be the fastest car,” he said on Saturday afternoon. “I don’t think we’ve shown that pace throughout the weekend.

“I hope the improvements that we did make from practice 2 into qualifying and the changes that we made will pay off tomorrow.”

Boy did it ever.

Lundgaard led the first 18 laps before peeling off pit road for the first time of the day. Under the Lap 45 caution, he pit again for the final time on Lap 49. It was the race winning move.

Scott McLaughlin, Scott Dixon and Rinus VeeKay didn’t pit (more on this later). Kyle Kirkwood, Colton Herta and Alex Palou lined up 4th-6th as they pit on Lap 44.

Lundgaard was seventh on the final restart.

Kirkwood dropped after his avoidable contact penalty, then Lundgaard casually got by Herta and Palou to be the top spot among those that didn’t need to pit.

VeeKay pit on Lap 59. McLaughlin bailed on Lap 61. Dixon then pit one lap later handing the lead to Lundgaard on Lap 62. He’d never look back in leading the final 24 laps en route to his first career NTT INDYCAR SERIES victory.

Alex Palou brought his bruised and battered car home runner-up in his No. 10 Dallara-Honda while Colton Herta, Scott Dixon and Josef Newgarden rounded out the top five on the streets of Exhibition Place in Toronto in front of the biggest crowd here since 1999.

“I think it’s been coming,” Lundgaard said of his win. “If I’m going to be completely honest, I would have expected it to come in about three weeks when we got back to Indy.

“Having my first pole there, my first podium, it would have been great to have the first win as well, but it came today. I can’t thank the team enough because all the progression that we’ve been making throughout this year, we just struggled to be able to start the season good enough. We struggled on especially the super speedways.

“I don’t really know where we are in the standings now, but I’m sure we’ve moved up. That’s what I mean. We’re moving forward even though we don’t have the pace and performance on the super speedways. It just means that we’re doing pretty good elsewhere. I think we proved that today again.

“I know what I’m capable of, and I know what the team is capable of, and in looking at the three cars this year I would say I’ve been the faster car.

“I know that obviously Jack didn’t make it very far today, unfortunately. I’m glad he is okay. I don’t really know where Graham finished yet.

“Even this weekend I don’t think we had a fast enough car yesterday to be on pole in a completely clear qualifying. Graham would have been roughly around me then, and he is unlucky that his group was wet. He hit the wall twice, and he was out, and he had to start the race last.

“So we had a better car today, I believe. We made it work and finished it off.”

Lap 41, 45 Cautions Changes Complexity Of Race

Romain Grosjean’s crash on Lap 41 put some spark into Sunday’s race for which created mayhem. Helio Castroneves’ Lap 45 incident put some excellereant on it.

During the first caution, a few cars ducked down pit road for what they hoped would be their final stop. Among those that pit on Lap 44 were Kyle Kirkwood, Colton Herta, Alex Palou, Felix Rosenqvist, David Malukas, Callum Ilott and Graham Rahal.

They were wanting to stretch their fuel until the end. Could they make it work? Last year, the final stop among the leaders was on Lap 45. However, they had a pair of cautions towards the end to help them stretch it.

That grouping got a massive gift when Castroneves brought out the third caution on the Lap 45 restart. But, he was punted by Kirkwood for which brought an avoidable contact penalty for the American.

He went from first on the Lap 44 strategy to last. His race was over in dropping to 17th. Also, most of the leaders that hadn’t pit yet elected to pit on Lap 49 during that caution.

Three drivers though didn’t. Scott McLaughlin, Scott Dixon and Rinus VeeKay stayed out. Christian Lundgaard, Will Power, Pato O’Ward, Marcus Ericsson, Josef Newgarden and others did pit.

We now had a race among three strategies. The three that didn’t pit, the ones that pit on Lap 44 and those that pit on Lap 49.

Veekay bailed on Lap 59. McLaughlin did so on Lap 61. Dixon did a lap later on Lap 62.

It handed Lundgaard the lead.

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Grosjean’s Slide Continues

Romain Grosjean came into the Month of May in Indianapolis beaming with confidence. He had finished runner-up for two straight races and sat 15 points out of the lead in fifth. At that point, a win felt was a foregone conclusion.

“I think we want to be a championship contender at the end of the year, so we used two mulligans in the season, so we’ve got to be here every race,” he said back in April at Barber.

“We’ve shown that the pace is there, which helps a lot to be at the front, but 100 percent want to score some points and finish the race. If it’s first, second, third, fourth, fifth, we don’t know, but what we know is we need to keep scoring points and be consistent for the championship.

“We executed very well this weekend. We had a fast car. Got pole. 20 seconds ahead of the two stoppers on the race finish. That shows how fast we were. We just didn’t have the right strategy today, so…

“I’d say we were not too bad. Put me P4 in the championship. Big picture, yes I wanted to win today, it hurts to not do it. We have a lot more occasions. If I can win Indy and the 500, it would be good.

“I think when your team boss comes to see you and says that’s probably the best drive he’s seen in INDYCAR, he’s been around for a long time, Michael, you take that as a win.

“Very proud of my engineer, my mechanics. We made P1, so we beat them on the back foot and got them with pole. We had a fast car today. With the fuel number we had to hit doing the lap times we were doing, pretty amazing. I’m really happy with that.”

At that point too, he and Andretti Autosport were nearing a contract extension for next season. Now, heading to Iowa in late July, he still has no contract offer in hand and appears that his brief stint with the team could come to a dire end.

That’s because Grosjean has struggled mightily since.

He has 2 poles and a third place start in the 4 races before Indy. In the 7 races since, he’s qualified 18th, 19th, 3rd, 19th, 14th and 9th respectively. In regards to finishes, Grosjean has finished 11th, 30th, 24th, 25th, 13rd and now 22nd.

Sunday in Toronto was his fifth crash in 10 races.

He crashed while battling for the win with 29 to go in the season opener at St. Pete. He crashed from the top five with two laps left in Texas. He crashed with 51 laps left in the Indy 500. He crashed after starting third in Detroit. He now crashed by himself in Toronto.

Grosjean has been slumping and went from fourth in points entering the Indy 500 down to 13th leaving Toronto.

“Yeah, I think there’s been circumstances, a few things in the last few races that made us fall back and look like it hasn’t been a great run,” Grosjean said on Friday.

“I think from my side I know where I can improve, but today just went smooth. We know we have a strong street package. Qualified first in St. Pete, third in Long Beach and third in Detroit, so always up there.”

He was second in practice and looked like a legitimate threat for the pole and race win this weekend at that point.

“It’s a good start,” he said then. “Obviously, as I said, the track is going to change a lot, but we need to keep working and keep improving. But generally happy with the car and happy with what we’ve been doing. Hopefully we can have a trouble-free weekend where everything goes and we don’t have any issue in the car and I don’t make any mistakes.”

Well, he made a costly mistake…

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Cars Behind Lundgaard Overcome Mistakes For Good Results

Alex Palou and Colton Herta struggled in qualifying on Saturday. Herta would qualify 14th and Palou in 15th. They’d finish 2nd and 3rd respectively.

Behind them, Scott Dixon and Scott McLaughlin made a costly mistake when they didn’t pit with the leaders on Lap 49. It looked like a death sentence. They were among just three cars to stay out because you had some pit on Lap 44 and the rest on Lap 49. McLaughlin last pit on Lap 35. Dixon pit two laps after on Lap 37. Rinus VeeKay pit on Lap 37 too.

They stayed out and led the field being 1-2-3 on the Lap 51 restart.

VeeKay peeled off on Lap 59. McLaughlin gave up the lead on Lap 60. Dixon did one lap later. That cost them miserably. Dixon was 14th after that. McLaughlin was down in 16th.

Remarkably, they’d come back to finish fourth (Dixon) and sixth (McLaughlin) respectively.

Sandwiched between them was Josef Newgarden who overshot hit pit stall on his final stop on Lap 49 and was 11th afterwards. He’d come back to finish fifth.

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Honda Dominates Again

Honda is a perfect 4-for-4 on street courses this season with taking 9 of the 12 podiums too. It went Ganassi-McLaren-Ganassi in St. Pete, Andretti-Andretti-Ganassi in Long Beach, Ganassi-Penske-McLaren in Detroit and now RLL-Ganassi-Andretti in Toronto.

This was their second straight race in swept the top two finishers.

While they lost out on the Indy 500, they did win in Chevy’s backyard in Detroit. They’ve now won 6 of the last 8 races on the season and 9 of the 10 poles including 8 straight.

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RLL Takes Massive Momentum To Massive Race

A year ago, RLL revived the Iowa Speedway with bringing INDYCAR back to a carnival type atmosphere. Hy-Vee, a sponsor of RLL, made it work for them. Now, RLL comes back to Iowa for the second go around there with some massive momentum.

Christian Lundgaard brings RLL just their second win since the start of the 2020 season as that comes with a pole too.

A race prior, Graham Rahal brought RLL a front row start.

“Yeah, really nice for the team. It’s been a long time coming,” Rahal said on RLL’s pace qualifying pace at Mid-Ohio. “We’ve been beat up. We’ve been bruised. We’ve been knocked down. For us as a team to rebound this way…”

If you take out the Indy 500 and streets of Detroit, RLL truly is exceling. Lundgaard won the pole in the GMR Grand Prix, a race that he had 3 of the top 8 starters.

That’s why he had so much optimism coming into this race weekend when others didn’t.

“Honestly, I do think that we’re going to have a fast car,” he said on Wednesday of this week. “We made a lot of progress going into that weekend last year. I think at the time in the season it was my best qualifying result, and I think at the time as well, it was the best finish we had that year up until that point.

“Just thinking about that, I think, we knew that we were making progress that part of the year of last year, and already now, we’ve seen an increase in performance early in the season. We outperformed ourselves compared to last year in Mid-Ohio. So we just need to stay on that trajectory.

“I think going into Toronto, it’s very important that we keep our head cool and kind of focus on our own stuff. Then I guess we’ll have to wait and see, but I do think we can come away with at least a match of a fourth or potentially even a podium.”

Not only did he get that, he got a win.

It’s no secret that the street course program for RLL is lacking in comparison to the natural road courses. They finished 6-9-22 in St. Pete, 12-13-14 in Long Beach and 16-17-25 in Detroit.

However, Lundgaard never wavered in his approach.

He has 6 top 10 finishes in 10 races this year compared to 7 in 18 races prior. In fact, he has three consecutive top seven finishes and five in the last seven races in general. He moved up from 14th in points heading to Barber to seventh leaving Toronto.

Which is massive for Hy-Vee and RLL with this much momentum for their big race that they put on.

Lundgaard just wanted to get a win before seasons end, now, the sights have to be set on multiple wins.

Lundgaard feels like the momentum is there still and that most of these tracks at the end of the schedule are perfect places to finish even further up than they did a year ago.

“Honestly, right now obviously we’re optimistic, leaving Mid-Ohio,” he told me. “I think last year the best car qualified 13th, which was just not transferring from the first qualifying group. This year we had two cars in the Fast Six and one on the Front Row and me in 5th, and we had Jack up in 11th as well.

“Just looking at that specific race from last year to this year, we moved a lot, and we really struggled at Mid-Ohio last year. Now we’re coming into a track where we didn’t necessarily struggle as much, but we built a good foundation for Nashville at Toronto last year, and we were very competitive at Nashville.

“So coming in here, I do think, just looking at that, that it is sort of a turning point, at least I hope so. We want to continue building on what we’re building on now and basically don’t really leave those performances.”

RLL was able to pick up test days recently in Sebring and at Iowa too. It was the Sebring test a year ago for which propelled them forward. Does the Iowa one this year do the same?

In 2022, in the same street races preceding Toronto, RLL finished 7-11-13 in St. Pete, 7-15-18 in Long Beach and 14-15-26 in Belle Isle. They went to work at Sebring in the middle of the summer to help them learn for Toronto and Nashville.

It paid off.

RLL went 4-8-19 in Toronto and 8-10-23 in Nashville.

They’re stronger everywhere already this season for the most part even more so since the team made some internal changes after the Indy 500 debacle.

“I think we’re finally starting to make changes with the car, as I just said, that they’re responding the right way, the way you’d expect them to, and it’s nice. It’s nice to feel that,” Rahal said.

“More than me, I think it’s just for these guys, to see the smiles on the mechanics’ faces, those guys, they’ve never had an ounce of quit in them, and they could have for years. To see them excited is worth it.”

Rahal went on a nice run to end the season last y ear with 5 top 10’s over the final 8 races including a pair of top five results. He had 4 top 10’s in the previous 9 with a best finish of 7th in that span.

Lundgaard also had 5 top 10 finishes in the same final 8 races including a pair of top five finishes too but one of those was a runner-up result on the Indy road course. That’s the same place he just earned a pole at a couple of months ago and remember, we go back next month. He had 2 top 10 finishes in the first 9 races.

3 of the final 4 races this season are on natural road courses which are their strengths. If they’re stronger on these tracks this year compared to last and can get momentum rolling further and further, watch out.

This could be a sleeper team to watch the rest of the way.

“Luckily, we have another Indy GP later this year, in August, and we’ve been competitive there. I had my first podium, had my first pole there, so I might as well get my first win at the speedway,” Lundgaard said on Wednesday. “I really do think that we have that opportunity at that race. We just need to nail it during that weekend.

“Again, there might be other opportunities. We know we’ll be strong at the two road courses at the end of the year, and I do think we’ll be strong at Nashville as well. We just need to figure Iowa and St. Louis out, and I think we can at least finish around sixth or seventh in the championship if we really do things well.

“I’m definitely hoping for a podium, definitely hoping for a win. We’ve come close a couple of times this year. So I’m definitely hoping we get to that.”

Lundgaard feels the comfort in the series now too.

“I’d say I was pretty much comfortable as soon as I basically — I mean, last year we saw certain tracks where it took me a while to just figure stuff out, but I would say this year we’ve been fast in pretty much all Practice 1 sessions,” he noted to me.

“To me that just indicates I’ve been to all these tracks now. I’m comfortable in the team. I’m comfortable in the series. I’m comfortable in the car. I didn’t really need to go out early in the session just to run laps. We’re actually going out straight away with our run plan and not having to deal with all the trying to figure stuff out.

“I guess to really answer your question, I’m very comfortable in the car. I know exactly what I need, exactly what I want, and that’s where the three drivers come in, where it’s tougher for a team to fix and get a car that fits three different driving styles.”

Results

TORONTO – Results Sunday of the Honda Indy Toronto NTT INDYCAR SERIES event on the 1.786-mile Streets of Toronto, with order of finish, starting position in parentheses, driver, engine, laps completed and reason out (if any):

1. (1) Christian Lundgaard, Honda, 85, Running
2. (15) Alex Palou, Honda, 85, Running
3. (14) Colton Herta, Honda, 85, Running
4. (7) Scott Dixon, Honda, 85, Running
5. (11) Josef Newgarden, Chevrolet, 85, Running
6. (2) Scott McLaughlin, Chevrolet, 85, Running
7. (10) Marcus Armstrong, Honda, 85, Running
8. (3) Pato O’Ward, Chevrolet, 85, Running
9. (27) Graham Rahal, Honda, 85, Running
10. (5) Felix Rosenqvist, Chevrolet, 85, Running
11. (4) Marcus Ericsson, Honda, 85, Running
12. (18) Agustin Canapino, Chevrolet, 85, Running
13. (12) Rinus VeeKay, Chevrolet, 85, Running
14. (6) Will Power, Chevrolet, 85, Running
15. (8) Kyle Kirkwood, Honda, 85, Running
16. (26) Alexander Rossi, Chevrolet, 84, Running
17. (24) Santino Ferrucci, Chevrolet, 82, Running
18. (16) Callum Ilott, Chevrolet, 81, Contact
19. (23) Sting Ray Robb, Honda, 81, Running
20. (17) David Malukas, Honda, 69, Contact
21. (13) Helio Castroneves, Honda, 45, Contact
22. (9) Romain Grosjean, Honda, 41, Contact
23. (22) Devlin DeFrancesco, Honda, 10, Mechanical
24. (19) Jack Harvey, Honda, 0, Contact
25. (20) Tom Blomqvist, Honda, 0, Contact
26. (21) Ryan Hunter-Reay, Chevrolet, 0, Contact
27. (25) Benjamin Pedersen, Chevrolet, 0, Contact

Race Statistics
Winner’s average speed: 89.361 mph
Time of Race: 01:41:55.8001
Margin of victory: 11.7893 seconds
Cautions: 3 for 16 laps
Lead changes: 7 among 4 drivers

Lap Leaders:
Lundgaard, Christian 1 – 18
McLaughlin, Scott 19 – 34
Ericsson, Marcus 35
Dixon, Scott 36
Lundgaard, Christian 37 – 48
McLaughlin, Scott 49 – 60
Dixon, Scott 61
Lundgaard, Christian 62 – 85

NTT INDYCAR SERIES Point Standings: Palou 417, Dixon 300, Newgarden 291, Ericsson 275, O’Ward 274, McLaughlin 258, Lundgaard 248, Power 242, Herta 239, Rossi 230, Kirkwood 192, Rosenqvist 183, Grosjean 175, Rahal 167, VeeKay 158, Armstrong 156, Ilott 154, Ferrucci 138, Malukas 134, Canapino 113, Castroneves 113, DeFrancesco 111, Harvey 101, Conor Daly 98, Simon Pagenaud 88, Robb 82, Pedersen 80, Hunter-Reay 49, Takuma Sato 37, Ed Carpenter 27, Tony Kanaan 18, Marco Andretti 13, Blomqvist 5, RC Enerson 5, Katherine Legge 5