SALINAS, Calif — Christian Lundgaard was reeling after making a mistake the Corkscrew in qualifying on Saturday. It cost him a shot at the pole. Instead, despite setting the Laguna Seca track record in the second round, he’d roll off third in Sunday’s 2023 NTT INDYCAR SERIES season finale.

An unfortunate incident on the opening lap in Turn 1 saw him get onto the inside curbing and shot his No. 45 Dallara-Honda back up the track and into second place starter Scott McLaughlin. That sparked an avoidable contact penalty. So did pitting for damage while the pits were closed.

He had to not only restart at the back of the field, but on Lap 12, had to do a drive through penalty as well.

Most races, his chances would be over. But, Lundgaard had speed and poise to come back to finish 6th in the end for what capped a remarkable drive in a remarkable season.

“At the start I locked the rears, but I was easily going to make the corner but McLaughlin sort of squeezed me on to the curb and as soon as I got on there, the front grip had a huge tank slapper and that ended up hitting his side,” Lundgaard said of his day. “I don’t know what happened after that. I had a straight puncture, suspension damage, and the whole side of the car was bruised.

“Throughout the whole race it was just a lot of wheel banging and dumb driving from everybody. We stayed in the game. We were seventh with one lap to go and got Rossi to finish sixth and kept eighth place in the championship so I’m happy with that since it was the target going into the weekend.

“I had a broken mirror so I couldn’t see anything on my left side so for everybody that dived up the inside, I had no clue that they were there until they were there so I couldn’t do much to defend my position. The negative of the weekend was not getting anything out of the pace we had but I don’t really think I ever expected to finish where we did with that first lap, but I know there was hope. We ended up on the better side of the unluck at the end of the race.”

Lundgaard finished 8th in points on the heels of 9 top 10 finishes. He scored his first career pole in May’s GMR Grand Prix. He scored his first career win in July in Toronto, a track that he also won the pole at too.

He had the fifth most points scored on road courses (328) but only the 20th most points on ovals. You can see where improvement needs to be made.

On natural road courses like this one, he finished 6th, 4th, 7th, 4th, 4th, 11th, 6th respectively. On streets, he came home 9th, 14th, 16th, 1st, 9th. Ovals was 19th, 19th, 20th, 13th, 17th.