By Austin Lawton, Staff Writer
Now one of the biggest free agents on the IndyCar driver market, Christian Lundgaard made yet another statement why his services should be picked up,by winning pole position for Sunday’s Honda Indy 200 at Mid-Ohio.
This marks the Dane’s first pole since Portland of 2025 and his fourth career overall. The Arrow McLaren driver has shown strong pace all weekend long, placing in the top five in both practice sessions and was fastest in Saturday’s session.
Lundgaard, coming off a race win at Road America two weeks ago, looks forward to starting one position higher on Sunday, than he did in 2025 at Mid-Ohio.
“We’ve been fast all weekend, so I feel like it was just the goal at the end of the day,” Lundgaard said. “Obviously we qualified second here last year, and to do it any better, it was one position. To have it as a team, too, at the end of the day, if it’s one way or the other, I don’t think it really matters. We’re leading the show tomorrow, and we can dictate the pace. So I think that will be at least our strongest benefit tomorrow.”
Lundgaard also enters this weekend with rumors circulating around his future with Arrow McLaren. The team are rumored to hire Scott Dixon, the six-time IndyCar champion and 2008 Indianapolis 500 winner and Felix Rosenqvist, the 2026 Indy 500 winner, leaving Lundgaard on the outside looking in.
The rumors to the Dane are “just noise” and everything continues to be business as usual.
“Well, at the end of the day for me it’s just noise. Once you’re in the car, I don’t really think anything matters. The talk is for next year, not this year. I still have a job to do and a job to finish.
Arrow McLaren swept the front row, with Pato O’Ward, who set a time of 01:04.8649, just 0.0253 seconds slower than Lungdaard (01:04.8396). O’Ward is looking for his first podium of the year, as Lundgaard is the only Arrow McLaren driver to be on the podium this season.
“There’s a lot of things that can happen,” O’Ward said in regards to climbing on the podium for the first time in 2026. “I’ve started in the front row other times this year, and we’ve had some happy pedalers behind that pumped us or took us out. You cannot control that. I cannot control that. I also cannot control if we have a hiccup in the pits. I cannot control that. All I can do is maximize what I’ve got inside of the race car, and I truly believe that’s what I’ve been doing this year.
I don’t think I’ve driven as well as I have this year. Sadly, the results I don’t think are well correlated with that, but I think there’s a lot of little things that have been costing us a lot of just much better results in certain areas. My hope for tomorrow is just to have a clean race. I don’t need the fastest pit stops. I don’t need the best strategy. I don’t need extremely lucky yellows. All I need is a nice smooth race, and I’m more than skilled enough to get the job done.”
Will Power (01:04.8778), David Malukas (01:04.9083) and Christian Rasmussen (01:05.2169) will start in third, fourth and fifth, respectively.
SEE: 2026 Honda Indy 200 at Mid-Ohio Starting Grid