Christian Lundgaard had a solid weekend in the Children’s Grand Prix of Alabama. After qualifying in seventh, Lundgaard made his way through the field to finish second to Alex Palou.
Best of the 16 overtakes
Lundgaard made 16 overtakes at the Barber Motorsports Park, including two standout overtakes on Scott McLaughlin and McLaren teammate Pato O’Ward. When asked about his favourite, Lundgaard gave an unsurprising answer.
“I mean, I enjoyed the pass on Scottie Mac here, but I really did enjoy the one I had on Pato into five, around the same pit sequence. It was kind of all three cars, the 5, the 12 and Scott coming out sort of like a lap after each other. I pitted before them. I had warm tires. It was just kind of chipping one off at the time.
“I had a great time out there, for sure.”
Thoughts on Alex Palou’s form
Lundgaard was then asked about the form of Palou, who currently sits 60 points ahead of Lundgaard after taking three wins in four races.
“Yeah, I mean, I think it’s just about putting that aside and focusing on yourself. The 10 car is doing a great job. We’ve seen that in years in the past.
“I would say we’re trying to raise our own bar, and we’re doing so. We’re performing better and better. On top of that, I had a team change. Getting to know a bunch of new people, getting to work with a bunch of new people. It’s a different car to drive.
“I’m very pleased with the job that I’ve done so far, the work that we’ve done. I mean, I don’t think I could have dreamed of three podiums in four races.”
The move for second place on McLaughlin
The Dane’s move on McLaughlin on lap 43 was the overtake which gave him the second place position come the chequered flag. When questioned about his thought process on the move, Lundgaard said:
“Yeah, I mean, ultimately you’re just trying to get by. It’s a pit sequence. It’s the one real opportunity you have, ’cause as soon as everybody settles in, you need to rely on people making a mistake and you can’t do that.
“It was about doing it when it counted. I was close enough to Scottie. I think we all know as soon as we get to the high speed on cold new tires, we’ll kind of bottom out. I pitted a couple of laps before, so I’d gone through that. When I caught Scott there, I knew game was on. I knew he was going to work for it, but always clean racing with Scott.”
Struggles with balance fixed in warm-up
Despite finishing second and out-qualifying teammate Pato O’Ward, Lundgaard had been struggling with the balance of his machine until the warm-up before the race.
“I’d say straightaway in warm-up this morning. I’ve been battling with the same balance issue all weekend. We had an issue on the car in P1, which kind of forced us not to be able to really try much in P1. So we didn’t get to try some things that we wanted to try.
“We were kind of stuck for the rest of the weekend with what we had, because there was a bunch of other stuff we needed to test. It kind of decreased in our list of things we wanted to try. I said last night we need to do something if I want to have a good race car. We did it for warm-up this morning. It was just clearly better. I said that was probably one of the biggest game changers I’ve had in a car. It’s a relatively small change. A little surprising for us.
“The car felt at least a lot better.”
