Felix Rosenqvist looks to carry momentum from Thermal Club into Long Beach (Photo: Luis Torres | The Podium Finish).
LONG BEACH, Calif. — St. Petersburg feels like an eternity for the INDYCAR paddock as the series will host its second round of the championship at Long Beach for the 49th Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach.
Despite the gap between points paid races, drivers such as Felix Roseqvist are prepared for the true start of the championship trail as the remaining 16 rounds will take place in a span of six months.
The driver of the No. 60 Meyer Shank Racing Honda and his competitors kept themselves busy with the series competing in a non-points race at Thermal Club, where he finished third in the “made for television” event, and the rain-shortened open test in preparation for the 108th Indianapolis 500 a week ago.
The veteran racer told The Podium Finish that Long Beach symbolizes the “calling before the storm” as the long and winding road kicks into high gear between now until the season finale at Nashville Superspeedway on Sept. 15.
“It’s gonna be busy all the way through the end of the season. It’s kind of been busy behind the scenes,” said Rosenqvist. “We have quite a bit of testing and simulator in the open test. Thermal was practically a long test for us as well, so there’s been a lot of driving.
“St. Pete feels like ages ago, but I feel like you kind of restart a little bit here. You just kind of wanna make sure you get a good points day on Sunday and then you really buckle up for the hectic season.”
In terms of Sunday’s race, Rosenqvist explained how important is to have a great run at Long Beach where qualifying becomes the precedent of his preparation before shifting his focus on the 85-lap race. Out of all the venues INDYCAR competes in, track position is paramount at the 1.968-mile street course due to the circuit being notoriously difficult to pass.
“It’s huge here,” Rosenqvist commented. “I think it’s probably one of the tracks basically based on the race length and the strategy. It’s normally a two stopper with no fuel safe. If you qualify well you nail your pit stuff, you’re probably gonna end up pretty close to where you started. So yeah, I’m hugely focused on qualifying.”
Rosenqvist navigating around the demanding Southern California street course (Photo: Luis Torres | The Podium Finish).
Speed is paramount in any race, especially at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway where Rosenqvist is no stranger of showcasing his muscle around the 2.5-mile oval. After being consistently fast all month a year ago with Arrow McLaren, the Swede showed his early strides for the team that’s no stranger of winning the 500.
In his quest for his first 500 and the organization’s second this decade, he had good tow speed last week at IMS and was 10th overall with a personal best speed of 223.442 mph.
While rain ended last Wednesday’s session a few hours early and ultimately ended up being the only day drivers logged laps, Rosenqvist doesn’t see it being a damper of just having one of the two scheduled days fulfilled.
There will be other days to run at IMS with the 200-lap race being over a month away and even compared how things were a few years ago where it was one session to the next, all in a quick swoop.
“Honestly, we get so much running there anyways, so it’s not really a big hit,” said Rosenqvist. “I remember one time we went to Texas and we did a practice quality and race on the same day. It’s not like we need all this practice. I think we’re in good shape, but we’ll always take more running if we can.”
In his sixth INDYCAR season, Rosenqvist is in a spot he’s never had in is career and that’s being the lead driver in terms of experience and pure speed. Moreover, being a teammate with series rookie Tom Blomqvist and only for the Indy 500, Helio Castroneves.
When asked about the acclimation to open wheels after being a mainstay in sports cars, Rosenqvist said from his observation, it’s gone really good.
“I think it’s a tough long championship to enter if you haven’t had a lot of single-seater experience recently,” he said. “We saw (Scott) McLaughlin in his rookie year and he wasn’t very impressive. And then now he’s actually one of the strongest drivers in INDYCAR.
“I think you gotta give (Tom) some time and I think his feedback is very good and the team is behind him. I’m behind him and we’re working really good together. So I feel like things are gonna turn around at this point of the season and he’s gonna have a big turning point for sure.”
Logging laps is a crucial part of building a strong foundation for organizations like Meyer Shank Racing, who’d like to be among the sport’s best like they’ve done in IMSA over the years.
Performances such as a seventh at St. Pete and a podium at Thermal Club, which Rosenqvist enjoyed all the track time he had and elaborated more in response of building momentum, comes a long way over the course of the season where any room for error provides tremendous consequences.
“It’s very important for us, especially for me being new to this team because it just gave us so much time on track. We could do consistent runs, try set up changes for essentially three days. So that was huge for us. So I really enjoyed going (at Thermal). We had a good results in cash in the pocket,” Rosenqvist explained.
“Tom being a rookie, I have to take that leader role a bit more this year, which I think it’s been good. I think it was a good timing for me to do that. It’s my sixth season in IndyCar, so I felt ready for I moved like that and I think it’s been working well so far and I think me and Tom worked well together. I think we we’re both getting stronger every race.”
