From the time Danica Patrick earned her one and only IndyCar victory at Twin Ring Motegi in Japan, back on Sunday, April 20, 2008, up until this weekend, she had somehow managed to remain the most recent IndyCar driver to win a race behind the wheel of a No. 7 car.
6,593 days later, just shy of 942 weeks, that streak finally came to an end.
Arrow McLaren's Christian Lundgaard earned a victory that many felt had been a long time coming in Saturday's Sonsio Grand Prix at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course, and he did it with the undisputed pass of the year on the outside of Team Penske's David Malukas, who had to settle for a career-high-matching second.
6,593 days after Danica Patrick's one and only IndyCar victory, IndyCar finally has a new winner in a No. 7 car.
— Beyond the Flag (@Beyond_The_Flag) May 10, 2026
Lundgaard hadn't won a race since earning his maiden series victory with Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing on the streets of Toronto, Ontario back in July 2023, when he was behind the wheel of the No. 45 Honda. Saturday's win was his first in 23 starts for McLaren.
Bizarre Danica Patrick No. 7 car streak finally ends after over 18 years
While the No. 7 certainly isn't the only car number that hasn't won since 2008, what's bizarre about this streak is the fact that it has rarely not been used over the past 18-plus years, and it had actually had a ton of success even without a trip to the top step of the podium.
Prior to the Sonsio Grand Prix, a total of 304 races had been contested since Patrick's win, and 284 of those races featured a No. 7 car. During that stretch, the car achieved a podium finish on 22 occasions, including eight with Lundgaard behind the wheel since he replaced Alexander Rossi a year ago. Of those podium finishes, 10 were runner-up finishes, including four from Lundgaard.
Other podium finishers in the No. 7 car during that stretch include Patrick and Sebastien Bourdais with three each, Mikhail Aleshin and Alexander Rossi with two each, and James Jakes, Marcus Ericsson, Oliver Askew, and Felix Rosenqvist with one each.
Teammates of the drivers in the No. 7 cars had also managed to rack up a truckload of wins during that stretch, 20 to be exact.
Pato O'Ward is responsible for nine of those 20, all since 2021, with James Hinchcliffe responsible for three, Tony Kanaan, Ryan Hunter-Reay, and Simon Pagenaud each responsible for two, and Mike Conway and Marco Andretti each responsible for one.
Speaking of O'Ward, McLaren had not won a race with anybody other than O'Ward since joining IndyCar full-time in 2020 in partnership with Arrow Schmidt Peterson Motorsports. At that point, the organization's most recent win had come with James Hinchcliffe at Iowa Speedway in July 2018.
We even floated the suggestion of McLaren moving Lundgaard to the No. 6 Chevrolet, swapping seats with teammate Nolan Siegel, if they ever wanted to see him win. Fortunately for all parties involved, it didn't come to that.
Now that the Danica drought is officially over, let's focus on our next points of interest: no driver of any odd-numbered car has won an Indy 500 since Kanaan won the 2013 race in the No. 11 Chevrolet for KV Racing Technology, and no driver of a No. 7 car has won it since Bill Holland in 1949, driving for Lou Moore.
Can Lundgaard also end these streaks this year, and if not, can someone else end the first?
Live coverage of the 110th running of the Indy 500, the seventh of 18 races on the 2026 NTT IndyCar Series calendar, is set to be provided by Fox from Indianapolis Motor Speedway beginning at 10:00 a.m. ET on Sunday, May 24. Start a free trial of FuboTV and don't miss it!
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