Despite a fifth place finish in the championship standings and overall numbers that rivaled those of established Arrow McLaren team leader Pato O'Ward a year ago, Christian Lundgaard's name was inexplicably brought up in the same discussions as Nolan Siegel's when it came to talks of a contract extension.
For months, an extension felt like a formality. Lundgaard could have won at Barber Motorsports Park if not for a pit road hiccup by his pit crew, and he went on to win the next two road course races at Indianapolis Motor Speedway and Road America.
But now third in the championship standings after a runner-up finish, his fifth podium finish of the year, at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, Lundgaard is out at McLaren for 2027, while Scott Dixon and Felix Rosenqvist are set to join O'Ward instead.
It would have made sense if Lundgaard, who only just joined the team a year ago, was playing hard ball on contract negotiations while knowing he had other offers on the table. And let's not kid ourselves; other offers will most definitely be coming his way, and he's probably the only name of Chip Ganassi Racing's short list to replace Dixon anyway.
But he isn't allowed to negotiate with other teams yet, and based on Tony Kanaan's "explanation" of why the team made the decision they did, it seems that Arrow McLaren were somehow content with letting him walk.
Tony Kanaan's explanation to me about why release Christian Lundgaard in favor of Scott Dixon and Felix Rosenqvist for 2027 ... @IndyCarOnFOX pic.twitter.com/4yqG3K9dok
— Bob Pockrass (@bobpockrass) July 6, 2026
It makes no sense. At all. No matter how you look at it.
"Short term vs. long term"? How does signing a 45-year-old Scott Dixon, who might as well be the 2015 version Peyton Manning in his current form, over a 24-year-old Christian Lundgaard, who is red-hot, still getting better, and already performing at an elite level, make sense either way?
Kanaan even specified "of my generation" when discussing his logic for signing Dixon. He actually compared Dixon's six championships to Lundgaard's three measly little wins.
Unless A.J. Foyt is out here signing himself to drive the No. 14 because his seven championships mean more than a 20-something-year-old's current success, I think we can safely say that retired race car drivers signing drivers from their own generation instead of proven A-level rising stars is not exactly a great long-term outlook.
Sure, it would be great if Kanaan ended up being right and could say "I told you so" to the overwhelming majority of the IndyCar fanbase that has no idea what the heck he's doing. Dixon can undoubtedly utilize his wealth of experience to elevate the entire organization, one way or another.
But Kanaan already used up a lot of that goodwill by claiming that his job was on the line when he signed Siegel to replace Theo Pourchaire mid-2024, when Pourchaire had already been announced to drive the rest of the season.
Siegel has recorded just five top 10 finishes since. He hasn't finished better than 10th this year, and yet his current 20th place in the standings is a career high. The team claimed they didn't sign him for his money, yet court documents in the Alex Palou case proved otherwise.
He still got a longer leash than Lundgaard, and Kanaan's job has never been under threat.
There simply has to be more going on here. Doesn't there?
The F1 instinct in me is saying that McLaren felt Lundgaard was too much of a threat for O'Ward, who has been the face of the team and the sport's most popular driver for the entire decade. No, IndyCar isn't F1, but I'm not so sure this team realizes that anymore.
Lundgaard has five podium finishes this year. O'Ward has one. Lundgaard's two wins have come on road courses, and he's yet to finish lower than second in such races. O’Ward, despite his win coming at Mid-Ohio, still has an average road course finish of only 12th this year.
Kanaan talked about his team not winning any championships so far. Lundgaard is literally beating four-time champion Palou at his own game. Palou is the road course king, the road course master, of this era. Yet Lundgaard could have beaten him in all four road courses thus far, and with three wins, if the pit crew didn't totally screw up Barber.
O'Ward hasn't beaten Palou in the standings at all since Palou joined Chip Ganassi Racing in 2021. That was before Lundgaard was even in the series.
O'Ward shows flashes of championship potential every year, yet we've seen, time and time again, that he can't sustain it over a full season. Lundgaard isn't even two years into his McLaren stint, is consistently outperforming O'Ward everywhere but the ovals, and they've already determined he can't win?
How unserious does it get?
Sure, O'Ward finished second in points a year ago, but Palou could have napped through four of those races and still been ahead. It might as well have been a thousand-point gap. O'Ward's best season thus far, from top to bottom, came in 2021, when he finished third with two wins while Palou won his first title.
That's exactly where Lundgaard is now, and he'd probably be second, 45 points behind Palou instead of 65, if not for the Barber mistake.
Dixon sure isn't beating Palou either, for what that's worth. Look at their numbers during their five-plus years as teammates. It's not even a contest, and despite the disparity, those first five years still saw Dixon in Dixon-like form.
On the flip side, McLaren know O'Ward and Rosenqvist have a good relationship, and I think we all know that Rosenqvist isn't a threat to the Mexican driver over a full season. He's 10 years older than Lundgaard, he's been in the series three years longer, and Lundgaard has both more wins and a better top championship finish.
Sure, Rosenqvist just won the Indy 500. But perhaps that, in and of itself, is a problem, because it opened up the wound that continues to plague McLaren: cutting drivers way too early.
Given the team's history with trying (and failing) to sign Palou (twice), the fact that they let Rosenqvist go initially, after trying to do so once before (for Palou), the fact that Siegel replaced Pourchaire in the middle of 2024, the fact that they fired another proven rising star in David Malukas before he ever got a chance to drive for them, and the fact that they could have retained Alexander Rossi and/or Callum Ilott (or Pourchaire, for that matter) instead of Siegel for 2025, Kanaan and Zak Brown could probably write more bad breakup songs than Taylor Swift.
Lundgaard might well have just become the next verse. Apparently he was trouble before he walked in, so shame on us for thinking winning races matters.
Fortunately, Chip Ganassi likes winners. Now he knows where to find another one.
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