After three months of waiting, Chip Ganassi Racing formalized their driver lineup for the 2027 NTT IndyCar Series season with the announcement that Christian Lundgaard is set to replace six-time champion Scott Dixon behind the wheel of the No. 9 Honda, joining Kyffin Simson and five-time champion Alex Palou on a multi-year contract.
And it's all thanks to Arrow McLaren cutting Lundgaard for what, after those same three months, still remains largely unknown.
McLaren cut ties with Nolan Siegel, which was expected, but dropping Lundgaard was a baffling move, amid a career year for the 25-year-old Danish driver. In only his second season with the team, he led them with seven podium finishes, including two victories, and finished a team-best (and career-best) third in the championship standings.
Lundgaard quite literally got a shorter leash than Siegel, who scored zero top five finishes in two and a half seasons. And Lundgaard actually scored more points on road courses than Palou did in 2026.
Chip Ganassi Racing adds Christian Lundgaard to formidable IndyCar lineup
The primary argument against Lundgaard was that he's not good on ovals, and it's not exactly a secret that McLaren and Zak Brown are prioritizing the "Triple Crown". They want to win the Indy 500, and it's become relatively obvious that they'd take an Indy 500 win over an IndyCar championship.
Fair enough. But Lundgaard scored a podium finish at the Milwaukee Mile to end the year, and his two seasons with McLaren came after driving an absolute tractor for Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing for three years, where it would have been impossible for anybody, himself included, to assess his true oval skillset.
Instead, they brought in Dixon and Felix Rosenqvist. Dixon has had a legendary career, but at 46 years old, he's coming off of his first winless season since 2004. Rosenqvist is the reigning Indy 500 winner, but that's also his only oval podium in eight years.
By being willing to cut Lundgaard entirely just to make those questionable moves possible, McLaren allowed the rich to get richer.
Chip Ganassi Racing have won six of the past seven championships, including five (four in a row from 2023 to 2026) with Palou. They're an 18-time IndyCar championship-winning team, and they've won two of the past five Indy 500s, after somehow going nine years in a row without one.
And now they've landed a driver who never should have become a free agent. They've landed a driver who has the same skillset as Palou on road courses, evidenced by his run of podiums and wins on weekends when Pato O'Ward was visibly frustrated with his race cars, and they've landed a driver who is clearly still improving on ovals, despite the somewhat half-baked narratives that exist.
Lest we forget that McLaren cut ties with Rosenqvist post-2023 as well, and they actually wanted him out post-2022 to make room for Palou. Instead, he leaves the team and wins an Indy 500. Imagine that.
Palou himself didn't win a single oval race in his first four seasons with Chip Ganassi Racing. They obviously didn't give up on him, because unless your name is Zak Brown or Tony Kanaan, you just don't do that when you land a top-tier talent. Now he's won three oval races, including the Indy 500, since 2025, and he even won the series' oval championship that year.
Does anybody really believe Lundgaard is a lost cause on ovals after only two years?
He's arguably the most well-rounded free agent to have been willingly cut by his race team after a season ever. And now he's set to join a proven winner, bolstering a lineup already headlined by one of the best drivers, if not the best driver, the sport has ever seen.
Does he have big shoes to fill by replacing Dixon? Absolutely. But looking strictly at "right here, right now", we all know that he's an immediate upgrade, a significant one at that, from Dixon's current form.
Again, the rich got richer. Why? Because Brown and Kanaan effectively handed that well-rounded free agent to the very team they claim they want to beat. And now that very team, one that always knew they would eventually have to deal with the seemingly daunting reality of losing a 59-time race winner, basically got a free pass after seeing that legend walk.
The combination of a 29-year-old Palou and a 25-year-old Lundgaard might very well already rival the Ganassi days of Dixon and Dario Franchitti, and it might very well do so for years to come. And the team Ganassi has to thank for that is none other than McLaren.
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