Christian Lundgaard rallied back from a qualifying wreck that put him 12th on the grid to finish in 3rd at the 2025 Long Beach Grand Prix. It was the second straight P3 for the Arrow McLaren driver, now the only driver other than championship leader Alex Palou to have multiple podium finishes. Lundgaard now sits third in points after three races, 12 behind race winner Kyle Kirkwood and 46 behind Palou.
Chassis swap for Lundgaard at Long Beach
Lundgaard’s qualifying ended with his car in the tires late in the second round on Saturday, necessitating a chassis swap before Sunday’s race.
“The endplate made a dent on the chassis. It was a big hit, but the end plate was fine basically, but the chassis wasn’t, so we had to change it.”
The lack of running in Fast 6 qualifying meant Lundgaard had extra tyres for Sunday, though. Lundgaard and McLaren decided to “try to go aggressive, and let’s see what we can do” to make up the gap at Long Beach.
Lundgaard, McLaren turn apples into applesauce
Starting on primary tyres while the rest of the leaders ran alternates, Lundgaard took advantage of the extra clean air runs in Long Beach. He would lead 26 laps, and was able to conserve his push-to-pass for the fights to come.
“I forgot about my push-to-pass. Probably with 15 laps to go, I still had 84 seconds. That came in handy at the end.”
Rosenqvist chased down by Lundgaard in Long Beach close
Indeed, by that point in the race Lundgaard was still four seconds behind Felix Rosenqvist for the final podium spot at Long Beach.
“I didn’t really think I was going to be able to go get Felix.[…] I think we came back to them at the end of the stint where I think we had a little more pace than they did.”
With ten laps left, the gap was down to about a second. Lundgaard used the last of his push-to-pass making the move for third with five laps left.
“We showed what we really can be”
Compounding this race and his third place at Thermal Club with what he described as a “sort of conservative” run at St. Petersburg–where he still finished 8th–Lundgaard attested that “today we showed what we really can be and where we’re supposed to be fighting.”
