One year ago, Felix Rosenqvist said his primary goal was to improve Meyer Shank Racing’s standing within the NTT INDYCAR SERIES. Today, his goals are even loftier.
As the 2025 season continues with its second race next week in Southern California – The Thermal Club INDYCAR Grand Prix will be held Sunday, March 23 at 3 p.m. ET – Rosenqvist will be one of the contending drivers for the pole, for a podium finish, maybe even a race win.
Rosenqvist finished third in last year’s race at The Thermal Club, although that was an exhibition race. He has gone 20 races without a podium finish, 77 races without a win, but the momentum of Meyer Shank Racing’s No. 60 SiriusXM Honda suggests those droughts could end soon.
New for this season is MSR’s technical alliance with Chip Ganassi Racing, the organization that has won five of the past seven series championships and employed Rosenqvist in 2019 and 2020. Rosenqvist and teammate Marcus Armstrong work closely with CGR’s drivers, and Rosenqvist’s car is engineered by Ross Bunnell, who helped Scott Dixon win five races over the past two years.
Rosenqvist and Armstrong qualified on the second row for the season-opening Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg presented by RP Funding, a race won by CGR’s Alex Palou. Rosenqvist finished seventh, and his result could have been much better if he hadn’t started the race on Firestone’s primary tire compound, a strategy disadvantaged by the first-lap caution that allowed most of the field to discard the less-preferred alternate tire compound.
Rosenqvist was disappointed with the St. Petersburg opportunity that slipped away, but he is as eager for the chances ahead.
“It’s been very good the way the teams work together and interact,” the 33-year-old Swede said of the new technical alliance. “I feel like (CGR is) as hungry as we are to listen to what we have to say about our experiences and vice versa. It's been very two-sided so far, kind of where you want it to.”
An example of the collaboration is this week’s private test at Barber Motorsports Park. The MSR bunch attended; CGR’s crew will receive the information. The roles will be reversed for the session later this month on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course.
Rosenqvist was new to MSR last year, and the pairing started with a pole and four consecutive top-10 finishes before a host of mechanical issues in races plagued them. But even amid the challenges, the No. 60 car climbed from 25th in the entrant point standings in 2023 to 12th, the largest gain of the year.
Comparing the same number of races year over year, Rosenqvist’s group scored 135 more points than the No. 60 group did the year prior.
“Now we’re talking about winning races and podiums,” Rosenqvist said with a smile. “It’s very different (this) year.”
It shouldn’t be minimized how strong the Rosenqvist and Armstrong pairing can be. Rosenqvist said he has known Armstrong, a 24-year-old New Zealand driver, since he was 14, and Rosenqvist served as something of a driver coach for Armstrong during his championship-winning season in Italian F4 Championship in 2017. (Armstrong was driving for PREMA that year, the new NTT INDYCAR SERIES team that Rosenqvist had twice driven for, including a title-winning season in FIA F3 European Championship in 2015.)
Contributing to Rosenqvist’s optimistic current state of mind is the fact he got married last September and has settled into his life in the United States. He and Emille live in Indianapolis.
The “happy space” that Rosenqvist describes of his personal life extends to his profession.
“It’s an exciting time for the team, I have to say,” he said. “It’s a lot of good energy.
“You can tell (team owners) Mike (Shank) and Jim (Meyer) are hungry. They’re always looking ahead how they can grow, how they can become better, faster.”
Like all 2025 races, The Thermal Club INDYCAR Grand Prix will air live on FOX, the FOX Sports app and the INDYCAR Radio Network.