How Rosenqvist has started to rebuild his IndyCar momentum

It was reassuring, last August in Nashville, to hear Zak Brown confirm that Arrow McLaren SP would be retaining its drivers for 2022. We were certain that Pato O’Ward wasn’t going anywhere, especially while McLaren dangled the Formula 1 carrot in front of him, and we knew that Felix Rosenqvist’s deal, signed in late 2020, was multi-year.

But still, this is a tough and swift-moving business. In silly season, one has to consider such factors as get-out clauses, performance clauses, breaches of terms and conditions, and “so sue me” attitudes. After all, in September 2019, this writer was assured by Sam Schmidt that James Hinchcliffe was staying onboard the imminently renamed Arrow McLaren SP team for 2020. Yet, within eight weeks, the Canadian was gone.

By late summer of ’21, therefore, it was natural to worry over Rosenqvist’s future. He was two-thirds of the way through what he now describes as “the worst season of my career”, having struggled to adapt to the very front-downforce-heavy, pointy setup philosophy that Arrow McLaren SP had elected to follow.

His pace was sporadically good, but his results were awful, partly as a result of that hit-and-miss speed, partly due to rotten luck. The one time Rosenqvist appeared to be in a potentially winning position, the first race in Detroit, his throttle stuck open and he had a nasty-looking shunt that forced him to miss the second Motown race and also Road America.

Even taking into account those two non-scores, 21st on the points table looks disastrous, especially its stark contrast with O’Ward’s tally. Pato’s momentum from 2020, when he scored four podium finishes and took fourth in points, went unchecked last year, and he scored his first two wins on his way to third in the