If there was a ‘Sneaky-Good Driver of the Early Season’ award in IndyCar, it would go to Chip Ganassi Racing’s Marcus Armstrong.
The young New Zealander impressed on occasion during his debut season in a part-time role, and despite recording five finishes between sixth and n inth place, Armstrong wasn’t able to deliver a breakthrough drive. That changed on Sunday in Detroit, where the Kiwi chased teammate and countryman Scott Dixon in the closing stages of the crash-filled event.
Although former teammate Marcus Ericsson slid through to take second for Andretti Global, Armstrong’s stout charge to third — to stand on his first IndyCar podium while Dixon delivered his 58th victory — spoke to the 23-year-old progress in his new full-time role for Ganassi.
“It was chaotic; it started raining already when we were on the grid before the start of the race so I knew straight away that there was going to be some sense of urgency from everyone. And it didn’t disappoint,” Armstrong told RACER.
“After that first yellow, it just turned into staying out of trouble, because there was always something going on down at Turn 3 as people were being very aggressive for no apparent reason. And we just made the most of it. I have to say that Taylor Kiel, my race strategist, did a phenomenal job of navigating me through everything that w as thrown our way. Rain, shine, fuel save… it was all on the table. Taylor was one step ahead of everyone and I felt like we strategically had a good plan.”
Armstrong’s intentional efforts to drive within himself and avoid high-risk passing attempts whenever possible was the right approach for his No. 11 Honda effort. It not only produced his first podium in IndyCar, but also made for a meaningful first for his race engineer Angela Ashmore, who previously won races — including the Indianapolis 500 – as an assistant engineer, and now got to watch her driver spray champagne in Detroit as the person in charge of running the car’s entire engineering department.
With the new third-place result stacked on top of the fifth he earned at The Thermal Club and the fifth from the Indianapolis Grand Prix, Armstrong’s making a habit of delivering quality finishes for Ganassi to complement what team leaders Dixon and Alex Palou routinely generate for the team.