Christian Rasmussen Earns 1st IndyCar Top-10 Finish at Mid-Ohio

LEXINGTON, Ohio — After scoring his best NTT IndyCar Series qualifying result of his brief career on Saturday, Christian Rasmussen backed that up with a career-best ninth-place finish in Sunday’s Honda Indy 200 at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course.

The Danish racer started eighth in the 27-car field and was running in sixth place ahead of his final pit stop in the No. 20 Ed Carpenter Racing Chevrolet. Unfortunately for Rasmussen, Alexander Rossi, Christian Lundgaard and Kyle Kirkwood leapfrogged the 2023 Indy NXT champion in the final pit stop sequence, dropping him to his eventual finishing position of ninth place.

“That was awesome!” Rasmussen told Frontstretch after the race. “We did exactly what we needed to do today just to have a clean, nice finish … You know we had obviously good pace in the car, which we showed yesterday in qualifying as well. But yeah, super, super happy. First top 10, I’m sure there’s more coming.

“It really just shows how much development we’ve done, not only me as a driver, but everyone in this team. So it’s been great to be a part of and it’s finally starting to show now what we’re capable of doing. So yeah, just very happy about that.”

This year has been mystifying for Rasmussen on road and street courses. Before Mid-Ohio, the 2020 USF2000 champion had only two finishes above 19th place (12th at the Indianapolis 500, 13th at Laguna Seca) in his part-time effort for ECR.

The eponymous team owner will take over the seat for the remaining oval races of the season while Rasmussen will be behind the wheel on the streets of Toronto and at Portland International Raceway.

“It’s kind of been a weird year on paper,” Ed Carpenter told Frontstretch. “It looks like we’ve taken a step back from last year. Internally, it feels like we’re better. We just haven’t been able to get the results from mistakes of our own and some bad luck at times.

“You know, in Detroit he was on for a top 10 there when we had an engine issue. So he’s been doing a really good job and progressing and it’s nice for him to get a reward and ultimately a confidence boost here as we head toward the last two road races for him.”

Rasmussen’s result moves him from 22nd to 19th place in points, 21 points behind teammate Rinus VeeKay in 18th.