Photo: Christian Rasmussen
The 2023 Indy Nxt champion has already secured a 2024 IndyCar programme; how easy was it to find a seat?
“It’s super cool for me to show that the ladder system works. Because that’s really how I’ve been able to to make this happen, is through the ladder system. I’m finally here, but the work doesn’t stop now. It’s going to be full push to also own my spot in IndyCar and prove myself there.”
Christian Rasmussen has done everything a young driver can to earn a seat in IndyCar, winning the USF2000, USF Pro 2000 and Indy Nxt championships in view of the teams from the top tier and impressing them in tests too. While the scholarship system on the Road to Indy may make it far easier to reach IndyCar than equivalent path to Formula 1 in Europe consisting of FIA Formula 3 and Formula 2, the level of demand for IndyCar seats right now still means it’s a hard job to get on the grid.
Next year Rasmussen will race for Ed Carpenter Racing, contesting the 12 road and steet course races (including the non-championship Thermal Club $1 Million Challenge) and the Indianapolis 500, but missing five other oval races.
The 23-year-old Dane said he ‘kind of had to’ treat his first test with ECR like a job interview, trying “to communicate the best I can and get to know everybody”. It did the trick when team boss Ed Carpenter later made the decision on who he would sign.
“Ed reached out to me about the test, and it’s just been very natural. We have some mutual acquaintances and through that we have kind of developed a relationship. So we’ve been talking for a while,” explained Rasmussen when his IndyCar deal was announced last month. “He has been figuring out what we could do for this year, and finally got a deal together.”
He added: “We were pursuing that [ECR test] before anything else. And it seemed like seats were filling up super, super quick as well. You know how silly season works in IndyCar. I had this opportunity early on, and thought it would be a great fit for me and pursued that, did the test, and it just kind of kind of worked out from there.”
Photo: James Black
When Rasmussen says early, he actually clarifies to Formula Scout that he means the opposite given his season finished on September 10 and IndyCar silly season was in full swing by then.
“We started those [IndyCar] talks fairly late. I had to go win the championship before I kind of knew what I was working with. I’m out of a very regular family that can’t always come up with with the budgets necessary to take that step. Especially being my rookie year in IndyCar, it’s hard to come without any budget at all.
“So I had to wait until I won the championship. And then I could see what what I had to deal with and then take it from there. I got the opportunity with the testing for Ed fairly soon after I won the championship at Laguna Seca.”
Although “the work starts now and we’ve got to get ready for the season”, Rasmussen doesn’t know how much testing he will do before his debut. His hope is “some days during December” to drive, and already knows what “I need to work on” in the car.
“I’m looking forward to the challenge, learning even more and improving myself as a racecar driver,” he said. “It’ll be a learning curve for sure, but I’m excited for it.”
Looking back at the Indy Nxt title (which featured five race wins and five poles) that put him in contention for an IndyCar seat, what did he do differently in 2023 to improve on his run to sixth in the standings as a rookie last year?
“I took some great experiences from my year with Andretti on how to run a championship at this level and not to panic early on when things might not go your way. So applying that to my 2023 campaign was good and that’s ultimately what what got us the championship.”
He went into more detail on that: “I’ve learned a lot of valuable lessons through my career, and it’s all about applying those for the following year. This year has been super good. We’ve been able to take a step back and take the results that we were given, even on the days that weren’t great for us. Then take the top-five result, top-six result, whenever you can.
Photo: Travis Hinkle
“I think a lot of those lessons came from my first year in Indy Nxt. And it was good for me personally to see how well I could apply that to this year.
“So again, putting another layer on that, learning from this year, applying all those lessons to next year is going to be important. The same thing in the future. I’m going to put another layer on for my first year of IndyCar, and I’m just going to improve and see how it all ends up. But it’s all about keep improving. I’m a big believer of that. There’s always something that you can improve on yourself.”
Rasmussen came third in Danish Formula 4 in 2017, then relocated his career to the USA. He came third in its national F4 championship before joining the Road to Indy. The logic behind crossing the Atlantic was asking the question “where do I have the biggest opportunity to make a professional career for myself with using the least amount of money possible?”, and “I’m sitting here, some some years down the road and don’t regret that decision one bit”.
Driving in IndyCar’s support series has crucially meant experience of its wide variety of tracks, and Rasmussen wants to see how he ‘stacks up’ against his future opposition on road and street courses, and ovals once he gets to race on more of them. But he’s not thinking about the Indy 500 yet, since “to let that get in my head this early on might not be beneficial” and he still has a lot of work to do on “getting to know the team and get up to speed in the Indy car”.
However he is “looking very much forward to getting on a superspeedway [as] I’ve only done short ovals in my career”.
As for setting expectations on his rookie IndyCar campaign, Rasmussen thinks he’ll “take it as it comes”.
“I want to perform my best and get the best out of myself, get the best out of the team, and then we’ll see how how we stack up. It’s very hard to just set a certain position or a certain number on that [in advance], but we’ll see how it goes.”
Photo: Karl Zemlin
What attracted Carpenter to Rasmussen?
“I think his record speaks for itself, the wins and championships. It’s going to be fun having yet another young guy in the team keeping that energy level high. I think him and Rinus [VeeKay] are going to be a really good fit and complement each other well. And the biggest thing that we saw in the test day at Barber was just the natural ability and speed that he has.”
Carpenter, like Rasmussen, uses the word ‘excited’ to describe his driver embarking on his learning stage in IndyCar. On top of that, Carpenter’s “really excited for [finding out] what his ceiling is going to be”.
He’s clearly interested in the Dane’s potential, and sees “a talented guy that we thought is a great fit for our organisation, and that’s all it was about”. However it was not ‘all about’ that, since he admits Rasmussen’s Indy Nxt title win this year and the prize money that earned him to spend on IndyCar “plays a big factor”.
“I mean, there’s never just one single thing. Christian certainly did a good job with the test, but so did Oliver [Askew],” he said. “We just felt strongly as a group that Christian was the right choice for the team, and that’s the direction we went.”
Carpenter may strongly believe in Rasmussen’s potential, but announcing him on a part-time, one-year deal didn’t echo that.
“There’s options for it to be multiple year, so that’s the intent that this is more than a one-year project. If you look at our history, in most cases, we’ve tried to build on relationships and and grow them. I don’t think it would be fair to say we’re going to see Christian’s full potential after one year. It’s a jump. And I expect him to be strong, but we want to be able to capitalise on his talent for the long run. So that’s our intent.”
One way to speed up that learning proccess, particularly on ovals, would be to add more races to Rasmussen’s schedule.
Photo: Travis Hinkle
“I would say that it’s early enough that there’s always potential to to add to the programme that we have, if the situation presents itself, and over time and we’re able to do that. Certainly the long-term goal is to have him running a full-time schedule, so we’ll see how that develops.”
HMD Motorsports, the team that ran Rasmussen to the Indy Nxt title, has expressed interest in helping its former driver in IndyCar. Could Henry Malukas’s team get involved alongside ECR?
“Henry is a jovial guy. I’ve had many conversations with him. That’s not one that we’ve talked about,” says Carpenter. “But if that’s something he’s interested in doing, he’s always a guy that I like being around. So would be happy to have that conversation if he sees the recording of this.”