THE MODERATOR: Joined now by Felix Rosenqvist who will driver the No. 55 Meyer Shank Racing Honda, the NTT P1 award winner at Long Beach last season, second season coming up with Meyer Shank Racing.
How is content day treating you so far? How much are you looking forward to the new season.
FELIX ROSENQVIST: Good, yeah. It's good to be back. It feels like forever ago since I did anything INDYCAR related. I was also not a married man the last time I drove an INDYCAR, so it's a long time ago, so good to be back.
It feels good. I feel like I kind of had a good winter, pretty stress-free, not a lot of traveling. Been hanging out here in Indy mostly, and yeah, happy the season is getting closer.
Q. Montoya said it costs you two-tenths once you get married.
FELIX ROSENQVIST: But you gain a lot of experience.
Q. You're with Meyer Shank Racing but you also came up through Prema. What can we expect Prema to do their first season since you're one of their star alumni?
FELIX ROSENQVIST: I mean, I think they'll do well for sure. They're very serious with their program. I know them well enough that they wouldn't take on this project if they didn't want to do it properly. I think if it's one of the European teams that can actually do successfully, it would be them.
Saying that, I know it's a tough challenge. I think they have a lot of tough challenges ahead of them. You need people. You need parts. You need relationships. Everything is new. It's just a blank sheet of paper.
I think probably busier off-season for them than some of us others, but we've seen what they can do, so I'm not going to count them away even for this year.
Q. As far as your operation, you're obviously the veteran driver of the group. How do you see the driver dynamic, and also, what can we expect to see improvement-wise from Meyer Shank?
FELIX ROSENQVIST: Well, it's an exciting time for the team, I have to say. It's actually a very different team to when I joined because we had a little bit of a middle year last year with the INDYCAR being the only program, and now with the IMSA stuff coming along again, it's a lot of people. It's a big team. A lot of things happening. A lot of smart people in the building and a lot of new faces for me even.
I was there for the Christmas party a few weeks ago, and a lot of faces I haven't seen before.
But it's exciting. It's a lot of good energy. You can tell that Mike and Jim are hungry. They're always looking ahead how they can grow, how they can become better, faster.
I feel good with my core group kind of being intact. Obviously we have the partnership now with Ganassi, which is exciting. Used to work with those guys five, six years back, so a lot of familiar faces there, as well.
So my pit stand will be pretty much unchanged, but obviously Ross, my new engineer, will be on the stand and some other people from Ganassi, as well. It's nice to keep most of the consistency, but some new stuff, as well.
I think we're all pretty excited just to hit the ground running in Sebring for the first test and St. Pete, and should be good, I think.
Q. As you've had a relatively quiet off-season to kind of analyze your first season at Meyer Shank Racing, I know there's not a major difference in results, but maybe just not quite as high moments in the latter half of the season last year. Is there anything you can attribute just a little bit of a performance and execution difference between the first half of 2024 and the second half?
FELIX ROSENQVIST: Yeah, we had a really strong start of the year. I think we were -- if you go back now and look at our ambitions at the time, we were sitting here last year, it was kind of like, we need to get back in the leader's circle. That was pretty much it.
Now we're talking about winning races and podiums. It's very different going into this year, and I think all that started in the beginning of last year where we had a very strong car. We were fast everywhere. We had really good results initially; then quite a lot of technical issues.
I would say it was kind of like outside of our control for the most part. But a lot of DNFs, stopping on track for different reasons, which cost a lot, and I feel like we had a little lukewarm part of the, like, mid-season.
After the 500 it was a bit stale and didn't really have the same speed, and then I feel like we finished really strong again. Like Nashville weekend we essentially had a puncture that left us standing again, but we were really fast all weekend and kind of left us hungry for the off-season.
I think that kind of summarizes it. It was too many DNFs, too many technical issues. But the speed was there all year, to be honest, and I think race execution is something I've been trying to work on a lot with my engineer. We're talking already how we can be a bit more clever on the strategy side and race pace and stuff.
I feel like that's where the low-hanging fruit is at the moment, and then kind of keeping the good bits from what we already had should be pretty strong.
Q. As you mentioned, you showed a lot of speed at certain times in MSR's relationship, technical alliance with Andretti Global last year. You guys now switch over to a similar relationship with Chip Ganassi Racing where you spent the first two years of your career and a team that's won, I think, four out of the last five championships. What is your thought about how that could impact and just continue to lift this team up in 2025?
FELIX ROSENQVIST: I think it's only positive. Obviously I would like to thank Andretti for the partnership we had. I was only part of it for one year, but I thought it worked really well. I think it showed that it can work just as well or better with Ganassi.
I think it really helps, as well, that I know a lot of the faces there. I think that's one of the hardest things when you step into a new environment. It's just a lot of people you have to get to know. You have to learn who to talk to for different stuff. That's already kind of there, which is hugely helpful.
Obviously Ganassi, they've been the best team. I think it's as simple as that, the last decade or so. It's hugely exciting for us. I think we can build something really good. I think it's a long-term thing, as well. That's at least the ambition on both sides.
Already what I've seen now, it's been very good the way the teams work together and interact. I feel like they're 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.
But at some point you need to hit the track, and that's the next step.
Q. Obviously you've got a new teammate in Marcus Armstrong this year. How excited are you to have him in the team given the fact that he has the experience like you have with Ganassi?
FELIX ROSENQVIST: It's good. I think his consistency is good for everyone, as well. I think he pretty much has the same lineup engineering-wise as last year. Effectively the same car, and I think that's good. It helps me, as well, to talk to him about the car and maybe look back -- you go to Barber, you look 2024 Barber how did you feel, X and Y.
It's always helpful the more experience you have. I've known Marcus since he was like 14. I actually driver coached him back in the day when he was in Formula 4 in Italy.
He's a good guy. We already did some stuff together in the winter, and he's good to have around. I think it's going to be a good vibe. He's pretty relaxed, as well, no big drama, so I think we'll get along.
Q. Last year on this day you were talking about you moved to Indy, were really in a good head space and you wanted to have a breakout year. Now you're married; where is your head space coming into the 2025 season?
FELIX ROSENQVIST: I think just building on that, really. I feel more than anything that I've kind of found my base here, as you say. A lot of kind of chaotic years in the past, and I feel like this off-season was like more calm than any other year.
I think it's good for you to kind of recharge your energy in the right way, focus on the right things, but also get a break from racing. Even if you're here in Indy -- I was back in Sweden for a week, but I feel like every year I want to spend more time here, which was kind of my goal to be able to say that when I moved over to INDYCAR in the first place because I feel like a lot of us, we're not from here, and you start traveling back and forth.
But it's cool to really feel that this is becoming like a true home, and also long-term you're not thinking about moving back or stuff like that. You're just kind of happy to be here, and there's a sense of calm in that.
I love it. And for the racing part, it's obviously very easy, as well, being here. Everything is kind of close. My engineers are close. Shank is like two and a half hours away.
Yeah, I feel like it's been a great off-season. I'm in a very happy space for sure.
Q. Have you spent time with the Ganassi shop? Are you doing that kind of work, too? Kind of describe how that is different than the Andretti relationship. Or is it similar?
FELIX ROSENQVIST: I'd say it's pretty similar. I went to the shop a few weeks ago just to talk to the engineers mainly. But it's not like we go there every day.
I would say, to be honest, whatever team you're with, you're not really spending like every day at the shop anyways. But there's probably like a 70 percent time at Shank and 30 percent at Ganassi, something like that.
My engineer is with Ganassi, so the engineer relationship with the driver is probably the closest one or the one that needs to be the closest to be really successful, so obviously you try to spend a lot of time with them. But yeah, I'd say it works pretty similar.
Like you have your dedicated guys from Ganassi at the pit stand and mainly engineering, dampers and stuff, and you kind of build that relationship on the pit stand during the year, and then you probably have some meetings to exchange information with other Ganassi teams, like the 9 and the 10 and the 8, every now and then after a big stint of weekends to just talk about things because we're effectively going to act as one unit when it comes to intelligence or data and stuff.
We'll kind of see how it builds up and where it lands. I think it's a little bit open still, but we have a rough idea how we want to make it work.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports