INDIANAPOLIS — Christian Rasmussen entered the DEX Imaging Media Center at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and took his seat on the white couch for Indianapolis 500 media day. Joined by Helio Castroneves and Ed Carpenter, he wasted no time throwing shade at both the four-time Indy 500 winner and his team owner.
“I’m just glad I’m taking the average age down here (laughter),” he said.
Locked in on “the biggest spectacle in racing,” Rasmussen doesn’t linger on a race that got away. Like his run at Phoenix Raceway earlier this season. Which he said “was easy to move on from.”
“Obviously you always want to have race wins,” he said. “But coming in on the first oval of the race and kind of feeling that we started where we left off last season, I think when you look at it, two out of the last three oval races, we’ve really been the car to beat.”
Since the back end of the 2025 NTT INDYCAR SERIES season and the start of the 2026 season, the driver of the No. 21 Ed Carpenter Racing Chevrolet experienced highs and lows on oval tracks. He scored his maiden IndyCar victory at the Milwaukee Mile and rear-ended the wall early in the going at Nashville Superspeedway. At Phoenix, he drove from an 18th starting spot to the lead on five different occasions and led 69 laps.
Then he hit the wall with less than 50 laps to go and finished 14th.
But that run gave him confidence, going into the 500.
“You always look back at what you could have done differently to change the outcome,” he said. “I mean, hindsight is 20/20.
“I think we did a good job. I think we did everything right that weekend. We were running up front. That’s just the risks of racing.”
As for Sunday, he hopes he and his team have the best car, but running the best car “is not always enough.”
“It’s a long race,” he said. “There’s a lot of variables during the Indy 500 with yellows and all of the stuff that can happen and obviously the 32 other variables that are on track.”
He rolls off 15th in the seventh round of the 2026 INDYCAR Series season. Which goes green at 12:30 p.m. on FOX.
