NTT INDYCAR SERIES News Conference
Thursday May 22, 2025
Indianapolis, Indiana, USA
Christian Rasmussen – Ed Carpenter Racing
Starts 18th
THE MODERATOR: Continuing with row six, the 109th running of the Indianapolis 500. Starting 18th, making his second appearance in the Indy 500, the 2023 Champion of INDY NXT by Firestone, driver of the No. 21 ECR Splenda Chevrolet for ECR, it’s Christian Rasmussen, and starting 17th, he led 23 laps in last year’s race, driver of the No. 77 Juncos Hollinger Racing Chevrolet, great to have Sting Ray Robb with us. Devlin DiFrancesco is also in row six. He starts 16th. He will join us later this afternoon.
Christian, for you, tell us about looking ahead to tomorrow, which is obviously hugely important to get you ready for Sunday as well?
CHRISTIAN RASMUSSEN: Yeah, looking forward to it. I think we’ve had a good month so far. We’ve had really fast race cars. We he missed out a little bit in qualifying, but we’re better than what we showed there.
Yeah, I’m excited. Excited to get started. We had a good race here last year. I was able to move forward, so hopefully we can do that again.
THE MODERATOR: Talk a little bit about — we’ll start with Christian — having Rossi on board now, a guy that’s won this race, that’s been around here a lot. Ed has been around here a lot. You’ve worked with Ed now for the second year. How much has experience helped you at a place like Indianapolis?
CHRISTIAN RASMUSSEN: Yeah, he’s been a massive asset not only here but the whole year. Alex comes in with a ton of experience. Obviously won around here, but he’s in his ninth year of INDYCAR, 10th year of INDYCAR.
THE MODERATOR: It’s his 10th Indy 500.
CHRISTIAN RASMUSSEN: No, it’s been amazing having him on board. I think Alex’s feedback to the car, knowing what’s going on is exceptional and more than anyone that I’ve ever worked with closely, so it’s been really good. He’s been helping on moving this whole project forward.
THE MODERATOR: It just seems, too, the team has a lot of momentum commercially speaking, and then obviously you’re seeing performance on track too, which I think has improved this year over last year. What is the momentum like for the team?
CHRISTIAN RASMUSSEN: Yeah, for sure it’s there. It’s like Rome was built in a day and it’s not you get a new guy in and things are going to change overnight. It’s a process. I think Alex has really helped move that process in the right direction, and I think, like you are saying, I think results are getting better and better. I think this is just the start of it.
Q. I’m wondering here, going into your second Indianapolis 500, finished 12th last year, great result. What are your thoughts going into your second Indianapolis 500? Do you think there’s going to be less nerves maybe, or just because it’s Indy, are those butterflies still going to be in your stomach coming back here for a second year?
CHRISTIAN RASMUSSEN: Yeah, I think there will always be butterflies when you are just about to start the Indianapolis 500, but no, just as the month as a whole, I’ve been a lot more calm in a way this year just kind of knowing what to expect a little bit more, having been through it all one time before.
You just know what to expect a little bit more, which makes it — yeah, at least for me I’ve just been able to have a little calmer approach, which has been nice.
Q. Christian, it seems that turn two might be your favorite corner. I was just curious if you know what’s happened there in terms of why that seems to have been a place where the car kind of got away from you?
CHRISTIAN RASMUSSEN: Yeah, the first time we thought we had a certain setup with the car. We were feeling very competitive up to that point. We had slight differences to the other car, but at that point when I did my first spin, we were I think 33 laps on tires. So it was a very easy one to brush off.
I was a little bit low, super old tires, and we just kind of thought that that was just one of them. So when we came back for practice the other day, we put on that same setup of the car because that’s where we felt the most competitive.
Obviously went out on new tires, and the same thing happened.
So it was just kind of out of the ordinary. The rear just kind of stepped out on the car on both instances out of nowhere with not really any sign of it wanting to do so. So, yeah, obviously we’ve kind of had to re-evaluate the package that we are bringing and adapting a little bit from the other cars and kind of going towards that direction.
Q. Do you have a similar setup to your two teammates?
CHRISTIAN RASMUSSEN: It’s very similar. It’s been slight differences throughout the month. We’ve done things on the 21 car that the 20 and the 33 has adopted, and the other way around as well. That’s kind of how the team dynamic works around here. If you find a little bit of something that you find an advantage in, then we can adopt that on the different cars.
That was just kind of the instance here where we had a thing that wasn’t really working for us, and we adopted some from the other cars.
STING RAY ROBB: I will say that you did it fairly well considering the other guys that had done it.
CHRISTIAN RASMUSSEN: About as good as you can.
STING RAY ROBB: That was impressive. I was puckered up watching like, Oh, all right, he’s okay, we’re all good.
CHRISTIAN RASMUSSEN: The first time the only damage we had was a slight crack on the rear wing.
STING RAY ROBB: That’s pretty good. Very impressive.
THE MODERATOR: Very impressive. Just after having experienced the Indy 500, both of you, once, twice, what’s your favorite part of race day? Christian, start with you.
CHRISTIAN RASMUSSEN: The racing (laughing). I love racing around here. I think it’s so cool. I think you can do stuff around here that you can’t really do anywhere else. The racing on ovals in general are different from racing on a street circuit.
Obviously it’s super special being here. Walking through Gasoline Alley with 350,000-plus people, that’s a whole other story, but on the racetrack I think, yeah, it’s the coolest event that we do.
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