IndyCar: Blomqvist Interested in IndyCar with MSR in 2024
Tom Blomqvist, the substitute driver for Simon Pagenaud at Meyer Shank Racing this weekend in Toronto, has quite an interesting career, spanning multiple racing disciplines. The 29-year-old has a triple nationality of British, Swedish, and New Zealander.
Blomqvist won the Rolex 24 and at Road Atlanta in 2022, his first year with Meyer Shank Racing in the IMSA SportsCar Championship. In 2023, he won the Rolex 24 again and then the Chevrolet Sports Car Grand Prix at Canadian Tire Motorsports Park two weeks ago.
It was a surprise to the experienced driver that he was asked to drive the tight, bumpy circuit for the Honda Indy Toronto NTT INDYCAR Series for the recovering Simon Pagenaud.
In the first IndyCar practice session, Blomqvist felt lost. But he managed not to damage the car and learned much more about his weekend assignment.
Being used to having power steering in his IMSA ride, his forearms were the area he felt the most discomfort after just 75 minutes in the IndyCar.
” I think the biggest thing is just the physicality of the car is quite a lot. So once the speed picks up, all the load through the wheel and everything is just so much greater, so to feel the car becomes a little bit more difficult for me because I’m not used to that.”
“Some of the lower speed stuff with the braking, the braking of the car is really, really good compared to what I’m used to. It’s easier to get like — I feel quite comfortable there.”
“Obviously, the last sort of — we need to turn a bit off the brakes to find the limit of the car, floating it into the apex, all that stuff is what I need to improve a lot. But it’s just the
little things, the whole 9, the last section there with that new pavement there was really tough for me.”
“I need to try and get my head around that hopefully by tomorrow.”
“Yeah, there’s a lot to look at overnight. I have all the information from the group, and the car also felt very good in terms of I wasn’t scared of anything, so the car is obviously very, very good. It’s just my feeling with being able to take it to the limit.”
“We’ve got tonight to go through the data and the video and bits and bobs and then hopefully come back in a better shape for tomorrow.”
“Yeah, the physicality is going to be probably the biggest thing for me. I found in some cases, once the speed comes up, like I mentioned before, to chase a car you need to really be on top of it, and that’s where I was kind of leaving a lot of margins.”
AR1 asked if IndyCar was something he wanted to do full-time, maybe in the 2024 season.
The smiling Brit replied, “Ask me after the weekend. Ask me on Sunday.”
We will just have to wait and see how this plays out for the talented driver.
Lucille Dust reporting live from Toronto, Canada