ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — After both of Meyer Shank Racing’s (MSR) drivers each had a spin during Friday’s practice session on the streets of St. Petersburg, Felix Rosenqvist and Marcus Armstrong put their cars on the second row for Sunday’s Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg to kick off the 2025 NTT IndyCar Series season.
Rosenqvist set a best lap of 59.6989 seconds (108.545 mph) to qualify third for Sunday’s 100-lap race around the 14-turn, 1.8-mile street circuit. Armstrong was .1289 seconds slower than Rosenqvist (108.311 mph) and will start fourth in the 27-car field. Scott McLaughlin won the pole ahead of Colton Herta.
The Swede hasn’t had the easiest start to 2025. He was sick during preseason testing at Sebring, requiring Armstrong to test both MSR machines during the final offseason test and lost a good amount of practice time on Friday due to the spin.
“It’s a bit of a uphill battle the whole weekend and I feel like everything just kind of clicked going into qualifying,” Rosenqvist told Frontstretch. “I know […] normally qualifying is kind of my strength and it was good to see that I was kind of able to bring it together.”
Rosenqvist was third fastest in his first round group to advance to the second round of qualifying. The No. 60 MSR machine was fifth fastest in the second round to advance to the Firestone Fast Six.
As for Armstrong, he was fifth fastest in the same first round group as Rosenqvist but third fastest in the second round to advance to the Firestone Fast Six.
“I mean it went well, I think I did some pretty average laps out there, honestly,” Armstrong told Frontstretch. “And I felt like there was a lot more in Q1 and Q2, and then in Q3 I felt like I drove a bit better. But I didn’t feel like I quite had the balance to properly execute a perfect lap and I was actually disappointed to finish P4. But you know what, I’m really happy to be up there because it’s a really chaotic race tomorrow and being at the front is the best chance of avoiding chaos.”
The New Zealand native believes that the setup missed the perfect balance as the track has changed during the weekend, but that’s something that a few overnight changes can easily fix.
Armstrong and Rosenqvist’s performances meant that MSR were the only team to have multiple cars in the final round of qualifying.
“It just shows how good these guys are preparing these cars,” Rosenqvist said. “That’s been one thing I’ve been very impressed with since I came over to the team. The attention to detail, all those things matters when you’re in qualifying, when you’re fighting for hundredths and thousandths [of a second] and I feel like there’s no mistakes on the mechanical side.
“The [tire] pressures are good and everything is just there for you to deliver, which is not, not always the case. You know, if you talk to everyone in this paddock for the last run they did, they’d probably say that it was X and Y that could have been executed differently and I could pretty much say that we nailed it. So that’s a rare thing to say and I’m super, super proud of the team for that.”
Christopher DeHarde has covered IndyCar racing and the Road to Indy for various outlets since 2014. In addition to open wheel racing, DeHarde has also covered IMSA and various short track racing events around Indiana. Originally from New Orleans, DeHarde moved to the Indianapolis area in 2017 to further pursue a career as a motorsports writer.