By William Soquet / LASTCAR.info Staff Writer

Marcus Armstrong finished last for the 1st time in his NTT IndyCar Series career in Sunday’s Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg when his #11 Ridgeline Lubricants Honda retired from the race due to contact after completing 25 of the race’s 100 laps.

The finish came in Armstrong’s 13th career start. Across IndyCar Series history, it was the eighth for the number 11, the 110th for Honda and the 225th for damage-related reasons.

Armstrong began racing at nine years old in his native New Zealand, starting in go-karts. Four years later, he moved to Formula Ford, and a steady ascent followed. By 2017, and still under 18, Armstrong was running in the Toyota Racing Series, New Zealand’s top single-seater championship. Simultaneously, he began racing in Europe. Armstrong was the champion of Italian F4 that year, and was fifth in Formula 3 the following year. He improved to second in 2019, his second and final year in the series. Formula 2 brought three seasons with three different teams that all ended with 13th-place finishes. Armstrong showed flashes in 2022, scoring three wins, but inconsistency across the season kept him from moving forward in the yearlong tally.

Following his third F2 season, he tested for Dale Coyne Racing at Sebring in October, and Coyne said that Armstrong would be a good candidate for a third DCR entry that would likely materialize in advance of 2023. However, Armstrong pivoted in a different direction, signing with Chip Ganassi Racing in December to run the road and street courses in the entry formerly driven by Jimmie Johnson.  He was quick off the bat and challenged in several races, but Armstrong was never able to put a fully elite race together. A sixth at Toronto was the high point of the season. In a weaker rookie class, he also claimed IndyCar’s Rookie of the Year award, despite missing five races. Ahead of 2023, Armstrong moved to a full-time position with the team, as Takuma Sato did not return to race the ovals.

A plethora of driver changes ran throughout the IndyCar paddock in the offseason, leaving many drivers with new teams. In total, 12 of the 27 cars on track either had new drivers in the seat or simply did not exist last year. That is in addition to a fourth Andretti entry that was shuttered in advance of this season.

One of the most recent changes to the IndyCar driver lineup was the addition of Colin Braun to the IndyCar paddock. Braun started his career in sports cars in 2004, but later tried his hand at stock cars before going back to sports cars. He participated in a single test for Dale Coyne Racing in the late stages of the offseason and was announced as one of the team’s drivers at the beginning of race week.

Accordingly, it would be a tall task to pick up single-seater racing after only one test. The Texan was last in first practice, over a second off 26th-place Pietro Fittipaldi in his new Rahal Letterman Lanigan racing ride. It was the same two drivers at the bottom of the charts in second practice, but Braun closed the gap to only seven-tenths of a second on Fittipaldi. At the other end of the charts was Armstrong, who looked very promising at the beginning of his sophomore season. He was third in first practice and tenth in second practice.

Braun once again trailed his qualifying group, finishing 13th and last in Group 1. He trailed rookie pilot Kyffin Simpson by just over a second. However, Group 1 was the group with fewer drivers in qualifying, so it meant that the #51 team would not start last on the grid. That spot went to Dale Coyne Racing teammate Jack Harvey, who was 14th in Group 2. Harvey lapped the streets eight-tenths of a second quicker than Braun, but was relegated to last due to participating in the qualifying group with more drivers. Armstrong was second in Group 2, advancing to the Round of 12. There, he set the tenth-fastest time, despite missing the cut for the Fast Six by a mere .08 second.

After the command to fire engines, it seemed as though yet another rookie was set to take the last-place battle before the race began. Christian Rasmussen, 2023’s Indy NXT champion, was set to make his first IndyCar start with Ed Carpenter Racing, driving the #20 on road and street courses this year. However, when the rest of the grid fired up at the command, the #20 car was still silent. IndyCar Radio reported that after a couple of attempts to fire the car, the team opted to change the battery in hopes of starting the machine. In a stroke of luck, the change went smoothly and the car fired. Rasmussen was able to catch the tail end of the field right before the green flag dropped.

From there, the next task was surviving an often-hectic opening lap. Five cars were eliminated last year after a first-lap melee. Only slight contact occurred on the opening lap, and that was between 12th-place starter Christian Lundgaard and 13th-place starter Alex Palou. Lundgaard suffered a puncture in the incident, but he was able to make it back to the pit lane. When in the pits, his team opted to put him on alternate tires, putting him off-sequence from the rest of the field.

After exiting the pits, Lundgaard went on a tear. He did not go a lap down and had plenty of open track ahead. On the alternate tires, he began a steady march to catch the tail end of the field, which at that point was Sting Ray Robb. Robb was shuffled to the last car that did not pit at the end of the opening lap, and the new A.J. Foyt Racing driver was unable to make up any ground back towards his 24th-place starting spot. Lundgaard set his fastest lap of the race on Lap 5, but did not make it back to the pack until the time of the first caution.

That first caution was thrown for Armstrong. After starting tenth, he held that position through the opening lap and was running alone in between Will Power and Scott Dixon on track. On Lap 26, he was entering a hard left-hand turn when his car bobbled, the brakes locked up, and the car finally turned at the last moment. At that point, however, it was too late. The entire right side of Armstrong’s car slammed into the tire barriers on the outside of corner apex and then the concrete wall on corner exit. The contact bent Armstrong’s front-right axle, forcing him to retire for the race.

Robb was the next car to retire, as his car lost braking power on Lap 34. Marcus Ericsson, in his first race with Andretti Global, suffered an air filter issue that affected engine power. He parked just after midway. Romain Grosjean, on debut with Juncos Hollinger Racing, was the victim of a gearbox issue that forced him out in the late stages of the race. Linus Lundqvist rounded out the Bottom Five as the last car running. He finished three laps down after being punted into a tire barrier by Grosjean in the midportions of the race and subsequently pitting for repairs.

LASTCAR STATISTICS

*The 2024 running marked the third straight St. Pete race where a driver embarking on their first full season finished last – David Malukas crashed out in 2022, followed by Benjamin Pedersen in 2023 and now Armstrong.

*Drivers from five different countries have now finished last in the #11 – Japan (Takuma Sato), Colombia (Tatiana Calderon), Brazil (Tony Kanaan), the USA (Greg Ray), and now New Zealand.

THE BOTTOM FIVE

27) #11-Marcus Armstrong / 25 laps / contact

26) #41-Sting Ray Robb / 33 laps / brakes

25) #28-Marcus Ericsson / 52 laps / engine

24) #77-Romain Grosjean / 82 laps / gearbox

23) #8-Linus Lundqvist / 97 laps / running

2024 LASTCAR NTT INDYCAR SERIES OWNERS CHAMPIONSHIP

1st) Chip Ganassi Racing (1)

2024 LASTCAR NTT INDYCAR SERIES MANUFACTURERS CHAMPIONSHIP

1st) Honda (1)

2024 LASTCAR NTT INDYCAR SERIES DRIVERS CHAMPIONSHIP