Sting Ray Robb felt compelled to fill the awkward silence that had sucked the air out of the room.

Nearly 15 seconds had passed since he’d finished answering a reporter who asked if Linus Lundqvist, the runaway 2022 Indy Lights champ, deserved one of IndyCar’s coveted open seats in an offseason that had seen the addition of two rides and four rookies.

Nearly five months prior, in a car run by HMD Motorsports – a major partner on one of Dale Coyne Racing’s two full-time IndyCar seats – Lundqvist clinched the Lights title with one race to go in a series that had produced down-to-the-wire title fights for 17 years running. Despite finishing 6^th and 4^th during the finale doubleheader at Laguna Seca, the Swedish driver finished 92 points ahead of the Robb.

The newest Coyne driver had a simple answer: “I believe that I deserve a seat, and he beat me. So there’s your answer.”

Before another reporter could change subjects, Robb inched forward in his seat.

“Can I say one more thing real quick? So, Linus does deserve a seat. His on-track performance (last year) was incredible,” Robb said. “But it takes more than just a driver to get into IndyCar. You’ve got to have a village around you that supports you, and so I think that’s where my group made a difference. It wasn’t just my performance, but it was the people around me.

“I feel bad for Linus because, as a driver, I could’ve been in that seat if I didn’t have those same people around me.”

Robb had assumed that Lundqvist was going to land in the No. 51 Honda ... until the he ran into Lundqvest at the gym. The pair’s brief conversation changed the course of the final steps of IndyCar’s latest Silly Season.

“With Linus winning the Indy Lights championship, we assumed that, with the HMD association, that that would be a shoo-in for him,” Robb explained at Content Days in Palm Springs. “But I went to PitFit one day with Linus and discovered that wasn’t the case.”

So the moment he finished his training session, Robb called his manager, Pieter Rossi, informed him of the available ride. Soon after, Rossi was on the phone with Coyne.

Coyne had already committed to testing Marcus Armstrong, the ex-F2 driver who eventually landed with a road and street course-only deal at Chip Ganassi Racing, and Danial Frost, who’s slated to begin his third season of Indy NXT next month, but the team soon added a third test date for Robb in early 2023. Robb’s camp was also in talks with Juncos Hollinger Racing, who midway through the 2022 season formally confirmed its plans to add a second full-time car alongside Callum Ilott for 2023.

“I think (Dale finding out we were in talks with JHR) allowed us to put a little fire under our seats and get a move on,” Robb said. “I think there’ve been some opportunities that were miraculously created that we couldn’t have done on our own, and (that early-January test) was what set the tone that allowed me to get in that seat.”

Right place, wrong time

For Lundqvist, it had taken him just about every piece of capital and support he’d built up in his young racing career just to make a sophomore run in Indy Lights in 2022. Having finished 3^rd to Kyle Kirkwood and David Malukas’ runaway title battle, Lundqvist still managed to create nearly a 100-point gap to 4^th-place and was the clear 2022 title favorite.

Five other full-season drivers from that grid returned, but Lundqvist was only confirmed for his ride two weeks before the season-opener. He’d win four of the first six races, and though he only won once in his next half-dozen starts, he’d long all but sealed the title by the time the paddock took off for the closing west coast swing.

In late-September at IndyCar’s end-of-the-year banquet, he and his HMD Motorsports team owners were thrown off at the prize money on the large ceremonial check: $500,000 – an amount Penske Entertainment Corp. said had been communicated to teams well in advance, which numerous paddock members have since disputed. With IndyCar taking back control of promotion of the series, it had made the rather quiet decision to dole out $50,000 in individual race purses across the 14 rounds in 2022, rather than putting that $700,000 towards the champion’s scholarship, as former series promoter Andersen Promotions long had.

So the series’ undoubted best driver in 2022, who only barely returned and did so believing he was pursuing a $1.2 million prize that would’ve guaranteed him an Indianapolis 500 ride and two other IndyCar starts in 2023, walked away with less than half that. It was an amount that wouldn’t begin to move the needle for full-season ride conversations and still didn’t reach half the funding for an Indy 500 ride.

Late last month, he spent his days roaming the Rolex 24 paddock for an opportunity to drive just about anything.

“Teams obviously need money to run, and I’m not a driver that brings money,” Lundqvist told the Associated Press at Daytona. “I understand the business, but it doesn’t mean that it hurts any less. I still believe that we deserve a shot. They tell me I just won the title the wrong year.

“I’m trying to find something. Anything, really, but I think the full-time racing option this year is gone. The best case is maybe I can put together maybe a couple of races, and if I do well, then maybe that can lead to something more. It’s not easy to come by these seats, and it’s a very tough way to start the year.”

Had Kirkwood, now an Andretti Autosport driver and the winningest Road to Indy racer in the ladder system’s history, been in Lundqvist’s position a year ago, he would’ve faced similar hurdles. Last week in his first days with his new team, Kirkwood finished top-3 in all three of IndyCar’s open test sessions he ran at The Thermal Club.

“The scholarship I got from Indy Lights kept me alive going into IndyCar, and I think it’s a super unfortunate situation that (Linus) is in,” Kirkwood said. “I highly respect Linus, and I think he should be part of this youth movement.”

There are several 2023 Indy NXT drivers eyeing a leap to IndyCar in 2024 with supreme talent or deep pockets behind them. Ex-F2 driver Robert Shwartzman tested with Ganassi earlier this year, with Formula E’s Nick Cassidy waiting in the wings. Mike Shank will struggle to keep his star IMSA driver Tom Blomqvist out of a jump into an IndyCar seat.

Not only has Lundqvist missed out in 2023, but he may already find himself behind the 8-ball for 2024, with 12 months to go.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: IndyCar: Sting Ray Robb, Linus Lundqvist on separate paths