Felix Rosenqvist: Leaving Meyer Shank Was the Hardest Decision of His Career

Felix Rosenqvist joined this week’s IndyCar media call days after confirming he will leave Meyer Shank Racing for Arrow McLaren in 2027. He described it as the hardest decision of his career, largely because of what he is leaving behind at Meyer Shank Racing.

Key Points – Felix Rosenqvist Arrow McLaren Move

• Rosenqvist calls leaving Meyer Shank Racing for Arrow McLaren in 2027 the hardest decision of his career
• Points to the Indy 500 win in May and a front row start at Long Beach in his first weekend with the team as the memories that made the call so difficult
• Predicts Meyer Shank Racing will be a “big threat” in 2027, the team he’s leaving now rated as a genuine front-running outfit
• Reunites with close friend Pato O’Ward at Arrow McLaren, best man at Rosenqvist’s wedding and a team-mate he already knows well from his previous stint there
• Still fully focused on Meyer Shank Racing’s run of six races in five weekends, sitting seventh in the championship, before the McLaren move takes effect

The Hardest Decision

Rosenqvist was careful not to say too much. Contract details stayed off the table when he was asked whether his Arrow McLaren stint begins at the end of this season or on 1 January. He wasn’t going to compare the two teams mid-season either. But when the decision itself came up, he didn’t reach for a diplomatic line. It was the hardest call he’s had to make in his career. No qualifier attached.

His comments about Meyer Shank Racing explained why the decision carried so much weight. He’s walking away from three years with a team he repeatedly described as a family, right after the best season of his IndyCar career.

What He’s Leaving

Asked to pick one moment from his time at Meyer Shank Racing that will stick with him, Rosenqvist didn’t go to the Indy 500 first. He went back to the very beginning. A front row start at Long Beach in his first weekend with the team. He called it a very different time, for the team and for him, back when fighting for poles and wins wasn’t the expectation the way it is now.

Then there’s May. Winning the Indy 500 together is, in his own words, the biggest single day of his career. Meyer Shank Racing has exactly two IndyCar wins to its name, both of them at the 500, which he called kind of crazy to sit with. What he kept coming back to wasn’t the trophy. It was watching the sister car’s crew celebrate as though they’d won it themselves.

He also doesn’t think he’s leaving a team standing still. Asked how big a threat Meyer Shank Racing will be in 2027, without him, he didn’t hedge for a second.

Rosenqvist said the team had developed considerably during his three seasons there. Long Beach and Road America this year both had winning pace before caution flags got in the way. Rosenqvist’s comments suggested Marcus Armstrong is inheriting a stronger team than the one he joined three years ago. He also said Armstrong would find the same family atmosphere praised by other drivers who have raced for Meyer Shank Racing.

Why Arrow McLaren Makes Sense

Arrow McLaren is also familiar territory. Rosenqvist previously raced for the team before joining Meyer Shank Racing, and already has a close working relationship with Pato O’Ward.

The two didn’t know each other before Rosenqvist first joined the team in 2021. He wasn’t sure they’d get along. By his account it clicked almost immediately, from the first test day, when O’Ward invited him to dinner. O’Ward was best man at Rosenqvist’s wedding. They live two minutes apart and still hang out regularly. He described the racing relationship in the simplest terms he could find: no games, nothing held back between them, just letting whoever’s quickest on the day win. Scott Dixon, who Rosenqvist has also raced alongside before, is another familiar presence in the 2027 line-up.

The move looks less like a leap into the unknown and more like a return to familiar ground.

Final Six Races

Rosenqvist enters the final six races with his 2027 future settled, but with Meyer Shank Racing still chasing another win before the season ends.

The stretch includes two circuits nobody in the field has raced, an extended Freedom 250 in Washington DC now stretched to 147 laps, and the Milwaukee doubleheader he’s flagged as the team’s single biggest focus after a tough weekend there last year. A test around a month ago went well enough for him to believe the team has begun closing the gap that hurt it at Milwaukee in 2025. He sits seventh in the championship and arrives at Portland with two podiums and five top-10 finishes at the circuit. A first non-Indy 500 win of the season remains the target before he leaves the team.

It starts this weekend at Portland, one of Rosenqvist’s strongest circuits. He’s been to every edition of the race in his IndyCar career and rates it among his favourites, a track with the flow of the ones he grew up racing and one where he’s typically qualified up front. Strategy here has usually been straightforward for him too, which matters after last year’s race got away from him early. Running second or third, he and Pato O’Ward both pitted on the first yellow, a shared mistake that dropped both of them out of clean air and cost Rosenqvist a top 10 finish. He wants that fixed this time, nothing more complicated than qualifying well and letting the strategy stay simple.

Portland is also, by his own description, one of his biggest fan bases on the calendar, and he’s never quite worked out why. A lot of Swedish heritage in the crowd, he said, old Volvos parked around the circuit, Swedish flags in the grandstands, fans who know a few words of the language passed down from a grandparent. On the west coast, a long way from home, it still feels a bit like Sweden to him.

Portland begins Rosenqvist’s final six-race run with Meyer Shank Racing. It ends at Laguna Seca, where his three-year spell with the team will formally close.