On Friday, Malukas was introduced as Meyer Shank Racing-bound Felix Rosenqvist‘s alternative at Arrow McLaren, completing the team’s three-car 2024 lineup alongside Pato O’Ward and Alexander Rossi.
Malukas, a Chicago-born American-Lithuanian, has spent the previous two seasons at Dale Coyne Racing with HMD, incomes a pair of podiums that features a career-best runner-up final 12 months on the 1.25-mile oval previously often called Gateway.
The 21-year-old has another begin with Coyne this weekend at Laguna Seca earlier than work along with his new workforce begins. Not too long ago-retired IndyCar veteran Kanaan, who serves an advisory position that features mentorship for the drivers at Arrow McLaren, is keen to get him embedded inside the organisation.
“I believe he brings lots of youngness to the workforce,” Kanaan advised Autosport. “He is fairly robust within the ovals, I believe we had been robust as a workforce on the ovals.
“He is younger, he is hungry and that is what we want.
“I all the time had robust team-mates and so they solely raised my recreation each time, for those who take a look at my profession and the identify of team-mates I had.
“That is what we are attempting to do right here, in order that was one thing that weighed lots of our determination to convey him up.”
Kanaan, who completed sixteenth in his remaining IndyCar Sequence begin at this 12 months’s Indianapolis 500 with Arrow McLaren, believes Malukas has a excessive ceiling that can solely be fulfilled by going towards team-mates that can problem him to develop.
Tony Kanaan, Arrow McLaren Chevrolet
Picture by: Michael L. Levitt / Motorsport Images
“One hundred percent,” stated Kanaan, the 2013 Indy 500 winner. “I used to be very lucky from [Alex] Zanardi to you identify it.
“What number of team-mates: Dario [Franchitti], Bryan [Herta], [Scott] Dixon. They solely made me higher.
“We noticed lots of expertise in him and with the opposite two that we’ve, they’re already pushing one another like loopy, I believe he’ll be a terrific addition.”
The timing of the announcement can also be essential, with Malukas becoming a member of forward of an offseason that can seemingly be crammed with testing with IndyCar’s hybrid engine looming. “That is the entire level,” Kanaan added.
The arrival of Malukas comes after Arrow McLaren had been pressured to alter course by just lately topped two-time sequence champion’s Alex Palou’s decision to not join the team in 2024 and stay with Chip Ganassi Racing.
“In racing, you possibly can’t wait,” Kanaan stated. “Generally you pull the set off and also you pull the set off too quickly, however I additionally suppose that it took us just a bit bit longer than different individuals. You’ve got seen the way in which the market moved within the final couple months.
“However that is all the pieces, particularly with the hybrid. Subsequent 12 months we’ll get lots of testing in, however we’ll get him within the store.
“All people will get a break this week, however subsequent week he’ll be within the store and I get to work with him and lots of issues that I believe that I’ve seen in it already that we expect we would have liked to enhance.
“He must study the way in which the mentality of the workforce works. After which he’ll be within the automobile quickly.”