The IndyCar Afterburn: the 109th Indianapolis 500

Today’s theme music: “Back Home Again in Indiana” as performed by Jim Corneilson

It was a bittersweet last Sunday of May, as the biggest day in the global motorsport calendar arrived in a way we might never see again. In between a Monaco Grand Prix where mandatory tire rules failed to spice up the action and a Coca-Cola 600 where Ross Chastain went from dead last to Victory Lane, the 109th Indianapolis 500 gave us the most compelling race of the IndyCar season so far. With Monaco moving ahead a week next year, this combination isn’t coming back for the foreseeable future, but at least the trifecta ended on one to remember.

We had a sold-out crowd in attendance at the world’s largest sporting venue, and thanks to Fox’s incredible job promoting this year’s running, it hit levels of viewership not seen in over 15 years, even with the broadcast itself having AI-generated segments that looked like vomit and some shockingly bad moments of TV direction during the race. Rain once again delayed the start, though thankfully not nearly as long as last year. Once we finally did get underway, we got a bit of a spiritual successor to 1992, with cool temperatures, chaos on pit lane, and an incredible talent cementing his place among the all-time greats. So before we turn our attention to the rest of the season, let’s review the ups, downs, and all-arounds from the greatest spectacle in motorsport.

Hello-val Palou-val

For years, Àlex Palou has been an all-conquering force in this sport, but one thing always nagged at him. Until he won on an oval, his detractors would be able to call him a right turn merchant, and without a win at Indianapolis, he’d have to put up absolutely absurd stats everywhere else in order to balance out his legacy. This weekend, he finally put all that to rest, and he did so in the most Palou way possible.

After qualifying onto the second row, the Spaniard stalked near the front all day, waiting for the opportunity to strike, and when it arrived, he pounced. He took the lead for the first time with 14 laps to go, making a masterful sneak attack down the inside on Marcus Ericsson, then compensated for an iffy fuel situation by drafting off the back of nearly-lapped rookie Louis Foster. The Sneaky Swede kept Palou on his toes from there until the final turn, when Nolan Siegel brought out the yellow and officially clinched it.

In the grand scheme of the season, this is Palou’s third straight win and fifth of the first six races. In national pride terms, he’s made Spain the twelfth country to produce a Brickyard winner, as well as the third country to join the list in the last ten runnings. And in light of what happened in post-race tech inspection, it’s a relief he won it on track. But more than anything, this is the moment Palou became an undeniable legend of American open-wheel racing.

Ericsson gets what’s coming to him

Ever since the controversial finish two years ago that prioritized finishing the 500 under green above all else, Marcus Ericsson has walked around with a chip on his shoulder. He believes, as any other driver in that situation would, that his rightful win there was stolen from him, and after getting collected on the first turn last year, the Sneaky Swede finally got his first real chance at revenge.

A bobbled early pit stop threw Ericsson off his initial strategy, but that turned out to be the key to everything. He turned his shift in fuel mileage into a massive advantage, ultimately ending up the leader of those on the alternate strategy as the laps counted down, and he was able to push harder than many of his contenders. Even when Palou made what turned out to be the race-winning pass, Ericsson kept things honest the rest of the way and could have make a big move to snatch it back had the two been at the absolute front of the draft train. Second place at Indy might feel worse than last anywhere else on the schedule, but at least this time, Ericsson could say he lost in an honest fight…

…or so we thought. As it turned out, Ericsson and teammate Kyle Kirkwood both failed post-race tech inspection due to illegal modifications on their cars. With such a firestorm over the Penskes last week, the series had to make examples, so they, along with Callum Ilott, got banished to the bottom of the box score, even behind all the people who crashed. With Ericsson’s best track last year coming up next and another oval two weeks after that, the Swede will be on a rampage trying to get some trophies and clear his name, and his quest for Brickyard restitution will have to go on another year.

Sato, Hunter-Reay show they can still hang

We had an absurd amount of variety at the front of the field, as fourteen different drivers led at least one lap. Even Devlin DeFrancesco managed a good chunk, albeit inflated by yellow flags. However, it was a pair of veteran part-timers who did the most front-running.

In the early stages, two-time 500 winner Takuma Sato was the man to beat. Once we finally got the green flag, Sato quickly ended Pato O’Ward’s only lead of the day and went on to rack up a field-best 51 laps before ill-timed cautions punted him out of the running. Combined with his P2 qualifying, Taku scored more championship points from 11th than everybody else outside the top five, proving that he absolutely still has the juice.

That passed the torch to 2012 National Champion and 2014 Indy 500 winner Ryan Hunter-Reay, who spent the midgame proving how well a smart alternate strategy could pay off. The Texan led 48 laps in a backup car his team had to throw together after his original ride burned to a crisp earlier in the month and could have easily been in the final fight had it not been for a run-killing hybrid issue on his final pit stop. Add in Hunter-Reay’s teammate Jack Harvey leading three laps, plus one for owner-driver Ed Carpenter, and you have over half the race led by the one-offs, proving that veteran wiles can take a driver quite far at the Brickyard.

Malukas, O’Ward make the podium

Two years ago, Santino Ferrucci shocked the world by piloting an A.J. Foyt car onto the podium at Indianapolis, a place the team hadn’t been since Eliseo Salazar in 2000. This time around, the other Coyote proved it wasn’t a fluke, as David Malukas lit up the scene. The Chicago native was right in the fight all day long, keeping pace on the primary strategy and probably deserving to lead more than the two laps he got. The #4 pit crew helped significantly by performing out of their minds and giving Lil’ Dave lightning-quick pit stops on par with the Penskes and Ganassis of the field. While he ultimately fell behind Palou, he reaped the rewards of a legal car, as Ericsson’s penalty made Malukas the official runner-up of the race. While second at Indy is rarely a place anyone wants to be, it does match Malukas’s best career finish in IndyCar, and it’s the best A.J. Foyt Racing result at the 500 since Kenny Brack won it all in 1999.

Ericsson’s downfall also ensured a third 500 podium in four years for Pato O’Ward, who certainly didn’t have a fun time out there, but ran well throughout the day and won’t say no to some extra championship points in his pocket. If the rest of the field can break up the Palou show and start taking some wins of their own, Pato will be the man best positioned to make it a real fight.

Daly hangs tough, but panics late

Hometown driver Conor Daly is always a fan favorite when he drives at the Brickyard, and he gave the crowd plenty to cheer for. With thirteen laps led and many more right in the vicinity of the effective lead, he was looking like a genuine threat for the win as we approached the final stages. However, his fuel management wasn’t on par with the likes of Palou, and Daly audibly panicked on the radio trying to call himself into the pits ahead of schedule for his final stop. Still, he managed to salvage enough to put Juncos Hollinger Racing in the top 10 at Indy for the first time in team history, and they’ll be very pleased if he can keep the #76 running towards the front on the remaining ovals.

Dixon limps to a place in history

This 500 should have been particularly special for Scott Dixon. It marked his 408th career start in American championship open-wheel racing, as well as a shot at becoming the first driver to ever lead 600 career laps at the Brickyard. However, the Iceman’s day went sour before we ever went green when his rear brakes caught fire on the formation laps. That eventually necessitated a change of brakes and calipers under green, putting Dixon three laps down, and he stayed there all day long to finish 23rd. It’s his worst finish at Indy since 2017, the year of his infamous aerial crash. All he can do now is pack up for Detroit, where he’ll defend his local crown and try to be real fine for drive 409.

The Sicko’s Guide to DNFs: pit lane insanity, Larson does the Double DNF

An Indy 500 where everybody finishes the race is against the spirit of the whole thing, but this year drivers started dropping before we even started the race. Scott McLaughlin, the fastest polesitter in Brickyard history and the only Penske with a clean car last weekend, suffered absolute devastation when he lost control on the pace laps and hit the inside wall.

Apart from the personal heartbreak, Scotty Mac’s incident helped ensure that we started under yellow, and we didn’t even really get to the line before Marco Andretti tried to go five wide and paid the price. Because of that, we wouldn’t truly get things underway until lap 10 of the race.

From there, pit row became the site of disaster, starting with 2016 winner Alexander Rossi. Despite a strong start for the whole Ed Carpenter Racing outfit, with the Californian leading an ECR 1-2-3 at one point, it all quite literally went up in flames during his stop on lap 74, burning a crew member’s hand in the process.

Rinus VeeKay was next out, as he attempted to pull in for a pit stop on lap 82, only to lose it, spin, and wreck. Unlike Rossi’s incident, this one brought out the caution, and we wouldn’t even get through that before the scariest moment of the race. The Sunday before, Robert Shwartzman had a dream run to take both his and Prema Racing’s first IndyCar pole, but that dream turned into a nightmare when his brakes locked up and his car went bowling, hitting four of his crew members in the process. Fortunately, the one injured victim sustained only minor damage, but it’s a devastating fumble for the team after they showed so much promise.

When we attempted to get going again, the biggest on-track incident of the day ensued, and fittingly, NASCAR champion Kyle Larson set it off. In his second attempt at Double Duty, Larson was already on for a bad first leg after stalling in pit row on his first stop, but he lost control on the restart, taking out Kyffin Simpson directly and Sting Ray Robb indirectly. The latter, forced into the grey, lost grip and hit walls on both sides of the road as a result. Larson would go on to Charlotte for the Coke 600, and though he took an early lead, he lost it when he decided to go Initial D mode into the grass, then got taken out in the Big One on lap 246. In all, Larson’s shot at 1,100 miles ended at 596½, and once we all found out he’d mocked McLaughlin’s crash at the start, he both made new detractors and gave his old ones a whole new reason to point and laugh.

From there, pit row once again became the nexus of heartbreak, and we had our most impactful one yet at about the two-thirds mark. Josef Newgarden was out to do the unthinkable on multiple fronts, gunning for a threepeat from 32nd on the grid, and for a while, that prospect looked scarily possible. The #2 ran as high as 6th, but after a seemingly normal pit stop, the car lost fuel pressure, had to come back in, and never got back out. It was a deflating way for him to go out, but it guaranteed a new king of the bricks.

The next unfortunate victim was Ryan Hunter-Reay. Going into the final stop of the day, RHR was gunning for the win as the two main strategies converged, but upon arrival, his hybrid unit failed and the #23 shut down.

Finally, the race began as it ended—namely, under a yellow flag because somebody crashed. Our final victim of the race was Arrow McLaren’s Nolan Siegel, who paid homage to his Bump Day run last year by running into the wall on his last chance to improve his standing. The poor guy got just enough of a look from the cameras to mess up the traditional shot of the winner crossing the line, but not long enough for the booth to say his name. Such are the lows of failure at the Brickyard.

Championship Collage: the rich get richer

Depending on the circumstances, a podium at Indy can feel worse than dead last anywhere else. In terms of the National Championship fight, though, the men who got closest to Álex Palou will have some comfort. Pato O’Ward has once again taken second on the season, right ahead of teammate Christian Lundgaard. Felix Rosenqvist moves up to 4th, while Kyle Kirkwood’s failed tech inspection sets the Floridian all the way back to 5th. Meanwhile, David Malukas’s runner-up finish sends him soaring up to 10th place, putting him in the mix with Alexander Rossi and Rinus VeeKay as a potential king of the midfield teams.

The battle for Rookie of the Year continues to heat up into an actual fight. Robert Shwartzman took the most valuable pole position of the year, scoring twelve points before the race even began on his way to the Indy 500’s ROTY honor. However, thanks to his horrific early end and Foster benefiting more from the post-race penalties, the Brit managed to escape Indianapolis with the lead. Meanwhile, Kyle Larson, who’s technically still an IndyCar rookie, wandered into the back of the classroom with six points, then presumably called someone an idiot and crashed again.

The Manufacturers’ Cup continues to be less of a chase and more of a beatdown. Chevrolet grabbed the pole and got a double podium out of Ericsson’s penalty, but Honda are 6 for 6 in the win column and lead 539 to 437 going into June. Keep in mind, though, this assumes IndyCar won’t recalculate the manufacturers’ scores from the 500 months later and put a bunch more points on the board. When that happened last year, it all but sealed the championship for Chevrolet, and the way things are going, it might not even take until the recount for Honda to put this completely out of reach.

Finally, in our official unofficial Nations’ Cup, Canada is no longer dead last now that Japan and Brazil have filed in at the back of the field with 36 and 20 points, respectively. Mexico is the day’s big winner, moving up two places into 3rd, while New Zealand fall down into Mexico’s old spot. Under the original calculations, Sweden would have tied for 5th, but Felix Rosenqvist’s haul from 4th does keep them in striking distance for that spot. Most interestingly, Denmark stayed fourth, but had a bit of a fumble—since this goes by highest finisher, not highest scorer, they take Christian Rasmussen’s 25 points, not Christian Lundgaard’s 27. This can absolutely matter down the stretch, as New Zealand knows all too well. The Kiwi delegation gave away seven points in similar fashion at last year’s 500, then lost the title to the United States by a single point at Nashville.

Future Flames: Detroit vs. everybody

In just a few days, we’ll go from the elegance and pageantry of the 500 to our annual no-holds-barred street fight at the Detroit Grand Prix. Since we switched layouts from Belle Isle to the brutal 90-degree turns of the Renaissance Center, the city of garage rock, techno, and Jared Goff has produced some truly bizarre moments, arguably peaking last year with the beginning of the end for Agustín Canapino’s time in IndyCar. Time will tell if we top that, but between this and the 500, there may be no better pair of races to show off the raw course variety IndyCar challenges its drivers with each year.

Scott Dixon enters this one as the four-time and defending local champ, and after a subpar start to the year by his standards, he’ll be very eager to take a bite out of teammate Palou, who won it the year before. It’ll also be circled on the calendar in red Sharpie over at Chevrolet, whose shots at victory have sunk like a rock all season long so far. If their teams can turn that around and get the bowties’ first win of the year directly in front of General Motors HQ, it’ll be a massive shot of morale.