INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — David Malukas sat in his car trying to replay what just transpired in the Indianapolis 500.
Somehow, he saw Felix Rosenqvist speeding past him in the final yards to win the closet finish in race history. The difference, 0.023 seconds between first and second place, was made even more painful because he left the Brickyard second last year, too.
The 24-year-old Team Penske driver understandably looked devastated in the immediate aftermath. Malukas’ father spoke with him on pit lane. His teammate, Scott McLaughlin, stood up and gave Malukas a hug during the postrace news conference. Even the fact he’d moved into second place in the points standings didn’t matter.
There was no consolation for losing one of the world’s biggest races by half a car length in the final yards.
“The pain is still there,” Malukas said after taking a few minutes to reflect on the near miss. “Watching it, he just had such a big run. There’s definitely nothing we could have — yeah, there’s just nothing. With the positioning, the timing of all of it, yeah, there’s nothing we could have done. We did everything we could, and it’s just a big thank you to this team. They gave me the best car out there.”
Malukas insisted he had the fastest car in the race after qualifying third for Team Penske. But as so many drivers have learned the hard way, the best car at the Brickyard doesn’t always win.
And now Malukas has joined a long and illustrious list of Hall of Fame caliber drivers who never reached victory lane at “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing.” The names include everyone from Michael Andretti to Tony Stewart.
But if anybody else at the 2.5-mile Brickyard on Sunday understands Malukas’ plight, it might be Pato O’Ward. The Arrow McLaren driver has spent four of the last five years coming agonizingly close to being the first Mexican driver to reach victory lane.
He had another shot in the final one-lap shootout but could not leapfrog the top two cars — Marcus Armstrong or Malukas — and instead added a fourth-place finish Sunday to go with his runner-up finishes in 2022 and 2024 and the third-place finish he had last year. O’Ward and Rosenqvist are close friends, but even that relationship wasn’t enough to wash away O’Ward’s disgust with coming up short yet again.
“Disappointing Sunday,” he said. ” We were in the mix again, but we didn’t have what we needed to go get it done. There is nothing left for us here other than winning.”
The same could be said for Malukas, who has qualified in the top seven each of the past two years, driving an A.J. Foyt Enterprises car to a second-place finish in 2024 and producing the best finish of the day for the powerful Penske team.
McLaughlin, who crashed out of last year’s race before the green flag had even waved called that the worst moment of his life and came back this year seeking redemption by going from worst to first. He almost achieved it.
“I’ve lost plenty of races in my career, and you sort of know how that feels being so close to something so massive,” McLaughlin said. “He’s going to be feeling it. He’s going to go through it himself and have his family around him, but I’ll talk to him when I see him.”
And perhaps Malukas, like McLaughlin, will return to Indy a more determined, more resilient driver capable of posting an improved result — maybe even leaving as an Indy winner.
“I’ve never pushed that hard in my whole life,” Malukas said. “Just to finish, like — I can’t believe it. This whole season, even before, just keep getting a lot of seconds, but we just can’t get — now it’s like — I don’t know how much closer you can get to getting it.”
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