I thought it was over going into Turn 4. Really, I thought it was over after Turn 1, when David Malukas threw his #12 Penske around the high side on Marcus Armstrong’s #66 Meyer Shank Racing Honda, and started to build a few car lengths gap with his Chevy. Meanwhile, Armstrong’s MSR teammate, Felix Rosenqvist, in the #60, held it high through 1, then 2, then 3, and off through 4, catching Malukas’ draft on the main straight towards the checkered flag. Malukas dove towards the pit lane to try to break the draft—a typical move in recent Indy 500s during last lap battles—but it was too late, Rosenqvist got to bricks barely a nose length before Malukas. Immortality for one, tears for another.
The closest finish in the 110 years running the Indianapolis 500 will overshadow what was otherwise a middling-at-best race. Rain delays loomed over the event, and even caused a couple of cautions to be thrown out of an abundance of safety. Besides an incident involving Ryan Hunter-Reay losing it out of Turn 2 and causing Katherine Legge to take evasive action and land on the inside wall (ruining her attempt to complete all 1100 miles of Indy and NASCAR’s Coke 600), the first half of the race was uneventful. Fox commentators kept pointing out they were heading for a record-setting amount of lead changes, which did happen, although in the first 100 or so laps a lot of that was just Chip Ganassi teammates Alex Palou and Scott Dixon trading P1 and 2 to help each other fuel-save. Meanwhile, behind them, there was only a single pit strategy taking place. Usually, in the otherwise uneventful unfolding of a race, there are at least split strategies that promise to come to a head at the end.
This did ultimately come to fruition, as Rosenqvist and, particularly, Pato O’Ward—the perennial runner up—went long on strategy. O’Ward’s #5 McLaren looked poised to put up another Sisyphean defense as he kept lifting on the straights to try to make up for the fast-approaching, freshly-fueled cars of Malukas et al gained on his and Rosenqvist’s battle, which O’Ward had to concede to the raw pace of the Meyer Shank machine. For Malukas, though, pace alone wasn’t enough for him to catch up. A fiery rip on the wall for rookie Caio Collet would bring out a late-race caution that set it up for a brilliant restart. With 5 to go, Rosenqvist led the field to green, as Armstrong went three-wide with Rosenqvist and O’Ward on the main straight before pulling ahead into 1, where Malukas joined the MSR and McLaren. Behind them, Mick Schumacher had a small brush with the wall, bringing out another short caution, which led to the final one-lap shootout. You know the rest.
The 110th running, in the end, continues to justify the speedway’s claim to the “greatest spectacle in racing.” Every year, something happens which gives it that title, whether near misses as a tire flies over the grandstands and onto a car in the parking lot, or these barnstorming finishes. Even amidst the doldrums of the survival and attrition of the first 150 laps, Indy always provides something to go home with. In fact, that rather routine first 75 percent of the race might be part of what makes the closing stages so exciting. The finale’s thrilling on its own, but without the buildup—starting May 1st, through the practices and qualifying sessions and local festivities—the speedway might lose its aura, its practically religious veneration. It’s more than a race. Sometimes a podium or a top 10 finish is enough, but at Indy, Victory Lane is everything.