How Rosenqvist came of age in the closest Indy 500 finish in history

Felix Rosenqvist had quite a month of May. It started on the fourth with the arrival of daughter Stella which made the 34-year-old and his wife Emille parents for the first time. He was then a strong contender for pole position for the Indianapolis 500, pacing two qualifying sessions before ultimately settling for fourth on the 33-car grid.

Rosenqvist was always there or thereabouts for most of the 200-lap race, but it looked like he had suffered some cruel luck with a caution period when he was in the lead on lap 193 as rookie Caio Collet crashed. As expected, the Swedish driver was a sitting duck for the lap 196 restart, dropping to third place behind his Meyer Shank Racing team-mate Marcus Armstrong and Team Penske newcomer David Malukas.

But soon after Mick Schumacher hit the wall at Turn 2, which triggered a red flag and set up a single-lap sprint to the finish. It was a thriller. While Malukas decisively forced his Dallara into the lead well before Turn 1, Rosenqvist braved almost the entire lap on the outside of Armstrong, the pair of Meyer Shank drivers somehow managing not to make contact. Rosenqvist pulled ahead exiting Turn 4, then outdragged Malukas to the line to claim the victory by 0.0233s in the closest finish in Indianapolis 500 history.

Rosenqvist had previously converted seven IndyCar poles into just one win and had a reputation for not being able to finish races. This performance decisively demonstrated his ability to perform when it counted. His sole win came when driving for Chip Ganassi Racing in 2020 at Road America. “I’ve obviously been a bit of a ‘Saturday man’ in this series,” Rosenqvist admitted. “Six years is a long time.”

But on this day – this whole year, in fact – something changed, whether it was within Rosenqvist or the entire Meyer Shank organisation. This was only MSR’s second IndyCar race win, both coming at the Indianapolis 500.

“I think we're not the ‘little’ team anymore, that they used to call us all the time,” said team co-owner and founder Mike Shank. “This is all we needed. I told these guys literally last night I felt like this group is pushing the door open and it’s getting ready to snap. We just need one thing. And I hope this is it. Felix deserves it. He’s had some tough luck in the past in situations like this. He closed it today, and I couldn’t be more happy.”

Rosenqvist took just his second IndyCar career win - not a bad way to break a six-year dry spell

Photo by: Penske Entertainment

Rosenqvist’s most recent close call came in April when he took the pole at Long Beach but came home second to dominant IndyCar champion Alex Palou. It’s clear that the inability to translate strong qualifying performances into race wins was starting to irritate Rosenqvist, and there was no better place to turn things around than the biggest and richest-paying race on the schedule.

That it came in what will be replayed time and time again as an all-time greatest Indianapolis 500 finish is only icing on the cake.

“I know David, Pato [O’Ward, who finished fourth], and Marcus very well, and I know they're probably pretty bummed right now,” Rosenqvist said. “But I think it’s really cool when you race against drivers with that level of respect. We raced super hard. There was some wheel banging and some tyre marks on the sidepods, which is cool. But no one ended in the wall. I think that’s why it turned out to be such a great finish and such a show for the fans. That means a lot to me. And to do it here in Indy in front of 350,000 people, that’s just unreal.”

Rosenqvist seized control of the race, and he was comfortably in front with 10 laps to go. Then came the yellow flag triggering a whirlwind turn of events that saw him experience a full spectrum of emotions

The first half of the race was run with a constant threat of rain and the possibility that the result could be declared final if 101 laps were completed. Rosenqvist sat back and watched as polesitter Palou and second-place qualifier Alexander Rossi traded the lead, Rossi driving with a foot injury sustained in a post-qualifying practice crash.

On the 92nd lap, Rossi pulled in with smoke emerging from his ECR Dallara-Chevrolet and the caution flew. Scott Dixon was the leader heading into the pitstops, and he was still in front when IndyCar threw the red flag for rain on lap 105.

Had officials decided to end the proceeding at that point, Dixon would have scored a long-awaited second Indianapolis 500 victory. But action resumed around half an hour later, and Malukas soon established himself out front until rain again brought out the pace car within six laps.

Pitting under caution when Newgarden crashed put Rosenqvist on the optimum strategy

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On the subsequent restart, two-time Indy 500 winner Josef Newgarden crashed hard in Turn 4, almost collecting Dixon. O’Ward, Armstrong, and Rosenqvist were among about half the field that pitted on lap 131, potentially allowing them to make the finish with just one more stop. That was the crucial strategy call that prevailed over teams that made later stops, including Malukas, Palou, and Dixon.

Malukas led for the lap 133 restart but got freight-trained and fell to sixth place. The American clearly had a fast car, and between passes on the track and others making pitstops, he advanced back to the lead within 15 laps. At the three-quarter mark, the race looked like a classic Penske vs. Ganassi battle, with Dixon, Palou, Malukas, and Scott McLaughlin all in with a shot at the win. But as the laps unwound without a caution, strategy appeared to favour the group that pitted under caution on lap 131.

Rosenqvist seized control of the race, and he was comfortably in front with 10 laps to go. Then came the yellow flag, triggering a whirlwind turn of events that saw him experience a full spectrum of emotions.

“I’m a pure racer,” he said. “Obviously, I was going to be happy if I won it on a yellow. You’re always going to be happy winning a race. But to win it like that is just such a bonus. It makes it three times more special to me. I would have loved to watch that…I would have paid a lot of money to watch that race. And that’s what it’s all about, to create a good show - fair racing, hard racing on the final lap like that. And to be the one doing the move, there's nothing like it really. I’ve never had a more exciting finish ever, and to have it here is just lucky, I guess.”

While Rosenqvist was a deserving and gracious winner, Malukas was left with the crushing disappointment of coming out on the wrong side of the closest finish in 110 runnings of the Indianapolis 500, which also featured a record 70 lead changes.

Though he has not yet won an IndyCar race, Malukas has more than justified Penske’s decision to choose the 24-year-old American to replace veteran IndyCar star Will Power, who has struggled in general in 2026 and suffered a gearbox failure in his Andretti Global Dallara-Honda at Indianapolis.

Malukas kept his helmet on for several minutes as he regained his composure after the race and he was still on the verge of tears in subsequent media interviews. It was his second consecutive second-place finish in this race, but his first in the highly scrutinised role of a Penske driver.

Despite a second straight runner-up finish at the Indy 500, Malukas demonstrated why Penske picked him to replace Power

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“I just don't know what else we could have done,” he said. “We were the fastest car that whole race. It was ours to win, and I knew that. I gave it 150% and almost crashed this damn car every lap and we still end up with a P2. I don’t know what else I can give. I can’t believe it, just so close. We’re going to come back again and give it everything. We’re going to give it 160% next time.”

O’Ward made his final pitstop on lap 164, followed one lap later by Armstrong and another still by Rosenqvist. The two-lap advantage the Swede eked out on fuel would prove to be crucial, as he was given the green light to run fuel rich and flat out with 15 laps remaining. Rosenqvist passed O’Ward for the lead on lap 186 and was set to run out the laps in front until Collet’s potentially game-changing crash.

That kind of misfortune might have rattled Rosenqvist in the past. But the new perspective of parenthood helped him maintain a calm head for the dying laps.

"It’s hard to explain that feeling, that you want it so much and you have so much adrenaline that you literally don’t care if you're going to crash. You’re just going all in" Felix Rosenqvist

“I just tried to stay positive, because I think in the past, I let it get to my head,” he said. “You start thinking, ‘Oh, this is bullshit’ or ‘This is bad luck’ or whatever, and at that point you just have to be strong and look forward - which is a tough thing to do because you’ve lost the biggest thing you can lose, really, in the race car.”

Rosenqvist’s final lap was simply mesmerising. He, along with restart leader Armstrong and Malukas, crossed the ‘Yard of Brick’ line to start the lap three-wide, with the Penske driver emerging in front. Rosenqvist doggedly stayed to Armstrong’s outside around Turns 1 and 2, then down the long back straight.

He continued to brave it out through Turns 3 and 4 before carrying an amazing amount of speed through onto the final straight. Malukas tried to defend too late while Rosenqvist was already alongside, and the Honda-powered Meyer Shank car pulled ahead of the Chevrolet-powered Penske entry on the sprint to the line, with Rosenqvist taking the win by a nose.

The closest finish to an Indy 500 in history

Photo by: Penske Entertainment

“I’ll definitely say the balls arrived when they needed to,” Rosenqvist smiled. “I’ve never been flat around the high line for more than one corner. To do a whole lap on the outside, that was pretty cool. It’s kind of unheard of at Indy.

“That’s just how much you want it. It’s hard to explain that feeling, that you want it so much and you have so much adrenaline that you literally don’t care if you're going to crash. You’re just going all in. It was cool that’s what it took to win it as well.”

What made Rosenqvist’s winning lap more amazing was that the car he had to dispatch just to reach leader Malukas was that of his own team-mate. It was a nail-biting 40 seconds for everyone in the Meyer Shank camp – not to mention the packed grandstands. Armstrong finally understeered and lost momentum exiting Turn 4, finishing fifth behind Scott Mc Laughlin and O’Ward.

“Obviously he’s gutted,” Rosenqvist said of Armstrong. “He’s going to be very disappointed. I’ve been in that boat, as well, when I’ve been leading towards the end and it hasn’t worked out, and it breaks you. And I know Pato has been in that boat many times.”

In America, many place a greater emphasis on Indianapolis 500 wins than IndyCar season championships. Rosenqvist’s victory therefore already puts him in exalted company. And to triumph in such memorable and spectacular fashion made this an Indianapolis 500 for the ages.

In truth, it salvaged what had been a lacklustre ‘Month of May,’ with the presence of only 33 entries and therefore a lack of traditional ‘bumping’, creating a curiously flat atmosphere that was finally jolted to life by Rossi’s race week practice accident.

The race suffered similar lulls, with lengthy fuel-saving stints punctuated by yellow and red flags for brief showers – and, in the case of the final red flag, hopes of an exciting finish. But despite the somewhat contrived drama, the Indianapolis 500 once again showed why it endures as one of the world’s classic motor races. You can’t watch that frenetic final lap and deny that it was exciting. Nor can you deny that Rosenqvist was a deserving winner – and a hell of a nice guy.

Rosenqvist joins the greats as an Indy 500 winner

Photo by: Justin Casterline / Getty Images