“Hardships build character” - Malukas’ navigation of Indy 500 heartbreak
- Archie O’Reilly
- 3 hours ago
- 7 min read
Crushed. Inconsolable. Tears flowing - from himself and the rest.
The desolation had already begun in the cockpit. When he emerged, eventually removing his helmet and wiping his face with his balaclava, the full extent of the emotional barrage was apparent. And how could you blame him? It was the deepest depth of sporting despair.
“I really started to beat myself up in that car so I told myself: ‘I need to get out of here before I just keep on overthinking and making things so much worse,’” he reacted. “It was a good decision to get out and see everybody and let the emotions out.
“Because in the car, it was not good thoughts.”
You would be hard-pressed to find much greater sporting heartbreak than the gut-wrenching torment of Sunday’s Indianapolis 500 finish for David Malukas. Having decisively blown past Marcus Armstrong at the beginning of the one-lap shootout at the climax, he led with seeming authority. As the Meyer Shank Racing pair squabbled behind, hope only grew.
His dream victory was on the line at the world’s greatest race, as the inexplicable count of eyes at the globe’s most-attended single-day sporting event looked on.
Weaving. Weaving some more. But through Turn 3 and Turn 4, somehow, hanging permanently to the outside of his teammate Armstrong, Felix Rosenqvist gained the mother of all momentum. It was a run scarcely believable as he exited onto the frontstretch and charged towards the Yard of Bricks. Malukas weaved more; Rosenqvist out of the draft.
Metres remaining. Side-by-side. And as the bricks beckoned, history burgeoned.
“I just don’t know what else we could have done,” Malukas uttered with anguish. “We were driving 150 percent that whole race. We had the fastest car out there that whole race.
“It was ours to win and I knew that. I’ve never pushed that hard in my whole life. I can’t believe it. This whole season, even before, just keep getting a lot of seconds but we just can’t get [a win]. I don’t know how much closer you can get to getting it.
“He just had a really good run. There’s nothing else I could have done. I’m trying to think back, maybe something different with deployment here or there…”
At the line, Rosenqvist led by 0.0233 seconds. Never before seen in the storied past of the Indy 500. Officially the closest finish in the race’s history.
All the while, Malukas toiled in the ensuing press conference, adamant to decipher how he could have possibly avoided losing the win in such despairing fashion. But when he reflected back in the immediate aftermath, he could scarcely select a single thing executed wrongly.
“There’s just no way,” he emphasised of how the final lap could have played out differently. “I didn’t know he had that big of a run. Watching the replay, it actually made me feel better because I was like: ‘To be honest, I don’t think there’s anything I could have done.’
“I think that was the IMS gods telling me that it’s not my time. The pain is still there [but] it makes it feel a little bit better. There’s definitely nothing we could have. There’s just nothing.”
Behind Malukas, teammate Scott McLaughlin came home third after a photo finish of his own alongside Pato O’Ward and Armstrong. Decidedly more upbeat after his best Indy finish to date, he arrived at the press conference several minutes earlier than Malukas.
This set up a raw, extremely heartfelt moment when the dejected 24-year-old emerged through the stage-side curtain, with McLaughlin pausing, standing and embracing Malukas.
“There’s no way, man,” McLaughlin insisted. “I’ve hardly seen the replay, David, but I don’t think you had any fight-back at that position. It sucks because I think if the pace is faster, it’s a normal race, David squeezes one home.”
It is the second time in as many years since returning to the Indy 500 - after a year injured in 2024 - that Malukas has finished runner-up, albeit having been promoted from third on the road last year. As he continues to chase his elusive first IndyCar win, it also marked a second runner-up result in May alone after finishing second in the Grand Prix of Indianapolis.
Being his first visit to the Speedway with Penske, Sunday provided a dream opportunity to win his first IndyCar race in the biggest of all. So that not coming to fruition having been so close - as close as anybody ever has been without winning - was devastating.
“Last year was more: ‘Hey, I do belong here, I can be there in the end for the fight,’” Malukas explained. “Now, it feels more: ’Okay, I’ve learned what it is to be in those last 20-30 laps.’ I learned from last year what I did wrong, corrected it this time.
“I knew this whole month our car was spectacular. I knew if we were going to be in a position like that, it was going to hurt. I was just so committed. I was not nervous on those last few restarts. For some reason, in my head I felt like: ‘We’ve got this. We’re going to get it.’
“And we didn’t, by just a few little bits. That’s why it hurts. Because in my mind, I really thought we were going to win it and we didn’t get that right.”
The highest high of winning the Indy 500 almost always comes in hand with the most extreme opposite end of the scale for whoever marginally misses out. It is a beautiful brutality, emblematic of what Indianapolis means to drivers, that defines the great race.
Excitement is rife throughout the build-up, knowing the prize for which they are fighting, but drivers aplenty will leave cursing the hallowed grounds.
“It’s Christmas but not everyone gets a present,” McLaughlin described. “And that’s the worst part about it. Because you wake up, you’re like: ‘Yo, we’re going to get presents. It’s going to be sick.’ And then only one guy goes home with one. That’s what my mom said.
“It’s a good way to look at it. Everyone here that finishes not-first despises today. You’ve just got to take the learnings, whether you crashed last year or you finished where we finished today. What could you have done differently? What could you have done better? What was out of your control? And [you] just come back stronger.”
McLaughlin’s bounce-back trail commenced this month after crashing on the pace laps at the Speedway last year. For Malukas, any future success would now be made all the sweeter by the preceding heartbreak, as unwelcome as it may be in the moment.
It was a devastating scene on Sunday, as Malukas took several minutes and numerous embraces with team members and family to gather himself for a tearful television interview. The contrast could not have been more stark from his typical effervescent bubbliness, but the rawness of the outpouring was endearing to many keen for a comeback story.
He is a driver already proven to excel in the face of adversity, too. When he lost his Arrow McLaren ride ahead of the 2024 Indy 500 before debuting for the team due to his wrist injury, he defied doubts about any future career to make the impression that led him to Penske, via a half-season at Meyer Shank Racing and campaign at AJ Foyt Racing last year.
Now second in the IndyCar standings after seven races, only 37 points adrift of Álex Palou’s championship lead, it has been an exceptional start to life at Penske.
Again defying any swirling doubts, he has seamlessly replaced Will Power, a 17-year legend of the team, and has already risen above experienced campaigners Josef Newgarden and McLaughlin - including all May long, having also qualified on the front row for the 500.
“I’ve been through many different teams and nobody is like Team Penske,” Malukas asserted. “Everybody here is just so closely connected and truly feels like family.
“Roger [Penske] was one of the first guys to come to me and tell me that he believes in me and told me to keep on pushing. Because of him, I can sit here and cry that I’m going for P2. That’s why it’s really emotional for me because I wanted to get a win for this team and just wanted to be written across those history books.
“Everything happens for a reason; I think there’s a reasoning to this. Right now, I’m just so obsessed. I just want to get this win. Literally I don’t know how much closer you can get.”
Such a stoic mindset has guided Malukas through the start of his IndyCar career, particularly adopted since the events of two years ago, when he was confined to watching the Indy 500 from the media centre as an honorary part of IndyCar’s content team while sidelined.
This latest low is a strange one. As finishing second so often is at the Speedway, such are the stakes, a still-exceptional result in the calendar’s marquee event is categorised as a catastrophe of sorts. There is no podium; all that matters is the win.
But through it, Malukas continues to build a sturdy platform as a genuine IndyCar contender. He may tend to dwell a little more on the lows. But the mettle that is building - and his everything happens for a reason belief - could prove invaluable down the line.
“Everybody here in this room has hardships. It’s the ones you remember. Obviously really, really good times you remember, but if I think back to when I was a kid - elementary school, middle school - I remember all the bad things I did.
“So you don’t repeat them and you learn from them and you make yourself better, it makes you who you are. That was something I truly enveloped to be who I am in 2024, coming from the wrist injury. That was a big hardship for me, trying to overcome that and come back into the field and go back into performing with one-and-a-half hands.
“Having all these hardships builds character and, for me, it just gives me more drive, gives me more motivation, more obsession to go out there and have my dreams come true. We’re getting so close. I will not be able to die at rest until we can go get a win.”
