Malukas & Foyt solving IndyCar puzzles to shine in 2025

Credit: Chris Jones

As David Malukas took the chequered flag on his two-lap qualifying run at the Milwaukee Mile, the noise he made on the radio can only be described as jubilant.

Something along the lines of: “Woohoohoo!”

He jumped ahead of Team Penske’s Scott McLaughlin, who had delivered a statement run  directly before him, by just shy of 0.5 mph. There were nine more drivers to run at that point, but after eight of those, he was still leading the pack and on course for a first career pole.

Arrow McLaren’s Pato O’Ward came closest to Malukas’ 162.256 mph two-lap average but still fell just inside 0.2 mph shy. The last driver to run though? The champion, Álex Palou.

Malukas had watched on as drivers fell by the wayside one-by-one. But the nail-biting wait ultimately resulted in a front-row start - Malukas’ second of the season and fourth of his career - and no maiden P1 Award as Palou delivered a stunning sixth pole lap of the season at the death.

Agonising but still a very strong result for Malukas - a clear view ahead from the front of the field on Sunday.

“They were two beautiful laps,” reflected Malukas on his own two-lap run. “I crossed that line… I wasn’t even looking at the time and I knew it was fast. Sometimes you just know it’s going to be good and I crossed and I was like: 

‘That was really beautiful. I really think that’s going to be the one.’

“I just had to wait until the end. And I saw [Palou] come out of [Turn] 4 and I was like: ‘Oh no.’ I was like: ‘Put the ghost [car] in there… I think he’s got it on this one.’ I saw the ghost and I was like: ‘Ah yes…’ It’s still good. Going to be on the front row again here at Milwaukee. We have a good race car. We’ll see what we can do.”

Credit: Chris Jones

Qualifying has been Malukas’ particular strongpoint throughout 2025, with 11 top-12 starts across 16 rounds. He has now been inside the top seven eight times in qualifying this year and the top five on five occasions.

On the flip side though, he has only finished inside the top 10 four times - headlined by a runner-up Indianapolis 500 finish and fourth in Iowa Race 2 - in 15 races this season.

“One hundred percent [qualifying has been the big strength],” said Malukas, coming to the end of his first season in the No.4 AJ Foyt Racing entry. “Going into the season, we’ve made gains from the start. We’ve learned so much. It’s a younger crew and I myself am 23. 

“There’s a lot that I’m learning. We’ve found a very good car when it comes to qualifying. We’ve had a lot of success in qualifying this season. It’s more just trying to focus on the road courses, on the races especially. 

“We made drastic changes in qualifying; the last thing is just trying to figure out our race pace. That’s the last puzzle to complete everything and then we can start fine-tuning some things here and there and be competitive. 

“There’s a lot of answers that we still need to work on. We have a long off-season so we’ll make sure to get those answers and figure it out. But from our side, we’re very happy. If we look at where we were at the start of the season, it’s been a drastic change.”

Whether Malukas lasts the course of the off-season at Foyt remains to be seen amid rumours that he could replace Will Power at Team Penske next season. But Malukas was tight-lipped when quizzed on the topic in Portland a fortnight ago and out-of-contact Power continued to insist there are no updates. 

Credit: Paul Hurley

As it stands, Malukas’ current focus remains on Foyt. And while there are final pieces of the puzzle for him to knit together to become a complete driver in his third full season in IndyCar, he has been particularly impressive in the teammate battle. 

Santino Ferrucci caught the eye with ninth in the championship last season - up 10 positions from the season prior - for the team’s first top 10 in the standings in over two decades. Sitting 10th in points, Malukas is four positions and 34 points clear of Ferrucci and continues to hold a significant edge in qualifying especially.

Ferrucci qualified a lowly 23rd at Milwaukee - almost 5.5 mph down on Malukas’ two-lap average speed.

“When it comes to setups with every single driver, everybody has their own preferences and they vary drastically,” Malukas detailed. “It’s very different and we’re very much on different wavelengths on where we want the car. It’s hard to say from our perspective [where the gap comes from]. It’s a different story.”

Intriguingly, in an entry widely believed to be backed by Penske amid the teams’ technical alliance and Malukas’ status as Power’s likely heir, engineer James Schnabel - on Penske’s books - switched from Ferrucci’s car to join forces with new addition Malukas in 2025.

Malukas gives a lot of credit to Schnabel for his role in elevating him to the position where he is tracking for a first career top-10 championship finish.

“He’s transformed Ferrucci, transformed me,” Malukas admitted. “In a season, it’s crazy what performances he’s been able to accomplish and what he’s been able to do. 

“We sat down, had a lot of talks and felt it out. We built that chemistry from a personality standpoint and getting to know each other and learning what I want from the car. And he’s done an incredible job understanding what I’m needing and giving that to me. 

Credit: Joe Skibinski

“If I look back at the start of the season, St. Pete and the first three months, it’s crazy how different things were. We were struggling to even make the top 10 in qualifying and now we’ve had some Fast Six performances and we’re here again on the front row at Milwaukee. It’s kudos to James.”

If Malukas is to get over the line for a first career win on Sunday, he will have to beat Palou in a repeat of a duel at Iowa last month. The expectation is that it will be 250 laps of the iconic mile-long oval dominated by tyre degradation.

“I was behind Palou in practice and he was so fast on passing people,” Malukas said. “It was like: ‘Man, I feel like this happened [before].’ It was just me and Palou in the front and just battling him again. It’s going to be a little bit like that again to start and then obviously the beautiful chaos of Milwaukee is going to unfold. We’ll see where we end up after all of that.

“It’s going to be a fantastic race. It’s one of those races that you don’t know where we’re going to be at until we get a yellow or until the race finishes. We’re just going to go out there and try to be as fast as we can and try to pass as many people as we can.”