Winners and Losers: Gateway 500
- Morgan Holiday
- 4 minutes ago
- 5 min read
Written by Morgan Holiday
Kyle Kirkwood took a second consecutive victory, and his third of the season at the World Wide Technology Raceway on Sunday. As one of only two drivers this year to win a race so far, he’s emerging as the biggest contender to take the championship fight to Álex Palou (despite the fact that he’s third, not second, in the title fight currently).
Outside of Kirkwood’s first oval win, there were plenty of other wins and losses throughout the weekend. DIVEBOMB takes a look at some of the winners and losers from the Gateway 500 weekend.
Winner - Christian Rasmussen
Eight races into his second season of IndyCar, Rasmussen scored his first career podium with a third place finish on this oval track. It was also the first time in over three years that an Ed Carpenter Racing driver stood on the podium.
After struggling with the car in practice and qualifying, Rasmussen started the race in 25th. But after some pre-race adjustments and Rasmussen figuring out what worked for the car, he was making up ground in the early stages of the race. Despite his car briefly catching fire in the pit lane and a penalty for a pit lane infraction that saw him drop from fourth to 18th, Rasmussen kept pushing forward to an eventual third place finish behind Kirkwood and Pato O’Ward.
His charge through the field (twice) included a whopping 62 on-track passes, over 20 more than anyone else in the field. Having achieved his best IndyCar result to date and the best result the team has seen in years, Rasmussen can certainly head home after this weekend feeling like a winner.
Winner - Marcus Armstrong
It’s Armstrong’s third season in IndyCar, but only his second year racing on ovals. After his first year was road/street track only campaign, learning how to race on oval tracks was going to be an uphill battle for the Kiwi, whose European racing background meant he hadn’t raced on an oval before his first Indianapolis 500 attempt in 2024.
He finished 30th in his first race on an oval, and his results since have been mixed, though not unimpressive. In fact, he finished eighth at Gateway last year. And this weekend was another solid performance from Armstrong, who qualified sixth and finished ninth at the World Wide Technology Raceway, outperforming his teammate Felix Rosenqvist on both Saturday and Sunday.
Armstrong sits tenth in the championship after Gateway and has been consistent this season at a new team in Meyer Shank Racing. It’s weekends like these that prove that a driver is capable of surviving in IndyCar, and the kind of weekend that Armstrong needs to keep having throughout the rest of the year.
Winner - Robert Shwartzman
One of the biggest surprises of the 2025 IndyCar season so far has to be Shwartzman’s performances on oval tracks. Despite never racing on an oval before his first year in IndyCar, the PREMA Racing driver took pole position for the Indianapolis 500. Despite the fact that he didn’t end up finishing that race, Shwartzman was awarded Rookie of the Year for the Indy 500.
For his second oval performance this past weekend, Shwartzman qualified a disappointing 24th, but made up ground in the race to lead five laps and secure his first top ten finish in an IndyCar race.
Shwartzman now sits at the top of the rookie standings with 99 points to his name. He’s also over 30 points ahead of Callum Ilott, his more experienced teammate. For the slow start that Shwartzman and PREMA have gotten in their first year of IndyCar, it’s been an upward battle that they’ve been fighting, and given the performance this weekend, winning.
Loser - Team Penske
The Gateway 500 weekend started off swimmingly for Team Penske, with their drivers securing the top two spots in both practice and qualifying. Will Power took pole position ahead of Scott McLaghlin, while Josef Newgarden qualified fifth to put all three drivers in the top five.
But as has become a theme for Penske this season, everything fell apart in the race. Power and McLaughlin battled for the lead in the early stages before Power hit the wall and retired from the race 47 laps in. Then, halfway through the race, Newgarden ran head on into a spinning Louis Foster and his race ended with him upside down (but fortunately, okay) on the start/finish straight.
McLaughlin was the sole Penske driver left in the race, until he was called into the pits with about 40 laps to go and retired with an issue for one of his rear tyres.
A triple retirement for Penske after all three drivers started in the top five and two of them were fighting for the win is about as bad as it gets for a team that prides itself on being “Penske Perfect”. That also, for anyone keeping track, makes it McLaughlin’s third race in a row in the losers column. Oof.
Loser - Jacob Abel
It’s been a tough start to the Dale Coyne Racing rookie’s season, with only one top 20 result in eight races, and the Gateway 500 weekend was another rough outing for Abel.
Just lacking the pace to compete with the rest of the field, Abel qualified last in 27th and finished the race in 21st, two laps down and third to last of the drivers still running. It may not be fair to compare Abel to his much more experienced teammate, but it certainly doesn’t help that Rinus VeeKay finished in the top ten.
Abel is currently last in the standings of all the full-time drivers, as well as last in the battle for Rookie of the Year. He still has plenty of time to find his footing and improve, but in a series that rewards drivers who adapt quickly and out-perform their machinery, this weekend was not a great look for the DCR rookie.
Loser - Nolan Siegel
Siegel has some wiggle room when it comes to expectations this season - he’s coming into his first full season with Arrow McLaren as the least experienced driver on the team. And even though he only has one top ten finish to his name so far, he’s had enough good moments to warrant praise.
But this weekend was one where it was clear that Siegel is at the bottom of the chain at McLaren, as his 20th place in qualifying and his 19th place in the race show. Christian Lundgaard didn’t fair too much better, starting and finishing 14th, but O’Ward started and finished in the top three.
It wasn’t just the anonymous result that proved this wasn’t Siegel’s weekend, as he caught flack from his teammate O’Ward after the race. Siegel was towards the front on the final restart, lapped but caught in the battle between his teammate and Kirkwood. Kirkwood won out in the battle, and after the race O’Ward voiced some frustration for the role he thought his teammate played in that interaction.
“On that little bit of restart I think good old Nolan was sleeping a little bit and that gave Kirkwood an opportunity and I was kind of stuck,” O’Ward commented on the broadcast right after the race. Whether or not it was Siegel’s fault that O’Ward was unable to beat Kirkwood in the race, it was not a good weekend for the young American driver.
