Winners and Losers: Gateway 500
- Morgan Holiday
- 3 hours ago
- 5 min read
Josef Newgarden scored a stunning victory in the Gateway 500 at World Wide Technology Raceway in St. Louis. He conquered his rivals and the ever-looming threat of rain to take the win over Marcus Ericsson and Christian Rasmussen.
Who were the big winners and losers of IndyCar’s first oval race since the Indy 500? DIVEBOMB takes a look.
Winner - Andretti Global
Andretti Global has had some great results so far this year, but as usual they have struggled to put everything together to give the whole team a solid weekend. This time, they’ve mostly pulled it off.
In Qualifying on Saturday, Kyle Kirkwood came close to pole position but missed out and lined up third for the race start. His teammates struggled to perform relatively, with Ericsson qualifying 12th and Will Power lining up in 21st.
But the race was where they shined, and while Kirkwood wasn’t able to hold onto a podium spot or improve for the win, Ericsson jumped forward to fight at the front and challenged Newgarden and the other frontrunners for most of the race. In the end, he had to settle for second, but a first podium of the year for the Swedish driver means that all three Andretti cars have now secured a podium in 2026.
Compared to Ericsson’s result, Kirkwood and Power’s sixth and eighth place finishes may seem lacklustre, but for a team who rarely sees all their drivers get a good result in one weekend, this achievement is something for the whole team to celebrate.
Winner - Christian Rasmussen
Fresh off the back of a contract extension announcement, Rasmussen made a strong statement at Gateway to cap off a fantastic week.
The Danish racing driver needed some upward momentum after a pretty dismal start to his 2026 season. In the first eight races of the season he had yet to score a top 10 finish, his best result of the year coming in the form of a 14th place finish in Phoenix. But Ed Carpenter Racing had enough faith in their driver to announce last week that he had signed a multi-year contact extension with the team.
Coming into Gateway off the back of the announcement, Rasmussen needed to prove their faith was not misplaced. And in true Rasmussen form, he pulled out a generational drive from 21st on the grid to third, and even battled for the lead for a good chunk of the race.
Rasmussen is a driver who is known to make his way to the front of the field no matter the cost, especially on oval tracks. This weekend he secured his first podium of the season and proved to any doubters that he’s a driver worth having on your team.
Winner - Rinus VeeKay
Another driver who took their best result of the year so far at Gateway was Rinus VeeKay, who narrowly missed out on a podium on Sunday night.
After a pretty solid, albeit not particularly special qualifying performance, VeeKay rolled out in 13th for the race. He was biding his time throughout most of the race but came up through the ranks in the closing stages to fight in the top five. As Newgarden, Ericsson and Rasmussen battled for the win, VeeKay was right there alongside them. In the end, he just missed out on a third place finish and settled for fourth.
The Dutch driver hasn’t had a top five finish since last year in Toronto, where he took second place. While he knows that more was on the table at Gateway, his best result of the season so far makes this a good weekend for VeeKay.
Loser - Álex Palou
It’s a rare appearance for Álex Palou in the loser column this week, as the unbeatable Spaniard hardly ever seems to fall out of the top spot.
And it was looking to be another classic Palou Show this weekend, as he grabbed pole position on Saturday by a tenth of a mile per hour over David Malukas. But a strategy error by his team saw Palou run out of fuel and was barely able to coast back into his pit box, dropping him from second place to 19th and putting him two laps down.
A 17th place finish is an uncommon drop in results from Palou, who only has one other finish outside the top seven this year (from a crash at Phoenix). Even with this weekend’s poor result, he’s still leading the championship standings by almost 50 points over Kirkwood. But the tides can change quickly in racing, and Palou will be hoping for a good result in the next few races to cement what would be his fourth consecutive IndyCar title.
Loser - Arrow McLaren
Arrow McLaren is another team that have struggled this season to pull all three of their drivers together for a collective good performance on any given race weekend. Unfortunately, Gateway wasn’t particularly good to any of the McLaren contingent.
Christian Lundgaard had the best weekend of the three, although considering that he’s the only McLaren driver this year to win a race or even score a podium in IndyCar, maybe that’s not surprising. But it wasn’t one of Lundgaard’s better weekends, a 16th place start and a tenth place finish rendering him mostly anonymous all weekend.
Pato O’Ward seems to be at his wit’s end after another weekend has slipped out of his grasp. He qualified ninth on Saturday but slipped down in the race to finish 11th. Barring his rookie year, this is the longest O’Ward has gone in an IndyCar season without a podium, and his frustration at himself and the team is evident.
Nolan Siegel, the youngest and least experienced driver in the McLaren outfit, has struggled even more than his teammates. Gateway marked another disappointing weekend for the American driver as he made contact with Palou on Lap 55 of the race and hit the wall, ending a race he started from 22nd.
Looking through the field it goes from bad to worse at McLaren, and they’re another set of drivers who will be desperately looking for redemption in the coming weekends.
Loser - Caio Collet
Rookie driver Caio Collet was on track for an excellent result at the World Wide Technology Raceway when a mechanical issue with 34 laps to go knocked him out of the race.
Collet qualified 20th on Saturday, two places behind fellow rookie Mick Schumacher and only five places behind his AJ Foyt Racing teammate Santino Ferrucci. In the race, Collet survived most of the chaos and was running eighth with 34 laps to go when a caution was called for weather related concerns. Just as the caution was called, Collet pulled into the pits to end his race after his engine failed, ending his chance at what could have been his best IndyCar result to date.
On a weekend where his main rival for the Rookie of the Year title, Dennis Hauger, was out for the count with a mechanical issue before the race even began, this result is a devastating loss for Collet.
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