Winners and Losers: Grand Prix of Indianapolis
- Morgan Holiday
- 5 hours ago
- 5 min read
Christian Lundgaard won his second career IndyCar race in the exciting and chaotic Grand Prix of Indianapolis. In the midst of the chaos, who had the best and worst weekends? DIVEBOMB takes a look at the winners and losers of the 2026 Indy GP weekend.
Winner - David Malukas
2026 is looking to be Malukas’ breakout year as he joins the formidable (though often unfortunate) Team Penske.
Coming off the back of missing the first part of the 2024 season and subsequently losing a contract with Arrow McLaren, followed by a year spent at backmarker team AJ Foyt Racing, Malukas certainly has something to prove. Not only does he have to prove that he has what it takes to race in top machinery, he also has two older and more experienced teammates to measure up to.
Coming into the Indy GP weekend, Malukas had two top five finishes in five races, one a podium finish in Phoenix. At Indianapolis, he made it through qualifying to get into the Fast 6, though he only qualified fifth. In the race, he made his way through the field to lead by Lap 31, capitalising on some of the early drama and inheriting the lead when Will Power came into the pits.
He then held the lead over Lundgaard until there were just 18 laps to go, when Lundgaard pulled off a dramatic move in Turn 4 to take the lead and ultimately the win. While Malukas is still missing out on his first career IndyCar win, weekends like these are proving that it’s only a matter of time now. After securing second place, his best result for Team Penske to date, he now sits third in the championship, ahead of both his teammates, Josef Newgarden and Scott McLaughlin.
Winner - Louis Foster
Foster had arguably his best weekend in IndyCar yet as he secured his first top 10 finish in the category. It wasn’t his best qualifying result, having been the polesitter at Road America last year, but it was the first time that the British driver has been able to put together a full weekend successfully.
Coming into Saturday, Foster’s career best result was 11th, first secured last year at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway (IMS) road course. He finished third in Practice 2 before heading onto qualifying, where he breezed through the first two rounds to make it into the Fast 6. While he wasn’t faster than any of his competitors in that session, a sixth place start for the race on Saturday was a solid position for Foster.
In the race, Foster held on through chaos and drama to secure seventh place, a major improvement on his previous best result achieved in last year’s Indy GP.
Winner - Dennis Hauger
As the star of last year’s Indy NXT season, expectations have been high for Hauger coming into his rookie year in IndyCar. And while he scored an incredible 10th place in his debut at St. Pete, it’s been a challenging uphill battle for the Dale Coyne Racing driver.
Hauger’s qualifying result at IMS put him down in 24th for the start of the race, but a collision involving multiple drivers in the first corner of the race allowed him to jump up to 13th by the time the caution began. From there it was just a matter of picking his way through the pack and not getting involved in any other incidents. In the end, the Danish driver secured a new career best result as he was in eighth place at the chequered flag.
All three of the rookies have had a challenging time in IndyCar so far, but Hauger has impressed the most and now leads the rookie standings by 30 points over Caio Collet after a great result at IMS.
Loser - Pato O’Ward
Few drivers could fairly be more frustrated about their Indy GP weekend than Arrow McLaren’s O’Ward, the Mexican driver getting caught up in an early incident and taken out of contention from that point forward.
O’Ward was on the pace all weekend, qualifying right behind Álex Palou to start second for the race. Coming into the first corner of the race he was running side by side with Palou for the lead of the race when Felix Rosenqvist locked up and sent his car into the back of O’Ward’s No.5 car, sending him spinning round and causing a ripple effect that took out several other drivers.
Recovering from the initial incident, O’Ward got going again but was running in 21st at the end of the caution period. Nothing he could do would be enough to recover all of the positions that he lost due to the opening lap incident, and O’Ward ended up finishing in 18th place on a weekend where his teammate won the race.
Despite having secured several top five finishes this year, O’Ward has yet to stand on the podium in 2026, the longest he’s gone at the start of a season without a podium finish since 2019. The Indy GP was yet another frustrating weekend for the McLaren driver and he’ll be hoping for a change of fortune gearing up for the next race on the calendar, the Indianapolis 500.
Loser - Ed Carpenter Racing
The Ed Carpenter Racing (ECR) pair of Alex Rossi and Christian Rasmussen had an unfortunate weekend that left them both at the bottom of the results as they both failed to finish the race.
Rossi was one of the fastest drivers to not make it into the Fast 12 on Saturday, which secured him a solid starting position of 13th. Rossi was able to capitalise on the chaos at the start and was running in seventh on Lap 21 when his car suffered a hybrid issue that left him sitting on the start/finish line. IndyCar’s failure to call a full caution even as the ECR driver was getting out of his car on the straight was infuriating for Rossi and the team.
Rasmussen qualified down in 19th and got caught up in the early chaos of the race. He came into the pits with front wing damage shortly after the end of the first caution and retired from the race. Then, after another caution, the team decided to send him back out on track on Lap 33, where he ran a ways down for a little while before retiring once again, putting the ECR pair down at the very bottom of the pack as the first two retirements from the race.
For a backmarker team hoping to capitalise on big incidents that catch out the rest of the field, ECR certainly failed to do that this weekend, whether that was fully their fault or not.
Loser - Mick Schumacher
While on track to take his best career IndyCar result to date, Schumacher made a mistake that cost him a top 12 finish.
Schumacher qualified 18th, putting him in a solid starting position to secure a good finish, especially after he made it through the opening laps unscathed. He continued to work his way forward and maintain a good position, to the point that he was sitting 12th in the closing stages of the race.
But battling with Santino Ferrucci for 11th, the Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing (RLL) driver made a crucial error, hitting the back of Ferrucci and forcing him into a spin into Turn 9 just three laps from the end. While he picked up 11th place, the resultant drive-through penalty dropped Schumacher to 20th, ruining his chance at his first top 12 finish.
The RLL rookie now sits 46 points below Hauger, the leader of the rookie drivers, and 16 below Collet.
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