INDIANAPOLIS — David Malukas pulled aside the black curtain that divides the interview podium and the hallway to the DEX Imaging Media Center at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for his post-race press conference. Scott McLaughlin, in the middle of the same press conference, got up from his seat and hugged his Team Penske teammate.
As he sat down to take questions from the media in attendance and on Zoom, the screens in the deadline room replayed the final lap over and over again.
A year ago, Malukas finished runner-up in the Indianapolis 500. Two weeks earlier on the IMS road course, Christian Lundgaard made a full-send, damn the torpedoes pass on him on the backstretch kink in the closing laps of the Sonsio Grand Prix and finished runner-up. Sunday, Malukas lost in a photo finish to Felix Rosenqvist.
“I just don’t know what else we could have done,” he said. “We were driving 150% that whole race. The guys did a fantastic job getting the car where it needed to be. We had the fastest car out there that whole race. It was ours to win, and I knew that.”
After Mick Schumacher hit the wall in Turn 1 with four laps to go in the seventh race of the 2026 NTT INDYCAR SERIES season, race control re-racked the field in time for a one lap shootout. Malukas lined up second behind race leader Marcus Armstrong, who took the lead from Rosenqvist moments before the Schumacher hit brought out the caution.
Thundering down the frontstretch, he mirrored Armstrong’s every move. Until he pulled out of line and passed him on the outside at the line. As he pulled away, Rosenqvist pulled up alongside his teammate and the Meyer Shank Racing Hondas raced side-by-side from Turn 1 to the entrance of Turn 4.
In his mind, Malukas thinks he’s got this.
Exiting Turn 4, he shifts down towards the inside wall. Rosenqvist, with a big run, follows him down and pulls to his outside.
“I mean, he just had a really good run,” Malukas said. “There’s nothing else I could have done.”
Side-by-side to the finish line, Rosenqvist eeked his car out ahead and edged him at the finish line by a margin of 0.0233 seconds. The closest finish in the 110-year history of the Indianapolis 500, and 17th closest in IndyCar history.
“In the car it looked a lot closer, which it was really, really close, but from the run I didn’t know he had that big of a run,” he said, watching a replay of the finish on a ceiling TV screen that faced the podium in the deadline room.
In the words of ABC’s “Wide World of Sports,” Rosenqvist felt the thrill of victory. While Malukas felt the agony of defeat.
As Rosenqvist hopped out of his car on the frontstretch and celebrated with his crew, Malukas sat in his car with his head in his hands and (figuratively) beat himself up. Then he realized he needed “to get out of (the car) before I just keep on overthinking and making things so much worse.” So he exited his car and members of his No. 12 Team Penske Chevrolet, his girlfriend and his dad.
“Yeah, just had to get out, and it was a good decision to do, get out and just see everybody and kind of just let the emotions out because in the car it was not good thoughts,” he said.
He looked up from his seat at the podium, watched a replay and concluded that there was nothing he could’ve done differently. While he felt “a little bit better,” the pain still remained.
“Watching it, he just had such a big run There’s definitely nothing we could have,” he paused and looked back at the screen to double check. “Yeah, there’s just nothing. With the positioning, the timing of all of it, yeah, there’s nothing we could have done.”
Regardless, Malukas can’t dwell on this finish for too long. The season rolls on, next week, in Detroit. Furthermore, he leaves Indianapolis second in the NTT INDYCAR Series championship battle, just 35 points behind Alex Palou. He think it won’t take long to put it behind and look forward.
“We’re just going to use it as, like I said, more drive, more motivation, more push and more obsession,” he said. “I think that’s — right now I’m just so obsessed, I just want to get this win. We’re so close so many times, and all of Indy, even Indy GP, it’s just a lot of seconds. We’re getting so close. Literally I don’t know how much closer you can get. Yep, we’re going to keep pushing.”
