Felix Rosenqvist won the 2026 Indianapolis 500 by 0.0233 seconds, slingshotting past David Malukas in the final yards before the bricks. That margin is roughly the time it takes to blink halfway. For Malukas, it was the distance between immortality and agony.
Three of the last four Indy 500s have now been decided by a pass for the lead on the final lap. Before this run started in 2023, it had only happened twice in the race’s 110-year history. The yard of bricks has developed a taste for cruelty.
Malukas, 24, drove the fastest car all day for Team Penske. He inherited the lead on the lap 199 restart after Meyer Shank Racing teammates Rosenqvist and Marcus Armstrong spent the first half of the final lap scrapping with each other instead of chasing him. Armstrong, who had led under the final caution brought out by Mick Schumacher’s wall contact, lost the top spot on the restart and then found himself in a no-win battle with his own teammate.
“I was given two options: either I lift, or I crash with Felix,” Armstrong told Indianapolis Channel 8 News. “I chose to lift.”
That fraternal knife fight cost Armstrong any shot at running down Malukas. It also gave Rosenqvist clean air and a clear target exiting turn four. The Swede, a self-described hunter, used the draft and dove past Malukas at the line.
“I don’t know what else we could have done,” Malukas told Fox Sports, visibly gutted. “I gave it 150%. I almost crashed this damn car every lap, and we still ended up with a P2, man.
This was technically Malukas’ second runner-up finish in two years, though 2025 came with an asterisk — he was elevated to second behind Alex Palou after Andretti Global disqualifications reshuffled the order. This one carried no asterisks. Just pure, distilled loss.
The pattern is now unmistakable. In 2023, Josef Newgarden passed defending winner Marcus Ericsson on the final half-lap. In 2024, Newgarden and Pato O’Ward swapped the lead twice after the white flag, with Newgarden completing back-to-back wins in nearly identical fashion. O’Ward’s second runner-up in three years left him hollowed out. Now Malukas joins that club.
Before 2023, this kind of final-lap pass happened exactly twice. Sam Hornish Jr. slingshot past rookie Marco Andretti in 2006. Dan Wheldon drove past J.R. Hildebrand’s crashed car in 2011, six months before his own death at Las Vegas.
“Until you pass the yard of bricks that final time, it doesn’t matter,” Wheldon said then. The quote lands harder every year. Andretti was among those consoling Malukas after the race. He would know.
Rosenqvist’s win had roots at Long Beach earlier this season, where he led 51 laps from pole before losing to Palou in the closing stages. He took a lesson from it. “I got back to third because I felt like I was hunting instead of being hunted,” he told Fox Sports.
At Indianapolis, he applied the theory perfectly — letting the chaos ahead sort itself out, then striking when the leader had no defense left.
Here is the detail that stings most for the six drivers who have now been passed while leading the final lap of the Indy 500: only one, Ericsson, was already a champion. None of the others have won the race since. The heartbreak doesn’t just sting in the moment. It embeds itself in a career.
Malukas says he’ll come back and give 160 percent next time. Every driver who has stood in his shoes has said something similar. Indianapolis keeps the receipts.
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