Felix Rosenqvist crossed the yard of bricks 0.0233 of a second ahead of the field on Sunday, stealing the 110th Indianapolis 500 in the closest finish the race has ever produced. Sixteen days ago, the Swede became a father. Now he’s an Indy 500 champion.
The margin rewrites history. It shatters the previous record and puts an exclamation point on a race that was anything but clean, littered with cautions and red flags in its final laps. Rosenqvist’s Meyer Shank Racing Honda had no business being there at the end — he was off-strategy from the leaders for much of the afternoon — but fuel mileage and nerve carried him through the chaos.
Mike Shank, the team’s owner, admitted they thought the race was sewn up with seven laps to go before a late caution and red flag blew the script apart. “The restart was going to be tough,” Shank said. It was. Rosenqvist survived it anyway.
This is MSR’s second Indy 500 victory, both Honda-powered. The first came in 2021 with Helio Castroneves, who was also in the field Sunday but retired with mechanical issues, finishing 25th. The team that once operated on fumes and grit now has two Borg-Warners on its shelf. That’s not a fluke. That’s a program.
Rosenqvist’s teammate Marcus Armstrong brought the second MSR car home fifth, wearing Acura livery in what Honda’s luxury brand called its first appearance at the 500. Acura is celebrating 40 years since its founding, and the Indy 500 is apparently part of the birthday party. Whether that sponsorship footprint grows into something more substantial remains to be seen, but the fifth-place finish didn’t hurt the pitch.
The man who should have won — at least on paper — was Alex Palou. The four-time and reigning IndyCar champion started on pole, led a race-high 59 laps, and looked like the class of the field for long stretches. He finished seventh.
Palou’s Chip Ganassi Racing team has the machinery and the driver, but the 500 has a cruel habit of rewarding audacity over dominance. Still, Palou extended his championship lead to 42 points, which will matter far more in September than it does today.
Four Honda-powered teams landed in the top ten: MSR with Rosenqvist and Armstrong, Ganassi with Palou, Dale Coyne Racing with Romain Grosjean in ninth, and Rahal Letterman Lanigan with two-time winner Takuma Sato in tenth. Grosjean’s result was Coyne’s best 500 finish since 2020. That’s a strong manufacturer showing and Honda’s seventeenth overall Indy 500 win.
The casualties tell their own story. Will Power, now with Andretti Global, didn’t finish. Neither did Castroneves. Mick Schumacher, running his rookie 500 for Rahal, came home 18th. The Brickyard doesn’t care about your résumé.
HRC US president David Salters offered the day’s most quotable line: “We do not suck, Felix does not suck, MSR does not suck!” It lacked corporate polish. It was perfect.
Rosenqvist, for his part, sounded like a man still processing what happened. “I feel like I’m still in a dream,” he said. Fair enough. The gap between first and second was less time than it takes to blink.
In a race defined by interruptions, restarts, and strategies torn up and rewritten, the smallest margin in 110 runnings decided everything. The series heads to the Detroit Grand Prix next Sunday. Palou still leads the championship. But the month of May belongs to a Swedish new dad who played the long game on fuel and won it by the width of a whisper.
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