The finish of the Indianapolis 500 was barely 24 hours old, and both David Malukas and Marcus Armstrong had replayed it over and over in their minds.
Armstrong had already watched a replay of the final lap several times. Malukas said he didn’t sleep, just going over what he could have done differently.
At some point, they have to put it out of their heads and get back to racing. Just how hard will that be for the 24-year-old Malukas and 25-year-old Armstrong?
“You dream of that every single day — that exact moment, fighting for the lead of the Indy 500 in the final lap,” Armstrong told me and other reporters Monday night. “So when you have the chance to do that and fulfill a dream, and you don’t do it, it hurts.”
It certainly can’t be easy. Armstrong was the leader going into the final lap and, while admittedly not always the best place to be, he saw Malukas get past him as expected but then had the unexpected happened when he lost a battle of wills with teammate Felix Rosenqvist, whose car was strong enough on the outside that Armstrong eventually had to lift in Turn 3.
Malukas, crying on national television, showed the deep disappointment of losing in the final hundred feet to Rosenqvist, who passed him just prior to the finish line to win by a margin of 0.0233 seconds, the smallest margin in Indianapolis 500 history.
Can they get focused for the race this weekend in Detroit, the first of the 11 remaining races on the INDYCAR calendar? They have to try to put the, well, second thoughts behind them. Malukas sits second in the overall standings — just 37 points behind three-time defending series champion Alex Palou — in what has proven to be a great first year for him at Team Penske.
“It just wasn’t meant to be,” Malukas told me and other reporters Monday night. “But either way, we’re more driven than ever to come back here. And even for the rest of the rest of the season, I mean, it’s a lot of twos, but we are P2 in the championship now, and the fight’s not over there.
“Heads are high and just more driven than ever.”
Neither Malukas nor Armstrong has an INDYCAR win in their careers. Armstrong is 0-for-53; Malukas 0-for-68.
“I’ve watched it a lot,” Armstrong said. “I’ve watched it many times, it’s annoying because I completely followed my intuition, you know? I went early on that restart, I knew I needed to, just like [Marcus] Ericsson did in 2022.
“I went early. I knew Malukas was going to get me. I saved a little bit of my [hybrid boost] deployment even for that as a result of I knew he was going to do me — and simply did not fairly have it to maintain a Felix behind me.”
Malukas didn’t want to look at it as a lot as simply marvel what might have been.
“I stared on the wall [Sunday night] and simply considered 8,000 completely different eventualities of what I might have performed otherwise,” Malukas stated. “All the time considering again, there’s so many alternative issues I might have performed. However simply in that second, you make these high-speed choices. It is all the time powerful.
“From my facet, I studied so many earlier races, and whoever is main into Flip 3 usually has it down. And on that restart, I used to be absolutely dedicated to creating the transfer going into Flip 1, simply because our automobile was unimaginable. I knew I used to be going to have the ability to maintain it going into Flip 3. I simply was not anticipating a run [by Rosenqvist] popping out of Flip 4.”
[MALUKAS’ HEARTBREAK: ‘This Is My Live Or Die Right Here’]
The profitable Rosenqvist felt for each Malukas and Armstrong.
“They’re huge boys,” Ronseqvist instructed me Wednesday morning. “I talked to each of them. … On the finish of the day, I believe all of us did what we might. There wasn’t actually many regrets on the entrance of the sphere. It simply type of performed out the way in which it performed out.”
That’s precisely what Armstrong stated about lifting with a purpose to maintain from crashing and probably wrecking himself and Meyer Shank teammate Rosenqvist.
“If I saved it full throttle, I do not know if we’d have made it by means of the nook,” Armstrong stated. “I do not remorse it now, as a result of I might be standing right here with a P25 [25th-place finish] or no matter, and the crew clearly would have misplaced an Indy 500.
“I did what I believed was proper at that very second, and I used to be just a bit bit crowded. And I used to be additionally in turbulent air from Malukas. It was a no-win state of affairs for me.”
