Yeah, yeah, it’s a day late. Mea culpa. Anyway, time for my 2025 Indianapolis 500 recap. I’ve done one of these most years — and this year was one of the most interesting races I’ve seen since starting at TTAC.
I haven’t watched much IndyCar this year, mostly because of our NASCAR obligations, but I’ve caught a few laps here and there and I’ve been aware of what’s going on — mostly, Alex Palou winning anything and everything. So I had a sense of the storylines going in to Sunday’s race.
Those storylines were, in no particular order:
- Would Helio Castroneves become the first five-time Indy 500 winner?
- Would Josef Newgarden get the three-peat?
- Would up-and-coming drivers like Pato O’Ward, Colton Herta, or Palou take the checkered?
- Could Kyle Larson do the Indy 500/Coca-Cola 600 double?
- Would a wily veteran like Takuma Sato sneak in one more win?
- Would a driver doing the one-off (aka racing only the 500 and nothing else this season) be the winner?
- Would a hometown driver like Ed Carpenter or Conor Daly* make sure the Borg-Warner Trophy was back home again in Indiana?
Oh, and one more that was of personal interest to me — could Chicago kid David Malukas win it? Chicago hasn’t produced a ton of big-name racing drivers, and Bobby Rahal, who grew up not too far from where I did, would be in the house. It would be cool to see a Chicagoan standing in victory lane and drinking the milk shortly after we got an American pope from the Windy City.
Hometown bias aside, Malukas has real talent — his third-place drive, which was later boosted to second after Marcus Ericsson was hit with a violation, was incredible.
Yes, Hoosier readers, I know Noblesville is 30 minutes from the track. I’ve done that drive. It’s still close enough to call Daly a hometown kid.
We know how it all played out. Newgarden, who had to start at the back of the pack because of a technical violation (one that got people fired), charged hard towards the front until a fuel-pressure problem ended his race. Sato and Castroneves finished ninth and tenth, respectively, but neither really seemed to have a shot at winning. Daly quietly finished eighth and Carpenter 15th. Larson took himself out by downshifting to a too-low gear and crashing. Herta had an unremarkable drive, and O’Ward finished third (fourth before the bump-up — all positions listed here are after Ericsson was moved to the back). And Malukas drove hard but didn’t have quite enough to pass Palou and Ericsson at the end.
The on-track action was one thing. But what happened in the pits — and before the race — was quite another. I felt like something was off from the second I tuned into Fox’s pre-race show. The weather looked funky — that kind of annoying drizzly rain that frustrates, because as soon as it passes, it comes back, and just hard enough to affect the track. So it was no surprise that the race’s start was delayed, though thankfully it was only about 45 minutes this year.
Fox’s broadcast itself also portended problems — it often froze for about 10 seconds at a time, at least on my cable. That said, I wasn’t too bothered by the network’s attempts to shoehorn its baseball and football celebrities — Rob Gronkowski, Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, Michael Strahan, and Tom Brady — into the coverage, though it was awkward at times.
I should’ve known the race was going to get weird when Scott McLaughlin crashed on the warm-up laps. I get why it happened — cold tires, cold track, sensitive cars setup to turn left — and I don’t think less of him as a driver. But it was sign of things to come. Or maybe Scott Dixon completing those same warm-up laps with his left-rear brake completely on fire was the bad omen.
We had Marco Andretti crashing on the first green-flag lap. We had a fueler on Alexander Rossi’s team catch fire as Rossi’s day ended. We had pole-sitter Robert Scwartzman sending his pit-crew members scattering like bowling pins in a scary incident in which he either braked too late or had no brakes left.
One of the broadcasters said the race didn’t feel normal until about the halfway point, and that’s exactly how I felt watching from home.
I am happy Palou finally got his 500 win, despite his overall season dominance. He was going to get one someday, might as well get it now while he’s on fire (figuratively). I would’ve loved to see Larson complete the double — more on that on our podcast this week — but it was not meant to be.
I am hoping next year’s race starts on time under sunny skies, and I hope it’s not nearly as dangerous to pit-crew members. That said, one of the reasons you tune into the 500 is that anything can happen.
Here’s hoping the 2026 edition is cleaner yet just as entertaining.
[Images: IndyCar]
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