Scott McLaughlin has finished on the podium at the Indianapolis 500 and Marcus Armstrong came within a single lap of winning it, as Swedish driver Felix Rosenqvist took the chequered flag in the closest finish in the 110-year history of the race.
The Kiwi duo led much of the late running at the Brickyard on Sunday afternoon local time, with Armstrong out front when the final restart unfolded on lap 200 of 200. By the time the field came roaring out of turn four for the last time, four cars were nose to tail across the line and Rosenqvist had passed David Malukas on the outside in the final fifty feet to win by 0.0233 seconds.
It was the smallest winning margin ever recorded at Indianapolis. The previous best was the 0.043 second gap between Al Unser Jr and Scott Goodyear in 1992. Malukas held second, McLaughlin third, Pato O’Ward fourth and Armstrong fifth, with the top five separated by less than a quarter of a second.
For Armstrong it was an extraordinary debut shift into a front-running Indy 500 role. The Christchurch-raised driver, racing for Meyer Shank Racing, had taken the lead during the green-flag exchanges in the closing twenty laps and was nursing his car home when a red flag for Caio Collet’s heavy crash with seven laps left bunched the field. A second caution for Mick Schumacher brushing the wall reset the run to the chequered flag, and on the restart Malukas slipped past Armstrong into turn one before Rosenqvist did the same to both of them at the line.
McLaughlin, racing for Team Penske and chasing his first 500 win after crashing out from pole position twelve months ago, said the day had been a strange mixture of relief and frustration. “It’s Christmas, but not everyone gets a present,” McLaughlin told reporters in pit lane. “That’s the worst part about it because you wake up, you’re like, yo, we’re going to get presents, it’s going to be sick, and then only one guy goes home with one.”
The former Supercars champion said his car had not had the pace in dirty air to attack his teammates Malukas or Josef Newgarden in the long stints, and that he had relied on restarts to make up ground. “I had a really good restart on the second to last one, and I got to sixth. The next restart I had a really good restart. Honestly, I thought my restarts all day were really solid, but I said I was going up to the top no matter what,” he said.
“We weren’t fast enough in traffic. I really struggled to hold with the #12 (Malukas) and the #10 (Palou) there at the last exchanges, so I had to make my hay on the restarts.”
McLaughlin spoke for several New Zealanders who had circled this race for the past year. He led 64 laps when he started from pole in 2025 before clipping the wall and going home with nothing. “I probably kept a lid on it a little bit, but the last 365 days have ate at me to come back here,” he said.
He was philosophical about the way the win slipped from his teammate Malukas, who had passed Armstrong for the lead with under a lap remaining only to be picked off by Rosenqvist. “The speed was slow, Felix was going to get a run regardless. Yeah, it sucks,” McLaughlin said.
Rosenqvist’s victory was just his second IndyCar win in 120 starts, and came in the same month he became a first-time father. The Stockholm driver becomes the third Swede to win the 500, after Kenny Brack and Marcus Ericsson, and he ran straight to his crew in victory lane to find his partner and baby son.
For Armstrong the result confirmed his rapid rise in the senior open-wheel category after switching to Meyer Shank Racing from Chip Ganassi Racing over the off-season. He had qualified comfortably inside the top half of the grid and was fastest of the New Zealand contingent on race morning warm-up. To take the lead inside the final stint and to still be on the lead lap at the flag, in his first season with a new team, marks him out as a likely Indy contender for years to come.
Six-time IndyCar champion Scott Dixon led 23 laps in the middle of the race for Chip Ganassi Racing but faded to fifteenth after pit strategy and a yellow flag caught him out. The 45 year old Aucklander has now started 23 consecutive Indianapolis 500s, a New Zealand record, but is still waiting for a second win to go with his 2008 victory.
It is the first time three New Zealanders have finished inside the top fifteen of the same Indianapolis 500. McLaughlin’s third place equals the best finish by a Kiwi at the race since Dixon’s 2008 win, and Armstrong’s fifth is comfortably the best result of his young career on the speedway.
For McLaughlin the immediate focus shifts to the IndyCar championship and to the streets of Detroit next weekend, where Penske will be looking to keep their title campaign rolling. He sat fourth in the standings before the race and his podium has lifted him into a clear top three.
But the wider takeaway will sit with the next generation. On a Monday morning in New Zealand, three Kiwis spent the closing laps of the world’s most-watched motor race fighting for the win at Indianapolis, with one of them setting up the final restart and another standing on the podium. Both wanted more. Both have plenty of road left.
What did you make of McLaughlin’s third place and Armstrong’s late charge from the front, and do you back a Kiwi to finally win another 500 in the next few years? Let us know in the comments.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job π
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