Felix Rosenqvist won the 110th Indianapolis 500 on Sunday, May 24, beating David Malukas by 0.0233 seconds — the closest margin in the race's 110-year history. The Swedish driver, racing for Meyer Shank Racing, passed Malukas wheel-to-wheel on the final lap after a late-race caution set up a green-flag shootout to the checkered flag. Scott McLaughlin finished third, Pato O'Ward fourth, Marcus Armstrong fifth, and polesitter Alex Palou — who led most laps — slipped to seventh on the strategy reshuffle.
The Final Lap
Rosenqvist took the lead for the 70th time of the race coming out of Turn 3 on Lap 200, slipping past Malukas on the high line as the two cars came up to lapped traffic. The 70 lead changes are themselves a new all-time Indy 500 record, breaking the previous mark of 68 set during Tony Kanaan's 2013 win. Malukas's car had been faster in the closing stint but ran out of room on the final corner. The 0.0233-second margin is narrower than every recorded finish in the race's history, including Sam Hornish Jr.'s 0.0635-second 2006 win over Marco Andretti.
The Fuel Strategy
Rosenqvist's win was a fuel-strategy gamble that paid off twice. Meyer Shank Racing short-pitted under the lap-150 caution to give him track position with marginal fuel, and the late yellow flag on lap 192 erased the deficit. He crossed the line with the engine cycling between full power and lean mixture across the final two laps. Three weeks after Kimi Antonelli rewrote F1's record book at Miami with a similar undercut, motorsport's first half of 2026 keeps turning on pit-wall decisions rather than outright pace.
What It Means
Rosenqvist becomes the third Swedish winner of the Indianapolis 500, after Kenny Bräck (1999) and Marcus Ericsson (2022). It is his first Indy 500 win in eight starts. For Meyer Shank Racing, a small team that lost Hélio Castroneves to ownership in 2023, it is the second Indianapolis 500 trophy in five years. For IndyCar — which has spent the year fending off F1's American expansion and the Andretti-Cadillac F1 entry — a photo finish on Memorial Day weekend is the broadcast moment the series needed. Fox averaged its highest Indy 500 viewership in eight years.
Source: CBS Sports · IndyCar.com
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