The 2025 Indianapolis 500 was an odd one. For the second year in a row, there was a rain delay, then with cold temperatures, it seemed a 1992 redux was on tap with a crash before the green. When things finally settled down, the race played out like a massive fuel save and pit strategy affair, with whoever was out front after the last cycle taking the win. That’s what happened.
And then, of course, there were the penalties later levied on the second, sixth and 12th place cars.
While the win went to Alex Palou, who has turned the 2025 season into the Year of Palou, there were 32 other drivers who had their own story to tell. And while the focus is on those up front, and possibly some of the others who were there but then faded, it’s only fair that each get their moment.
Across the field, there were impressive drives from the back to the front, there were penalties that ruined the best car on track, pit stops that eliminated an Indy 500 one-off from the win, and a crash that turned a second attempt at the Double into a footnote.
Every driver has a story. So let’s look at the full-field rundown of the 109th running of the Indianapolis 500.
Winner – Alex Palou
Palou did it. Finally, no more talk of the three-time NTT IndyCar Series champion having no wins on ovals. Now he has nixed that and has done it on the biggest stage by winning the 109th running of the Indy 500.
This felt like something that was going to happen eventually. His team’s strategy and his own skill were too in synch to be held out of the winner’s circle overlooking the Yard of Bricks. Like most of his wins this year, except for the Sonsio Grand Prix, the race came to him. He stayed out of trouble while other frontrunners fell to the side as they experienced missteps or bad luck.
The race itself fell flat as far as action goes, and the chase to the end was less exciting than watching Amish horse buggies race tractors in rural Indiana or Ohio. That doesn’t matter in the history books. Palou is an Indy 500 winner, and more than likely a four-time series champion by the time he returns next year to go for the repeat.
Runner-up – David Malukas
The best feel-good story for the race belonged to David Malukas — and it got even better when post-race inspection failures of the original second-place car Marcus Ericsson bumped him up a spot. Sidelined last year due to an off-season injury, then losing his Arrow McLaren ride before sitting in the seat at a racetrack, the American landed at AJ Foyt Racing and gave the team its best finish since 1999 when Kenny Brack won for them. Malukas hung around all day at the front and at one point was the only car seemingly capable of challenging Takuma Sato. The finish ties his career best from World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway in 2022.
Third – Pato O’Ward
Pato O’Ward did not have the car to challenge for the lead. Or he didn’t have the right luck to get the pit stop strategy in his favor. It wasn’t for a lack of trying. On lap 172, he overtook Felix Rosenqvist and was on the hunt to get Malukas and Palou in front of him. But the effort stalled out when Ericsson came out in front of the group, and then two back markers cycled as leaders of the pack. It was his fourth top five in the last five races at Indy, and he moved to second in points.
Rosenqvist qualified fifth and finished fourth. His Honda never cycled higher and higher than third, and without that, he couldn’t make up ground on the leaders to challenge them. It was a good finish for the team, still, as they were better than two of the other Chip Ganassi Racing cars with whom they share engineering data. His Creed livery was still one of the best in the field, though.
It was a surprise that Santino Ferrucci wasn’t the best Foyt car, and he finished fifth. That’s not a bad thing, as it means the team has two very qualified and competitive drivers in the two-car stable. His string of top 10s at Indy continues as in seven starts, he’s never finished lower than 10th.
Save of the day goes to sixth-place finisher Christian Rasmussen. On lap 106 it seemed his race was over on a restart, losing control in the north short chute between turns 3 and 4. But he wrestled the car straight and continued. Due to the strategy after the yellow due to rain, Rasmussen was able to get up front and led for eight laps. The finish was his second top 10 of his career.
Ovals continue to hinder Christian Lundgaard’s ability to challenge for a championship. His seventh was his best at Indy, albeit aided by the post-race penalties. He was never a factor up front and ran as low as 23rd. A top 10 is a good finish to rack up and take on to Detroit as he fights for second in the title bout.
For a team like Juncos Hollinger Racing, an eighth would be a party. But not after what could have been if the last two stints had worked out for Conor Daly’s No. 76 car. He was up front and was going to have a say in how the finish went, but his car lost its handling at the end of the second-to-last stint, and he never recovered the track position. Another great shot at a chance for a win was lost for Daly.
The hard-luck driver of the race was Sato. He started second and showed strength right away, and led a race-high 51 laps. But as mentioned with Palou, things have to fall your way to win Indy, and Sato overcooked his entry on pit road and suffered a long pit stop. His shot at a third Indy 500 win was gone.
Another year down in Helio Castroneves’s drive-for-five attempt. He had a top-10 car for most of the day, but pit stops were his undoing as twice he lost ground and fell late into the teens. With the track position battle tough, he couldn’t keep doing that. He pitted on lap 199, and fell to 10th. He later told Frontstretch he intends to run the 500 again in the future.
Devlin DeFrancesco arguably had the best IndyCar race of his career. He led 17 laps and was able to maintain position when pit stop strategy cycled him up front, something teammate Graham Rahal was unable to do. He and Louis Foster played spoilers at the end, though, overtaking each other in front of the field and eliminating any shot at a great duel for the win.
It will be hard for Foster to snatch Rookie of the Year from Robert Shwartzman with just a 12th-place finish. The rookie had to serve a drive-through for pit speed violations on lap 61, and then again on lap 110. That’s not the recipe for a top 10 at Indy. He was the last car on the lead lap and brought his machine home in one piece.
Nolan Siegel was 13th with two laps to go in his first Indy 500, but crashed on the final lap out of turn 2. He’d been fighting a squirrely car all day and it finally bit him. However, the young Californian made the race after being bumped in 2024 so he finally got to experience what Indy was all about on Sunday with his 13th-place finish.
A top 10 result was ruined for Colton Herta when he got hit with a pit speed violation, serving a drive-through on lap 64. At the time, he had advanced from 26th to sixth. All of it was lost and he couldn’t get back on the lead lap.
Ed Carpenter got close to the front with pit strategy, but unlike teammates Rasmussen and Alexander Rossi, never led. A bad stop on lap 122 put him a lap down and he couldn’t recover. It was his first race as an Indy-only entry, as Rasmussen will handle the ovals the rest of the year.
Team Penske had a miserable 2025 Indy 500, and there’s a reason why: the Speedway commanded it. Or if you don’t believe in that spiritual mumbo jumbo, it’s because they had awful luck. Will Power was the highest Penske car in 16th, but he had no zip to get to the front. His teammate Josef Newgarden, who started alongside him on the last row,w= at least climbed efficiently until he dropped out. Power, on the other hand, just didn’t have it. Since he won it in 2018 and finished fifth the following year, Power hasn’t touched the top 10, notching a 14th as the best in 2020.
Rahal stayed out during the rain yellow that started on lap 19, restarting seventh. By the next lap, he had fallen to 14th, and then 21st. He was uncompetitive and had nothing in the form of speed like teammate Sato.
Marcus Armstrong‘s 2025 Indy 500 went longer than his first one last year, but there wasn’t a lot to celebrate. His month was rough with his accident on qualifying day, and stressful when he had to compete in the Last Chance Qualifier. He never had great speed on Sunday and finished 21st.
For a one-off entry, Jack Harvey did pretty well. He led three laps and his Dreyer-Reinbold Racing Chevy had pace. His teammate had a great day as well — more on that in a second — but Harvey sped entering the pits and had to serve a penalty on lap 165. Prior to that, a top 10 was looking within reach. Instead, he earned 22nd.
The all-time pole sitter at Indianapolis, Scott Dixon had a terrible race. While all eyes were on Scott McLaughlin with his pre-race crash, smoke and flame billowed from the left rear brakes of the No. 9 car. He’d try to manage, but eventually the team had to make two lengthy stops to address it. His ‘curse’ continues at the Speedway.
If not for Sato being so competitive, Ryan Hunter-Reay’s gut-punch of a finish would be number one on the hard-luck scale. He led 48 laps in the one-off DRR car and had the momentum heading into the last stop. All he had to do was get out in front, and with how things played out, he’d be looking at win number two, and first for long-time owner Dennis Reinbold. But he ran out of fuel and the team had trouble getting him going again. He was close, but not close enough.
The climb through the field by two-time defending Indy 500 winner Newgarden was the biggest storyline being watched as the 200 laps ticked down. His pit stop competition-winning crew leaped frog him through the field each stop, and was knocking on the front of the pack. Then, a fuel pressure issue derailed the day, as the Speedway didn’t seem to take too kindly to the rule-breaking earlier in the month. Newgarden’s rough 2025 season continued.
Sting Ray Robb didn’t have the speed like his JHR teammate Daly, and ended up caught up in the crash involving Kyle Larson and Kyffin Simpson, finishing 23rd.
With the delay at the start, and the caution early for rain, Larson’s second Double attempt was going to be unfulfilled just like the previous one. He never seemed to get the car going for himself, hanging at the end of the pack for the majority of the race until crashing on lap 109. It was possibly his last Double attempt for the near future.
Ganassi’s Simpson was mid-pack most of the race until crashing with Larson on lap 109, finishing 25th.
Polesitter Shwartzman’s race started great, but that was because a yellow came out in the first turn, keeping him up front. He led eight laps and stayed in the top 10 until the first stops on lap 24. But he fell 21st after a bad stop, then dropped out on lap 87 after careening into his crew and the pit wall. Teammate Callum Ilott had helped make the day better with a top 12 finish, but he was later penalized, turning the team’s first Indy 500 qualifying into a nightmare on race weekend.
Rinus VeeKay worked up into the top 10 but then, during a pit stop, he lost his brakes, and when they engage,d he spun, hitting the inside pitlane wall. He finished 27th.
Another hard-luck driver was Rossi. His Ed Carpenter Racing team had him out front, and he paced the field for 14 laps. However, a gearbox issue forced him to pit road. A fire erupted and Rossi quickly exited, but none too pleased, throwing his gloves in anger. Another shot at his second Indy 500 win was lost.
Marco Andretti’s 20th Indy 500 was much like the weather and intermittent rain showers on race day: brief. The Andretti Curse gut-punched the racing family on the initial green flag of the race when Harvey made contact with Andretti entering turn 1, sending him into the wall. He originally placed 32nd, but gained three positions with post-race penalty enforcement.
If there is one image that is etched in Indy 500 lore after the 109th running, it’s the emotional display by McLaughlin after he crashed on the warm-up laps. His car was destroyed after hitting the pit lane divider on the front stretch, and he sat dejected at the crash site, realizing he’d be unable to run. With the penalties for attenuator modifications, it was clear with the unusual incident that the Speedway never forgets.
Well, how surprising is this? Originally, the review for Ericsson included accolades about his runner-up finish. But he and two others, see below, were hit with penalties post-race on Monday (May 26). Besides the prestige of the event and the emotional turmoil of missing out on a second Indy 500 win, Ericsson’s team took a huge pay cut. Last year, O’Ward earned over $1 million for second, and last place is around $300,000. Ouch.
Kyle Kirkwood’s sixth place became 32nd after his post-race technical inspection failure. He told Frontstretch after the race he didn’t have the car to win. Now he doesn’t have a car that originally finished in the top 10.
PREMA Racing’s great Indy 500 storyline with Shwartzman on pole and Ilott getting their best result in 2025 was dashed with the post-race penalties. Now the team leaves Indy with a 26th and a 33rd. The Speedway can be that way sometimes.
Tom is an IndyCar writer at Frontstretch, joining in March 2023. Besides writing the IndyCar Previews and frequent editions of Inside IndyCar, he will hop on as a fill-in guest on the Open Wheel podcast The Pit Straight. A native Hoosier, he calls Fort Wayne home. Follow Tom on Twitter @TomBlackburn42.