Kicking Off the Month of May - IndyCar 2026 Round 6 Recap

The Month of May festivities technically kicked off at the end of April with the Indy 500 Open Test. However, the Indy GP is the first true racing action of the month leading up to the 500. It's also a great way to gain some momentum leading to the 500. With all that in mind, let's run through the stories from this weekend's Grand Prix.

More Tech Issues

Tragically, we didn't get to see wet qualifying, with Friday's session delayed to race day. This shift in the schedule caused the morning warm-up session to be cancelled, giving the teams very little time to prepare and see how their race pace held up.

Unfortunately, come qualifying time, the broadcast booth and the teams on pit road didn't have any timing data for almost 6 minutes of the first 10-minute session. The data flow was eventually restored, but it certainly put the drivers and teams in the first group at a bit of a disadvantage.

Normally a story like this would be a footnote rather than a headline topic, but after the P2P fiasco at Long Beach, it's not a great look to have even more major technical issues.

Rossi's Ego

Alexander Rossi had a hybrid failure, causing his car to come to a stop on the frontstretch. IndyCar handled this by throwing a local yellow in the section where Rossi was stopped. Rossi, apparently, didn't agree with this decision, and chose to jump out of the car, forcing IndyCar to throw a full-course yellow.

Many people, including the broadcast, criticized IndyCar for not immediately throwing the FCY with a car stalled on a high-speed area of the track. What's important to note is that IndyCar frequently delays the FCY in the middle of a pit cycle to avoid affecting the race outcome, assuming the stalled car is in a safe position. The frontstretch is a high-speed section of the track, but Rossi's car was way off the racing line. No one was going to crash into him there. Rossi's selfish temper tantrum ruined the races of several other drivers. Hopefully IndyCar sanctions him in some way for his actions.

The Rebounds

Before the green flag on the initial start, Rinus Veekay had contact, breaking his front wing and flattening his tires. Similarly, into turn 1, Felix Rosenqvist locked up, spearing into Pato O'Ward and taking Caio Colett and Scott Dixon with them.

Dixon decided to go off-strategy as a result, kicking off the pit cycle that Rossi's car stalled in the middle of. The resulting yellow flag forced the leaders to pit and cycle to the back. In particular, Alex Palou and Kyle Kirkwood lost out the most.

Palou did manage to claw back a 5th-place finish. It's a good result, even if it's not what Palou or Chip Ganassi wanted or what Palou deserved. Still, he can take away some good points from a very blue-collar day.

Dixon, meanwhile, dragged a damaged car around to finish 6th. A very Scott Dixon-like performance to keep him somewhat within the championship hunt this early in the season.

McLaren's Redemption

Of the cars on the primary strategy who didn't get caught out by the caution, David Malukas and Christian Lundgaard found themselves in the best positions as the race came to its end. Lundgaard was rapidly closing on the back of Malukas as they came to the final pit stop.

Back in Barber, in this same position against Palou, McLaren completely choked it away with a 17-second pit stop.

This week, there was no such fumble.

Despite coming out behind Malukas once the No. 12 finally pitted, Lundgaard pulled a heroic move to get past with one-lap warmer tires, and he never looked back from there, grabbing his first win in papaya colors.

It hasn't been the start to the season that McLaren would have liked, despite several very strong results, but a win to kick off the Month of May is a great step in the right direction.

Andretti Is Andretti

It could have easily been Kirkwood in 5th and Palou in 9th, but Andretti had an Andretti-style pit stop, dropping a wheel nut, forcing them to jack the car up a second time and earning them a 15-second pit stop.

Elsewhere, Marcus Ericsson retired from the race near the end with clutch issues. This is common at Indy, where the teams run a usable first gear, which puts a lot of stress on the clutch, but this is also the second consecutive retirement for Ericsson for mechanical issues.

Will Power, meanwhile, qualified dead last on the field. The early race chaos seemed initially to fall into Power's hands, but he ended up falling back due to being on the non-optimal strategy, relegating him to a 13th-place rebound.

Truly, the New York Jets of IndyCar.

Penske Perfect?

Despite a strong 2nd-place finish, the strategy for Malukas was odd at the end of the race. Despite Lundgaard rapidly closing onto the back of Malukas, the team stayed out longer, even running a full lap in traffic rather than trying to pit and hoping to merge into clean air. It leaves Penske and Malukas fans with a difficult question to answer: what were they thinking?

Scott McLaughlin had a pretty forgettable day, finishing 16th. He did have some front wing damage, but his qualifying performance wasn't especially impressive, so we have no way of knowing just how far he might have been able to march up the field with a clean car.

Josef Newgarden, at least, had a fairly anonymous day despite being involved in spinning Dixon, quietly bringing in a 4th-place finish. That's a pretty good day from Penske overall, but it still feels like the cracks are continuing to spread within the team.

Conclusion

Palou still walks away with the championship lead, but it feels like some of the momentum has faded. With that said, Lundgaard himself will admit that he struggles on the ovals, so I'm not sure if the momentum of winning the GP will mean much in a few weeks for the 500. As for Kirkwood and Malukas, it was a day of "what could have been", so it's hard to say what kind of momentum those two could have.

At the very least, we get the better part of a week and a half of non-stop action on the oval at IMS, leading up to the greatest spectacle in racing. We'll see what the Indy 500 holds for us.