- Felix Rosenqvist traveled to sculptor Will Behrends’ North Carolina studio to see the clay model of his own face for the Borg-Warner Trophy, calling the reveal surreal.
- Rosenqvist won the 2026 Indianapolis 500 by 0.0233 of a second over David Malukas, the closest finish in the race’s history, becoming just the third Swedish winner.
- The Swede returns to Arrow McLaren in 2027 alongside Pato O’Ward and Scott Dixon, carrying an Indy 500 win that, four months on, is only now starting to feel real.
Finally Getting to See Your Own Face
Felix Rosenqvist walked into a studio in North Carolina, looked up, and met his own face staring back at him in clay. “Finally getting to see your own face, it’s kind of creepy,” he told RACER. “It felt surreal, especially when I walked around and the light struck it from different angles. It just really brought it alive.”
Four months after beating David Malukas to the Indianapolis 500 finish line by 0.0233 of a second, the closest finish in the race’s history, Rosenqvist traveled to sculptor Will Behrends’ studio to see the clay model that will carry his face into bronze on the Borg-Warner Trophy, joining every winner of the race dating back to 1936.
A Tradition Ninety Years in the Making
The Borg-Warner Trophy reveal is one of racing’s odder rituals, and one of its most personal. The morning after a driver wins the 500, a photographer arrives for a sitting before the champagne has worn off. Months later, that photo shoot becomes a sculpted head, added to the bas-relief portraits that spiral around the trophy’s silver body, a lineage that now runs from Louis Meyer in the 1930s through Rosenqvist’s fellow Swedish winners, Kenny Bräck in 1999 and Marcus Ericsson in 2022.
Behrends has sculpted every one of those faces starting in 1990, when Arie Luyendyk became his first subject. Rosenqvist is the 37th driver to sit for him, and the sculptor faced a problem he had not solved before: Rosenqvist is the first bearded winner in the trophy’s history. “I’m also the first bearded winner of the race, which was, I think, a unique challenge for Will,” Rosenqvist said.
What struck the Swede most was not the likeness itself but the texture underneath it. “It was kind of like seeing your lost twin brother,” he said. “He got all the little details that we all have, our little things and quirks, which makes it look like you, right? That’s, in the end, where the personality comes in.”
Eight Seasons, Three Teams, One Lap That Changed Everything
Rosenqvist’s road to that studio chair took eight IndyCar seasons and three race teams. He arrived from Formula E in 2019 with Chip Ganassi Racing, won Rookie of the Year honors, and picked up his first series victory at Road America the following year. A move to Arrow McLaren followed from 2021 to 2023, three seasons that raised his profile without delivering the result that defines a career. He joined Meyer Shank Racing in 2024, and by May of this year, in his third season with the team and eighth in the series, he finally got the win every IndyCar driver measures himself against.
He got it in the hardest way available. On the last lap of the 2026 Indianapolis 500, Rosenqvist ran down Malukas and crossed the yard of bricks 0.0233 of a second ahead, a margin thinner than a blink, in the tightest finish the race has produced in more than a century of running. He became the 77th different winner in Indy 500 history, delivered Honda its 17th win at the Brickyard, and joined Bräck and Ericsson as just the third Swedish driver to win the race.
Four months on, the number is still sinking in. “It definitely feels like the victory is a bit more solidified in a way,” Rosenqvist said. “Obviously, I’ve won other big races in my career, but this one definitely has a different vibe to it and feels like more of a forever thing in a different way. It’s definitely becoming more real.”
A Win That Had No Time to Breathe
Winning the 500 is supposed to change the rest of a driver’s year. For Rosenqvist, the celebration had to compete with a championship still in progress and a career decision already in motion. Arrow McLaren had announced back in July that Rosenqvist would reunite with the team for 2027, racing alongside Pato O’Ward and six-time champion Scott Dixon, a deal struck before the ink on his Indy 500 trophy had even dried.
“I feel like I celebrated it really hard, which I’m happy I did, but then everything was kind of put on pause a little bit with how busy the season is,” he said. “Your mind’s got to be there for the season; otherwise, you’re going to fall behind. So, yeah, I’ve been longing for the moment where I can sort of relax and sit back and enjoy the win a little bit.”
Standing in front of his own sculpted face gave him that moment, whether he expected it to or not. “My heart rate was definitely jacked,” he said of the seconds before Behrends pulled the cover off the clay model. “I don’t know why, but it was a very tense moment. But it’s cool, man. He put so much work into it, and he makes this trophy what it is.”
Crediting the Hundred People Behind Him
Rosenqvist was careful, in the same breath, to make sure the win did not read as a solo effort. He credited BorgWarner and Behrends for holding onto a hand-built process that could have been simplified or handed off long ago. “I think it could have been done in so many easier or cheaper ways,” he said of the sculpting process. “BorgWarner really takes a lot of pride in making this part of history. I’m just thankful that everyone puts their heart and soul into it, especially Will. It’s a really, really cool tradition that hopefully is going to stay forever.”
That same instinct extended to Meyer Shank Racing, the small Ohio team that gave him his win before letting him leave for a bigger one. Rosenqvist said he planned to visit the team’s headquarters this week for a final farewell before his move to Arrow McLaren becomes official, one more chance to relive the finish with the mechanics and engineers who built the car under him. “There’s, you know, 100 people behind this victory, not only me,” he said. “That’s something I really want to emphasize. They’re a huge part of this.”
The Longest Way Around to a Familiar Team
There is an odd symmetry to where Rosenqvist lands in 2027. Arrow McLaren is the team he left after three seasons that produced strong runs, a handful of poles, and no signature win to point back to. Leaving Meyer Shank Racing behind now, after the biggest result of his life, could easily read as a driver chasing a bigger budget the moment his stock rose. Rosenqvist’s own comments push against that reading. He spoke about Meyer Shank not as a stepping stone he outgrew but as a team he needed one more week with, planning a stop at its Ohio shop before the 2027 program takes over his calendar, to sit with the same mechanics and engineers who built the car that got him to the bricks first.
Arrow McLaren, for its part, gets a driver walking in with a Borg-Warner Trophy portrait already commissioned, racing alongside Pato O’Ward and six-time series champion Scott Dixon, who joins the team from Chip Ganassi Racing in the same offseason reshuffle. That puts three drivers with a combined résumé of one Indy 500 win, dozens of poles and a title, into a single garage for 2027, a lineup other teams in the paddock are already treating as the favorite before a wheel turns next March.
What the Bronze Face Will Outlast
Race results fade into record books. Championships get chased down by the next season’s field. What Behrends carves stays fixed on a trophy that will sit in the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum for the rest of the sport’s history, long after the cars that raced this May have been replaced twice over. Rosenqvist’s face, beard and all, now belongs to that permanent lineup alongside Bräck’s and Ericsson’s, three Swedes memorialized in the same silver.
He leaves for Arrow McLaren in 2027 with an Indy 500 win that no longer needs defending in silly season conversations or contract negotiations. It is carved. Behrends’ next task is finishing the bas-relief casting so it can be welded into place before next May’s race, when Rosenqvist will hand the trophy back to Indianapolis Motor Speedway and start the defense of a title that, four months after crossing the line, finally feels real to the man who won it.
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