- David Malukas lost his Arrow McLaren ride in 2024 after a mountain bike crash shattered his wrist, then rebuilt his career through two smaller teams.
- He now drives for Team Penske, where Josef Newgarden says people once questioned why he got the seat, and he has answered with a string of top-seven runs.
- IndyCar’s own website recently named him a candidate to become the series’ 300th different race winner, a milestone he has not yet reached.
The Crash That Nearly Ended Everything Before It Started
David Malukas had just signed with Arrow McLaren to drive the No. 6 Chevrolet for the 2024 season, a seat that put him alongside Pato O’Ward on one of IndyCar’s best-funded teams. Then he went for a ride on his mountain bike. He crashed, and the fall tore up his left hand and wrist badly enough to require surgery. He missed the first four races of the season rehabbing an injury that had nothing to do with a race car. Before he ever turned a wheel for Arrow McLaren that year, the team moved on without him.
Losing a top-tier ride over an off-track accident is the kind of setback that ends careers in open-wheel racing. Seats at that level do not open often, and they rarely come back around for a driver who just lost one. Malukas had to find a way back in with almost nothing to show for it beyond the promise he had flashed before the crash.
Climbing Back Through Two Teams in Two Years
He found his way back midseason in 2025 with Meyer Shank Racing, making nine starts to prove he still belonged. That stretch earned him a full-time ride at A.J. Foyt Racing, where he turned in a career-best 11th in points, finished second at the Indianapolis 500, and posted five top-10 results. For a team that had spent years outside IndyCar’s front rank, Malukas’s season was a signature achievement, and it put his name back in front of the teams that mattered.
One of those teams was Team Penske. Roger Penske’s organization signed Malukas for 2026 to replace Will Power in the No. 12 Verizon Chevrolet, handing him a seat most drivers spend a career chasing. It was a remarkable turn for a driver who, two years earlier, could not even start a season he had already signed up for.
Newgarden’s Blunt Assessment of the Doubt Around Him
Not everyone welcomed the move. Josef Newgarden, a two-time Indianapolis 500 winner and Malukas’s new teammate, said flatly that some people had questioned why Malukas was given one of Team Penske’s three cars. Newgarden did not share that doubt. He called Malukas smart, fast, and capable of winning, a vote of confidence from a driver who had little reason to hand one out for free. Teammate Scott McLaughlin added his own praise, pointing to the work Malukas put in away from the track, in the shop and in the simulator, and said he carries himself in a way that commands respect inside the team.
Those endorsements mean more coming from inside a team with Team Penske’s standards. Newgarden and McLaughlin have combined for multiple championships and an Indy 500 win between them. When they vouch for a teammate who spent part of 2024 unable to drive at all, it lands differently in a garage that does not hand out charity.
A Fast Start and a Pit Stop That Cost Him a Podium
Malukas did not need long to show why Team Penske took the chance. Entering the Indianapolis 500, he sat third in the championship on the back of four straight top-seven finishes. He had already won the NTT P1 Award for fastest qualifier at Phoenix and started on the front row at Barber Motorsports Park. At Long Beach, he ran in position for a podium finish before a slow final pit stop dropped him to seventh, a result that stung in the moment but did not derail his broader season. Through the season’s first five races, Malukas led every Team Penske driver in points, ahead of Newgarden and McLaughlin both.
Then came the Indianapolis 500, the race that had already given him a runner-up finish the year before at Foyt. In 2026, driving for Penske, he came agonizingly close again, this time losing by a margin reported as roughly two hundredths of a second, among the tightest finishes in the race’s history. He was seen in tears afterward. It was the second time in two years he had reached the final stretch of the Indianapolis 500 with a win in sight, only to watch it slip away at the line.
Moving On From Heartbreak at Detroit
Malukas did not get long to dwell on the loss. The series moved straight to the Detroit Grand Prix, and he said he had already put the Indianapolis result behind him by the time he arrived. That kind of short memory counts for something in a sport where the next race always sits just days away, and where a driver who cannot let go of a near miss tends to make the next one worse rather than better. His response was not to talk about what might have been. It was to point to the next event on the calendar and get back to work.
Chasing a Milestone Win and His First Penske Season on His Terms
By September, IndyCar’s reporting team was already looking ahead to a different kind of history. The series’ own website ran a feature asking which driver would become the 300th different winner in IndyCar competition, and Malukas’s name sat near the top of the list. He has come closer than almost anyone else on the grid without reaching victory lane, a runner-up in two straight editions of the sport’s biggest race and a front-runner at multiple other events this year. The gap between where he stands and that first win is measured in hundredths of a second, not laps or positions.
A paddock-wide check-in at Laguna Seca late in the season found him satisfied with his first year at Team Penske overall, a measured response from a driver who has learned not to let any single result, good or bad, define how he talks about his own season. That restraint looks earned rather than rehearsed. He has been the team’s most consistent points scorer for long stretches of 2026, a fact that quietly answers the question Newgarden said people were asking when he first arrived.
The arc from a shattered wrist and a lost ride to a seat at one of IndyCar’s flagship teams did not happen on the strength of a lucky break. Arrow McLaren moved on without him, and nobody owed him another chance after that. He earned the Meyer Shank starts, then the Foyt seat, then the podium runs and front-row starts that made Team Penske’s decision look obvious in hindsight. The 300th win, whenever it comes, will close a story that started with him unable to even hold a steering wheel properly. Until then, he keeps showing up third, second, seventh, each result another argument against the doubt that followed him into the garage.
Oval racing is where Malukas has made his sharpest impression, and Team Penske’s remaining schedule leans on tracks suited to exactly that strength. He has described himself as a driver who reads a draft by feel rather than by spreadsheet, a trait that served him well on the superspeedway-style ovals that reward instinct over data. Teammates have noticed the same thing Newgarden pointed out early on: a driver who studies in the simulator all week and then trusts his hands on Sunday. That balance between preparation and improvisation is rare among younger IndyCar drivers, many of whom lean almost entirely on data traces pulled from practice sessions.
What makes his 2026 season stand out is not a single result but the pattern across nearly every race weekend. A front row here, a podium bid there, a championship position that outpaced two drivers with Indy 500 wins and championships of their own. None of it has produced a trophy yet, which is exactly why IndyCar’s own reporters keep circling back to his name whenever the conversation turns to milestones still waiting to be claimed. The sport has a long memory for drivers who lose heartbreakers, and an even longer one for the moment they finally convert a near miss into a win. Malukas is still waiting for that moment, but almost nobody in the garage would bet against it arriving soon.
For now, his story remains one of proximity: second by a few car lengths, third in points, seventh after a slow stop that could have been a podium. Each number sits close enough to a breakthrough that his first win, whenever it lands, will feel less like a surprise and more like the conclusion everyone in the garage already expected.
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