What Makes The Indy 500 So Hard To Win? Winners & Aspiring Winners Speak Out

Indianapolis Motor Speedway (Speedway, Ind.) — Pato O’Ward has famously found himself in contention to win the Indianapolis 500.

He’s led during the last lap. But not at the finish line.

O’Ward has led 95 laps in his six Indy 500 starts, and the Arrow McLaren No. 5 driver has nine career victories in the series. But none have come in the Indy 500.

So what makes the Indy 500 so hard to win?

"It goes greater than just driving the race car," O’Ward told me and other reporters this week. "It goes through seven pit stops. It goes through an ever-changing strategy. It goes through the timing [of moves], the timing that I still have to get right.

"And there's so many things that are out of your control that can throw it upside down. But at the end of the day, it is up to us inside of the race cars to try and just get ourselves into that opportunity to make it happen."

An opportunity. That’s what the drivers seek at Indianapolis. And then they hope, in some ways, a little bit of racing luck falls their way.

From driver to driver, they talk about how this race is different than any other. And it isn’t just the fact that more than 300,000 people will be at the track for the sold-out race on May 24 (12:30 p.m. ET on FOX).

For the last few years, drivers have not raced on an oval 1.5 miles or bigger. That makes the 2.5-mile IMS oval much larger than any other race they run all year. They don’t run 500 miles anywhere else, meaning more pit stops. So what they learn one year, they can’t apply to any other track, meaning it takes a year to learn.

It took Josef Newgarden 12 starts in the race to win it — his 27th career victory in the series. The Team Penske No. 2 driver then won again in his 13th and appeared to be in position to win in his 14th last year before a mechanical issue ended his day.

"If we get an opportunity like we did last year, I think we'll be in a good spot," Newgarden told me and other reporters this week. "Every year is different, though. There’s maybe not been as many changes year over year, but I think you’ve just got to be open to the possibility to that what worked last year might not work this year."

Alexander Rossi won as a rookie in 2016. He’s been trying to earn that second victory since then. 

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What makes this race so hard to win?

"You should ask Scott [Dixon] that," Rossi told me and other reporters last month. "He’s one of the best drivers of our generation, and he only has one as well. There’s just so many variables and things out of your control and it's a very particular race."

Scott Dixon has won the pole three times since his 2008 victory, which came in his sixth start. The Chip Ganassi Racing No. 9 driver will make his 18th start this year in looking for that second win.

Oh, and Dixon — the six-time INDYCAR champion — also has led more laps (677) than any other driver in race history.

"Even if you have a perfect day, it only gives you a chance," Dixon told me and other reporters. "It’s a longer race. Everybody's pushing everything to the limit, whether that's the driver or on the mechanical side, or on the engineering side, strategy side.

"And then, like anything on ovals, it can be a, a late-race caution that could flip everything on its head as well. So some things are in your control and some things are out of your control. As far as you look at a three-hour, one-day event, it's probably the hardest one."

Ovals. For drivers who grew up in the European formula system and move to INDYCAR, they don’t have much experience racing ovals. There are five oval tracks on this year’s schedule — Phoenix, WWTR Gateway (St. Louis), Nashville, Milwaukee and Indy.

Christian Lundgaard won the race Saturday on the IMS road course. But the Arrow McLaren No. 7 driver isn’t considered a favorite this weekend because he is rarely a contender on ovals.

Lundgaard told me and other reporters that his competitors have told him once it clicks for him on an oval, he will run better.

"Phoenix was a big disappointment in many ways," Lundgaard said about the March race. "The test [in February] was never really the same for me as the race was.

"There’s no time out there where I'm uncomfortable. ... It is just that feel of you need to be comfortable in the uncomfortable and just put the car in different positions and different places to really figure out what it's doing. And I think some people are happier to do that than others."

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Helio Castroneves is more than happy to do that. He has won four Indianapolis 500s. He won his first two and then needed seven more races to earn a third and then 12 more to win a fourth. Driving an extra entry for Meyer Shank Racing, Castroneves looks to capture a victory on the sport's biggest stage (by the way, he's used to big other stages as a Dancing With The Stars winner in 2007).

"I refuse to hear people say that you can't do it, and I’m just going to work extremely hard and put all the little details together," Castroneves told me and other reporters as he talked about what makes this race hard as he goes for a record fifth. "And I think that's where I'm good at it."

Every driver says the issue is they can put all those little details together and still not win.

Will Power won in his 11th start in 2018. This will be his eighth attempt at earning another and his first start for the Andretti Global No. 26 driver.

"It's so complicated with how much goes into it," Power told me and other reporters last month. "You could name 10 different reasons why you didn't win the past 10 races here.

"It’s unpredictable. You never know what's going to happen on race day. I think the lesson would be, is to be there at the end in that front group. That's, if I was to tell myself something over the last 10 times I've done this, is you’ve got to get to the end and be at the front."

That’s exactly where four-time INDYCAR Series champion Alex Palou found himself last year. 

"You need to have a fast car, but only having a fast car doesn't mean anything," Palou told me and other reporters. "You need to have great pits, but only having that doesn't mean anything. ... It’s such a long race with so many pit stops and things that continue to change that you need to be able to react wherever you are."

Palou is used to winning by leading most of the laps in his Chip Ganassi Racing No. 10 car. At Indianapolis, in a 200-lap, 500-mile race, there will be times when a driver ends up outside the top-10.

"It's not like a straightforward race where you're top-three and you do a good pit stop and you win," Palou said. "It's more of like, ‘Hey, you might be leading, but then you're 15th four-wide on the outside, and you need to survive that.

"There's so many things that can go wrong, and as soon as one of those don't go right, you cannot win."

Marcus Ericsson knows that. He won in his fourth Indy 500 start. But he has been close to winning two of the last three.

His failure to win hasn’t come from a lack of effort.

"There are so many things that you have to get right, and even when you do get everything right, it's still not over until it's over," Ericsson told me and other reporters here at Indianapolis. "So it's a tough race to win.

"And it's the race you work all year-round, or at least I do, to try and figure out how I can be better here, how I can execute better, how I can minimize mistakes — how I can just get back to Victory Lane, basically. So it's what drives me, and I think many others."

Which brings us back to O’Ward, who, as the commercials have shown, has had his heart ripped out here at Indy. A driver can find himself in position and then must do everything right in the final laps.

"[You must choose] when to make a pass, when you choose to back up to [someone] — and a yellow can come out because some other guy decided to put it in the wall," O’Ward said. "Or you do [that move] too early, and they get you back.

"I feel like I've had it all happen to me."