Legendary NFL head coach Bill Parcells famously stated that you are what your record says you are. While that usually holds true, the NTT IndyCar SERIES always features a few exceptions where the final points standings do not quite reflect a driver's true competitiveness over the course of a campaign. Bad luck has a habit of spoiling good runs, dragging averages down and hiding what really happened on track.
Take David Malukas, for instance. It speaks volumes about the insane competitiveness at the sharp end of the grid that the driver of Team Penske's No. 12 Chevrolet ended up fifth in the standings, despite sitting second in points as late as August. Malukas racked up four runner-up finishes, none bigger than the thrilling Indianapolis 500 presented by Gainbridge where he missed out by a razor-thin margin of .0233 of a second—the closest finish in the history of the race. He also took second at the Sonsio Grand Prix on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course, the XPEL Grand Prix at Road America, and the second race of the Milwaukee Mile doubleheader, the Snap-on Makers and Fixers 250. With six top-three finishes, he trailed only series champion Alex Palou of Chip Ganassi Racing and third-place finisher Christian Lundgaard of Arrow McLaren in that metric, while posting a stellar 3.2 qualifying average and 3.5 finishing average on ovals. Unfortunately, five results of 12th or worse—including a tough August stretch of 12th, 17th, and 24th places while dealing with an aggravated past wrist injury—cost him a higher spot.
Felix Rosenqvist put together a season so brilliant at times that it remains baffling he finished down in ninth. Driving the No. 60 Honda for Meyer Shank Racing w/ Curb Agajanian, the Swede claimed the seventh and eighth poles of his career, took a spectacular last-lap win at the Indianapolis 500, and secured second place at both the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach and the OnlyBulls Grand Prix of Portland. He even led nine of the 18 races during the year. What dragged him down were 11 double-digit finishes, featuring the first four races of the season and five of the opening six.
Will Power's transition to Andretti Global's No. 26 Honda started as a disaster, featuring an average finish of 17.0 through the first eight rounds. Yet Power still led five of those races—including a front-row start for the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix—before finding his footing in the second half of the year with three consecutive third-place finishes in August to land 11th in the points. Power led 12 of the 18 races and finished third five times, trailing only Palou, Lundgaard, Malukas, and Andretti Global teammate Kyle Kirkwood in podiums, which sets the two-time series champion up nicely for 2027.
Marcus Armstrong's 14th-place finish hides a season that included leading the Indianapolis 500 coming to the white flag. The driver of Meyer Shank Racing w/ Curb Agajanian's No. 66 Honda grabbed fifth-place oval finishes at Phoenix and Indianapolis, took sixth at the Children’s of Alabama Indy Grand Prix at Barber Motorsports Park, and closed out the year with a ninth place in the second Milwaukee race and a seventh place in the Mission Foods Grand Prix of Monterey at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca. A brutal midseason run of seven races with a 19.7 average finish—at least three of which stemmed from mechanical failures—undone his progress, though he is stepping up to the lead role at MSR for next season.
Finally, Graham Rahal was exceptionally strong on road courses, making his short oval struggles all the more glaring. The veteran in Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing's No. 15 Honda drove to third-place finishes at Barber Motorsports Park and the Sonsio Grand Prix, and was running third just two corners from the finish at the XPEL Grand Prix at Road America before Power knocked him off the track into a 23rd-place finish. He also took third on the streets of Detroit. But after qualifying third and finishing ninth at Phoenix early on, a 21.8 average finish across the four ensuing short ovals and a 20th-place result in the Indianapolis 500 kept him down to 16th in the final standings.
