David Malukas had the same reaction everyone else did Saturday afternoon when Pato O’Ward hung a big lap on the qualifying board at Nashville Superspeedway.
“Ohhhh,” the television camera caught Malukas saying in response to O’Ward’s 202.909-mph first lap, a tour of the 1.33-mile oval that dwarfed Malukas’ two-lap average of 201.922.
Despite what the driver of the A.J. Foyt Enterprises’ No. 4 Clarience Technologies Chevrolet had said earlier, this latest heartbreak must have felt like a punch to his gut. Malukas, in his fourth NTT INDYCAR SERIES season, desperately wants his first career pole, and this latest bid was swiped when O’Ward completed the run with an average of 202.621.
Last week in Milwaukee, it was series champion Alex Palou who knocked Malukas back to second place. This time, it was O’Ward. Palou took the top spot as the last qualifier last Saturday, O’Ward as the second-to-last today.
“I’m always just very competitive,” Malukas said. “I want to get that (NTT P1 Award) sticker; I want to get the pole. And no matter what, I always get the pressure. I feel the intensity. I want to make sure that no matter what the car is, that it’s going to be close to P1, if it’s not P1.”
What must Malukas do to get that first NTT P1 Award? He will have the offseason to consider that. For now, he will start second in a series race for the second consecutive week, the third time this season and the fifth time ever.
Malukas (photo, above) said the team gave him “a damn-near perfect car.”
“(It) was so beautiful,” he said. “I knew as soon as I did the warm-up lap, I was like, ‘Whoa, they just gave me a big car.’ So, that (makes) me look pretty good.”
Malukas is one of several drivers who qualified in the top 10 for Sunday’s Borchetta Bourbon Music City Grand Prix presented by WillScot (2 p.m. ET, FOX, FOX Deportes, FOX One, FOX Sports app, INDYCAR Radio Network) seeking their first series win.
Joining Malukas in that group were Arrow McLaren’s Nolan Siegel (starting seventh), PREMA Racing’s Callum Ilott (ninth) and Chip Ganassi Racing’s Kyffin Simpson (10th). Arrow McLaren’s Christian Lundgaard, who will start third, has one series race win in his career, but it came on a street circuit (in Toronto in 2023). Lundgaard is seeking his first oval win from his best career oval qualifying spot.
Malukas finished second in this year’s Indianapolis 500 presented by Gainbridge, one of the three runner-up finishes in his career. He was contending for the win last week at the Milwaukee Mile until an air gun failure during a late-race pit stop dropped him a lap down. He battled back to finish eighth for his fifth top-10 finish of the season.
Ninety-four of the 96 laps that Malukas, 23, has led this season have come on oval tracks, and he has led in three of those five races. He knows he can lead this season finale, and he believes he can win it.
“Just need things to go our way,” he said. “I feel like that’s kind of been the season. We get these almost. With this last one of the season, it would be good to just do it, go to victory lane and get a sticker or something. We want it. We want it bad. This crew is young, so we just keep pushing for it.
“It’s going to take everything right. It’s the hardest thing ever to win in INDYCAR, to win a race and especially when we’ve got Alex Palou having a season of his life (winning eight times in 16 starts). I was right behind him in Milwaukee, and man, it was tough. We were figuring it out halfway through, and then things obviously went sideways for us.
“But, yeah, we’ll give everything.”
