MADISON, Ill. — David Malukas’ performance in last Saturday night’s Bommarito Automotive Group 500 at World Wide Technology Raceway thrust the rookie driver into the IndyCar spotlight.
The 20-year-old driver from Chicago had shown promise at times this season for Dale Coyne Racing with HMD Motorsports but had yet to produce eye-catching results.
He qualified sixth at Detroit, fifth at Toronto, sixth for the first of two races at Iowa Speedway and seventh at Nashville.
Malukas qualified 12th for the Aug. 20 race on the 1.25-mile oval near St. Louis, but most of the attention was focused on the NTT IndyCar Series points race.
Malukas was driving a smart race and staying out of trouble before rain interrupted the race on lap 214. After a 2-hour-and-9-minute delay, the race restarted on lap 224 and Malukas was ready to charge.
He battled polesitter Will Power of Team Penske for fourth with 29 laps left in the race. With 17 to go, Malukas passed Pato O’Ward for third.
The only two cars head of him were Penske drivers Josef Newgarden and Scott McLaughlin.
His engineer, Ross Bunnell, told the young driver to go get ’em.
“I saw them go through one and two,” Malukas recalled. “Oh, my God, they’re Penskes. I’m going behind Penskes right now. This is crazy.
“To me, as a kid, I used to always watch. I just could only dream of it. Every time through practice, every time they passed me, I always let them by, Man…
“It’s definitely special to me. I was trying so hard to not get nervous,” Malukas added. “I mean, I was nervous, but I was trying so hard not to get overexcited and do something stupid. Yeah, it’s definitely intimidating when there’s two Penskes in front of you.”
On lap 259 of the 260-lap race, Malukas passed McLaughlin’s No. 3 Chevrolet for second. He finished .4708 seconds behind Newgarden.
“You could tell that last stint and a half, David drove like a real Tiger,” said team owner Dale Coyne. “Tiger is a good way to pit it. He was confident. Confident in himself. Confident in the car and what the car would do.
“He just drove it.”
Malukas will return to the team next season and Coyne is excited about the future.
“He has improved all year long and that’s what rookies are supposed to do,” Coyne said. “He has done that.
“This is all about results. The guys work hard all week and want results and they deserve that. We had good cars, no mistakes and it all went perfect. We were the class of the Honda field, and we are very pleased with that.”
Malukas credited open-wheel great Pancho Carter, who coached him as the spotter on how to deal with the high-speed chess game at the end of the race.
It paid off when he passed McLaughlin for second place with just over one lap to go.
“Pancho came on the radio, my spotter, I was trying so hard, and they know how to do this, Malukas said. “Blocking my line and stuff. Man, this is so hard. But Pancho said, ‘Try going wide in one and two, three and four.’
“One and two didn’t work. They swept it during the rain delay, but it felt really good.
“I just said, ‘Two to go, let’s try it.
“It worked very well. I had that bit of clean air on the front right wing, I was able to get a run. Because the track was so much quicker with it being so much later, I hit the limiter in sixth gear. I couldn’t get a tow or suck on him. We had to go two-wide in one and two. Scary going wide there. Definitely getting some loose ends.
“Overall, so happy that we managed to go back out. We knew from practice yesterday the cooler the track got, the better our car ended up being compared to the others around us. We knew we had a good car going into it. I knew I had a chance.”
Once in second, Malukas was told to go after the race leader as the white flag was waving.
“Pancho is like, ‘Go get ’em, last lap,’” Malukas said. “’There are two corners left.
“It was a bit unfortunate I did it so late. But I guess rookie season, rookie stuff. I’m going to put it in the back of my brain and remember it for next time.
“Maybe I could have got Josef in another lap, maybe not. I don’t know. It’s tough. He had lap traffic. That’s the only reason why I could get to McLaughlin and Newgarden. I definitely would have done some stupid thing to get really close to him. It’s not like they were slow, they were really quick. It would have been interesting.”
To race against a championship team such as Penske in his home state and finish on the second stop of the podium is a great step forward for the rookie driver who has a bright future in IndyCar.
“It means so much,” he said. “From the start of this season, it started off rough, making a lot of rookie mistakes. But I kept learning. I knew the car was getting so good, the team was doing such a good job to get the connection and chemistry on what we needed, what I wanted. It was going so well. I knew the car deserved a podium.
“It feels so good to finally get one with the three races left in the season. I’m through the roof.”