Placing 2nd in his third run at the Speedway was an incredible achievement for the kid from Illinois, and if taking third for AJ Foyt Racing wasn’t enough of an accomplishment, he also produced the top result for the wider Team Penske squad, which supplies the Foyt operation with technical information and a race engineer for Malukas.
After his best-ever Indy performance, all the Lithuanian American wanted to do was…go pee.
“Even if I laugh, it hurts,” Malukas told RACER. “Talk about magical. I mean, the guys did a magical job, from the strategy to getting the setup where it needed to be, to the guys being super fast on these pit stops. I mean, that was a near perfect race for us, when, I think from a strategy standpoint and a race as a whole, we were the number one car there from start to finish.
“Our trajectory, everything was near perfect, but this race picks its winners, and leading at the end there, you know, got us a little bit unlucky with the two [lapped cars]. We were sitting ducks for (race winner Alex) Palou. So lucky. If those lap cars weren’t there, man, ‘Little Dave’ would have been right there.”
Malukas was understandably proud of his efforts.
“I drove my ass off, I’m not gonna lie,” he said. “Man, this race means so much to me. Ever since I was a kid, even last year when I didn’t even have a left hand and I was watching as a fan in the stands, and now, I couldn’t picture, one year later, I’d be fighting for the win here. It was a perfect month for us, so we really needed it. Man, it’s been a rough start to the season, but we’re going to be turning around now. I didn’t just drive my ass off; everybody here worked their asses off here. That was so close.”
