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Indy 500: Will Helio Castroneves win his fourth in 2018?

By Asher Fair

INDIANAPOLIS - MAY 24: (R-L) Team owner Roger Penske, president of Penske Racing, Tim Cimdric, Helio Castroneves, driver of the #3 Team Penske Dallara Honda, engineer Ron Ruzewski, crew chief Rick Rinaman, celebrate in victory lane after winning the IRL IndyCar Series 93rd running of the Indianapolis 500 on May 24, 2009 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Indianapolis, Indiana. (Photo by Darrell Ingham/Getty Images)
INDIANAPOLIS - MAY 24: (R-L) Team owner Roger Penske, president of Penske Racing, Tim Cimdric, Helio Castroneves, driver of the #3 Team Penske Dallara Honda, engineer Ron Ruzewski, crew chief Rick Rinaman, celebrate in victory lane after winning the IRL IndyCar Series 93rd running of the Indianapolis 500 on May 24, 2009 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Indianapolis, Indiana. (Photo by Darrell Ingham/Getty Images) /
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For the ninth year in a row, Helio Castroneves will attempt to win his fourth Indy 500. Is 2018 the year in which he will get the job done?

For the ninth consecutive year, Helio Castroneves enters the Indianapolis 500 as a three-time winner of the event looking to join the elite club of four-time winners, which includes only three IndyCar drivers: A.J. Foyt, Al Unser Sr., and Rick Mears.

For the eighth of those nine years, Castroneves, 43, enters the Indy 500 as the only driver with a chance to join that club of four-time winners. The only year during this nine-year span in which there was another driver attempting to do so was in 2013 when both Castroneves and Dario Franchitti, who won the previous year’s Indy 500, were three-time winners of the race.

Franchitti retired after the 2013 season, so this is the fifth straight Indy 500 during which only Castroneves is attempting to join that club of four-time winners. Will this be the year in which he gets the job done?

Castroneves’ Indy 500 career began back in 2001, and he won the race in his first attempt to become the ninth rookie to do so. He proceeded to win it again, albeit in controversial fashion, in 2002 to become the first driver to ever win the race in both of his first two attempts.

In the 15 Indy 500 races since then, however, Castroneves has won just one of them. Seven years after he won his second Indy 500 in 2002, he won his third Indy 500 in 2009. In the eight Indy 500 races since 2009, he has not been back to victory lane.

However, Castroneves has come extremely close to doing so on three occasions, as he has finished in second place three times in the 14 Indy 500 races since 2002 that he has not won, and he has done so twice in the last four years.

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In the 2003 Indy 500, he finished in second place just 0.2990 seconds behind race winner Gil de Ferran. In the 2014 Indy 500, he finished in second just 0.0600 seconds behind race winner Ryan Hunter-Reay in what was the second closest finish in Indy 500 history. In last year’s Indy 500, he finished in second once again just 0.2011 seconds behind race winner Takuma Sato.

If not for these 0.5601 seconds across three different Indy 500 races, Castroneves could already be the only six-time Indy 500 winner and have a record that no one would likely even come relatively close to touching.

While nothing is guaranteed, it would seem like only a matter of time before Castroneves finally ends up on top once again to claim his fourth Indy 500 victory. He is no longer a full-time IndyCar driver, but everyone is learning the new UAK18 aero kit at the four-turn, 2.5-mile Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Speedway, Indiana together. With that in mind, it is hard to say definitively that there is any one driver who has a better chance at winning this year’s Indy 500 than he does.

Next: Top 10 Indianapolis 500 drivers of all-time

Will Helio Castroneves become the fourth driver to win the Indy 500 four times by winning the 102nd running of the event this year? Tune in to ABC at 11:00 a.m. ET on Sunday, May 27 to watch the live broadcast of the race and find out.