Indy 500: How Helio Castroneves won in last year’s slowest car

Helio Castroneves became a four-time Indy 500 winner in a car that was last year’s slowest in the field of 33 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

After 11 years of trying to become the Indy 500’s fourth four-time winner, a move from Team Penske’s IndyCar team, where he had spent the last 20 seasons competing in the race, to Meyer Shank Racing paid off in year number one for Helio Castroneves.

In his 21st career start in the “Greatest Spectacle in Racing” and his 12th as a three-time winner, having won the race as a rookie in 2001 and then again in 2002 and 2009, the 46-year-old Brazilian joined A.J. Foyt, Al Unser and Rick Mears in the four-time winners’ club.

He led 20 laps, including the final two after making an outside pass on Chip Ganassi Racing’s Alex Palou going into turn one, of the 200-lap race around the four-turn, 2.5-mile (4.023-kilometer) oval in Speedway, Indiana after qualifying in eighth place in the Fast Nine Shootout.

His win came in his first start behind the wheel of the #06 Honda at Meyer Shank Racing, and it came in Meyer Shank Racing’s first ever race with two cars.

And it came behind the wheel of what was actually the 2020 Indy 500’s slowest car.

Meyer Shank Racing only began competing full-time in 2020. They ran only the Indy 500 in 2017 before running a six-race effort in 2018 and a 10-race effort in 2019. As a full-time operation in 2020, they ran one car in all 14 races on the schedule.

After the 2020 season ended, DragonSpeed announced that they would be shuttering their IndyCar program and selling their chassis to Meyer Shank Racing, which had wanted to expand into a two-car effort for the 2021 season.

That expansion happened, albeit with an additional part-time car, not a second full-time car. That second chassis made its Meyer Shank Racing debut with Castroneves in the cockpit in Sunday’s 105th running of the Indy 500, and it delivered a historic victory which was also the team’s first ever win in the series.

Just last year, Castoneves’s 2021 Indy 500-winning car was by far the slowest in the Indy 500 field.

More from IndyCar

• IndyCar: Two teams with no drivers confirmed for 2024
• IndyCar: Chip Ganassi Racing news hints Alex Palou announcement
• IndyCar: ‘Addition by subtraction’ could pay off in a big way
• Team Penske should make a bold driver signing for 2024
• IndyCar: 5 teams that still have open seats for 2024

Ben Hanley qualified the #81 DragonSpeed Chevrolet in 33rd place for the 104th running of the race last August. Had there been more than 33 drivers on the entry list, he probably would have missed the race, given how far off the pace his car was.

31st place qualifier Sage Karam qualified with a four-lap average speed of 227.099 miles per hour. Hanley qualified with a four-lap average speed of 222.917 miles per hour, a full 4.182 miles per hour off of Karam’s pace.

To put that in perspective, 4.182 miles per hour faster than 227.099 is 231.281. That would have been good enough for pole position. So the gap from 31st to 33rd was larger than the gap from the pole (231.068 miles per hour by Marco Andretti) to 31st.

Hanley finished the race in 23rd place, two laps off the lead lap, but ahead of only two other drivers who finished the race, one of whom had issues that mired him laps down early on. That was the final race in which the #81 Chevrolet competed before the chassis was sold.

And in its next start, it was a winning car that got to take the lift to Victory Circle.

Setup changes, driver change, engine change, etc.; everything came together to turn the #06 Honda into a contender, and the Indy 500’s newest four-time winner was there to capitalize in his first ever Indy 500 not competing for Roger Penske.

Castroneves’s next scheduled start is set to take place on Sunday, August 8 in the inaugural Big Machine Music City Grand Prix on the streets of Nashville, Tennessee. This race is set to be broadcast live on NBC Sports Network beginning at 5:30 p.m. ET.