Indy 500: Ranking all 34 drivers, from No. 34 to No. 1

Indy 500 rankings: No. 3 – Pato O’Ward

Nobody has been more consistent at Indianapolis Motor Speedway over the last three years than Pato O’Ward, recording finishes of sixth, fourth, and second place. O’Ward had a chance to win it last year with an outside move on Marcus Ericsson in turn one, but he had to bail out.

There is a reason that the two-time reigning oval champion, who at one point had all but one driver a lap down at Texas Motor Speedway, has been the betting favorite to win the “Greatest Spectacle in Racing” since the 2023 IndyCar season began.

Indy 500 rankings: No. 2 – Scott Dixon

And nobody has been faster at Indianapolis Motor Speedway over the last three years than Scott Dixon. From the front row in 2020, he led the most laps, and he took the pole position in 2021 and 2022, doing so in the latter with an all-time record speed. What is it going to take for the number two driver on the all-time IndyCar wins list to finally earn his second Indy 500 win?

Running out of fuel due to a caution flag early in the 2021 race knocked him out of contention, and a late speeding penalty in 2022 knocked him out of contention — and technically ended up costing him a seventh IndyCar championship — after he had dominated the event and become the race’s all-time laps led leader.

Indy 500 rankings: No. 1 – Alex Palou

Alex Palou enters the month of May as the “odd man out” at Chip Ganassi Racing. For as good as he has been since joining the team in 2021, he is the only one of the team’s four drivers for this year’s Indy 500 without an Indy 500 win to his name. But he has been knocking on the door.

Palou has never started lower than seventh place in his three Indy 500 starts, and he has never started outside the top two rows in his two starts with Chip Ganassi Racing, a team for which he wasn’t even planning on competing this year. Last year, he made his first front row start.

After leading much of the early stages of the race, Palou was knocked out of contention last year for the same reason Dixon was in 2021, and he still managed to fight back from 30th place to finish in ninth.

With passing expected to be far more frequent and manageable this year than it was last year due to some significant adjustments to the superspeedway package, it will be hard to keep Palou from running at the front.

No driver who finished in second place, which Palou did in 2021, before winning the Indy 500 for the first time has gone on to win it since Will Power (second in 2015) in 2018. Can Palou do it in 2023?