Practice for the 107th running of the Indy 500 begins this week. Which IndyCar drivers are being overlooked when it comes to the odds to win the race?
Following Saturday afternoon’s GMR Grand Prix at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course, the next race on the IndyCar schedule is the 107th running of the Indy 500 at the track’s oval layout.
There are 34 drivers on the entry list, though only 33 can qualify to compete in the 200-lap race around the four-turn, 2.5-mile (4.023-kilometer) Speedway, Indiana race track.
Several familiar drivers find themselves as the favorites, and there are a lot of drivers listed with long odds who have a great chance to contend for good results. For instance, A.J. Foyt Enterprises’ Santino Ferrucci is listed at +8000, despite having finished in the top 10 in all four of his Indy 500 starts.
But which of those drivers can actually compete for the win? Here are five longshots who can take the checkered flag.
All odds courtesy of DraftKings Sportsbook. Odds and availability subject to change. Sign up with DraftKings to bet now and take advantage of their current special promotion!
Indy 500 longshots: No. 1 – Helio Castroneves (+2500)
When Helio Castroneves won the 2021 Indy 500 in what was his first ever start behind the wheel of the No. 06 Meyer Shank Racing Honda, his odds to do so were +2800.
Now the fourth of four four-time winners of the “Greatest Spectacle in Racing” has another chance to become the race’s only five-time winner, and his odds find themselves in familiar territory at +2500 — somehow.
Meyer Shank Racing haven’t had the start to the 2023 season they would have liked, and they weren’t as strong at Indianapolis Motor Speedway last year as they were in 2021. But Castroneves still finished in seventh place in last year’s Indy 500, and he finished in 10th in the 2023 season’s first oval race at Texas Motor Speedway.
Most importantly, he was also quick in April testing for the Indy 500. Is the “Drive for Five” on?
Indy 500 longshots: No. 2 – Simon Pagenaud (+3000)
There is no doubt that Meyer Shank Racing haven’t had as strong of a start as they would have liked to have had to start the 2023 season, as touched on in the previous slide, but there are two key reasons to be confident.
First and foremost, their 2022 pace in the Indy 500 wasn’t quite on par with their pace from 2021, but both drivers still managed to finish in the top eight, with Simon Pagenaud finishing just one spot behind Helio Castroneves in eighth place. So any pace improvement year-over-year should bode well for a team whose drivers have five Indy 500 wins under their belts.
And secondly, it appears as though they have brought that speed — and more. They showed well in testing last month and should again be factors at the front.
While all the focus will be on Castroneves potentially winning a fourth Indy 500, fellow former Team Penske driver Pagenaud cannot be ignored.
It’s no secret that Team Penske have struggled at Indianapolis Motor Speedway since Pagenaud’s 2019 win. Yet in 2021, his final Indy 500 start with the team, he finished in third place, closer to second place Alex Palou than Palou was to Castroneves.
At +3000, Pagenaud is too good to pass up, especially given that he appears to be in need of a big result after a rough start to the year.
Indy 500 longshots: No. 3 – Ryan Hunter-Reay (+4000)
The ultimate dark horse in this year’s Indy 500 is Ryan Hunter-Reay, who is returning to Indianapolis Motor Speedway this year after failing to secure a deal to compete in the 106th running of the Indy 500 last year.
Hunter-Reay won the race in 2014 and should probably have at least one more Indy 500 win to his name. He was the driver to beat in 2016 before an incident in the pits knocked him out of contention, and he was the driver to beat again in 2017 before an engine failure knocked him out of the race.
Now he is set to compete for Dreyer & Reinbold Racing, not the Andretti Autosport team with which he won the race nine years ago.
Even before they were the only true “Indy 500-only” team, Dreyer & Reinbold Racing were seen as the strongest Indy 500 team in the field. While their qualifying pace hasn’t always been there, they are always a factor on race day.
Look no further than Sage Karam’s seventh place finish from 31st in 2021, or Santino Ferrucci battling for second last year before delivering the team another top 10 finish.
We’ve also seen how past Indy 500 champions moving to new teams has worked out on the past, most notably with three-time Indy 500 winner Helio Castroneves winning a fourth after moving from Team Penske to Meyer Shank Racing.
Hunter-Reay is fully capable of replicating that.
Indy 500 longshots: No. 4 – Conor Daly (+4000)
A driver with just two top 10 finishes with his current team, a team for which he has competed for the last four seasons, may not deserve to be seen as a true contender to win the Indy 500. But in Conor Daly’s case, he fits the bill.
Daly led more laps than anybody else in the 2021 Indy 500 before being knocked out of the lead pack due to damage from a flying tire. He just happened to be in its path when it came off of Graham Rahal’s wrecked No. 15 Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing Honda in turn two.
Ed Carpenter Racing have been known to qualify very well and then sort of fade on race day in recent years. Rinus VeeKay, for instance, has never started worse than fourth place, yet his top finish is eighth, and his average result is exactly 17 positions worse than his average starting spot.
But for Daly, it has been the exact opposite. While some may have thought his effort in 2021 was a fluke, since it was, in fact, good pit strategy which got him his track position at first, he ended that talk in 2022 by leading more laps and placing a career-high sixth.
There is something about Indianapolis Motor Speedway that clicks with Daly, and even though he hasn’t finished in a top 10 in a non-Indy race in three years, nothing else matters when IndyCar is Back Home Again.
Indy 500 longshots: No. 5 – David Malukas (+4000)
For some, David Malukas may very well fit the description of longshot pick with a chance at a decent result. But it’s time to start talking about “Little Dave” as a true contender to pull off an upset in this year’s Indy 500.
Malukas, who was robbed of last year’s Indy 500 Rookie of the Year Award after finishing in a rookie-best 16th place, has made amazing strides not just as an IndyCar driver but as an oval driver.
He has finished in the top eight at every oval track the series has visited since then, and he was the highest finishing non-Team Penske, Chip Ganassi Racing, or Arrow McLaren driver in last year’s oval standings.
Highlighting his recent oval success is a runner-up finish at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway last August, when he boldly passed Team Penske’s Scott McLaughlin and was on his way to hunting down fellow Team Penske driver Josef Newgarden before the checkered flag flew.
He backed that up with a fourth place effort in this year’s oval opener at Texas Motor Speedway, showing poise and calmness well beyond his years in what turned into an old school-style pack race.
What also flies under the radar is Dale Coyne Racing’s speed at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. They always bring solid cars to the Racing Capital of the World, even if it’s not talked about as much as it is when it comes to some of the sport’s powerhouse teams. Both Dale Coyne Racing cars qualified in the top 13 last year.
This year’s Indy 500 is set to be broadcast live on NBC from Indianapolis Motor Speedway beginning at 11:00 a.m. ET on Sunday, May 28.