An action-packed Sunday afternoon at Indianapolis Motor Speedway featured three different qualifying sessions for the 110th running of the Indy 500 after Saturday's rainout, and it set the full 11-row, 33-car grid for this coming Sunday afternoon's famed NTT IndyCar Series race.
For the second time in four years, Chip Ganassi Racing's Alex Palou is set to lead the field to the green flag after taking the pole position with a four-lap average speed of 232.248 miles per hour around the four-turn, 2.5-mile (4.023-kilometer) Speedway, Indiana oval behind the wheel of his No. 10 Honda.
A full starting lineup can be found here.
What can we expect in this year's running of the "Greatest Spectacle in Racing"? Here are five things we're not counting on.
Caution-free Indy 500
During the hybrid era, IndyCar has seen an abundance of caution-free races, including one already in 2026 and three in a row at one point in 2025.
While the 2025 Indy 500 wasn't one of them, it did see a 91-lap green flag stint up until the white flag lap, when Fox Sports infamously missed Alex Palou crossing the finish line to show Nolan Siegel's wrecked No. 6 car in turn two. And that green flag stint isn't even close to being the longest at Indy in recent years.
This year's month of May, even if you include the April open test, has featured zero notable incidents, aside from a sketchy moment here and there. Everybody has kept it clean through practice and qualifying, although two race trim practice sessions do remain on the schedule for this week.
I don't think that necessarily means we're due for a complete wreckfest, because this is a talented field from top to bottom, but at some point you have to expect some regression toward the mean.
The 2025 race featured seven caution flags, most of any hybrid era race thus far, and six of them had happened by the time the race had just passed the halfway mark.
Alex Palou leads at least 100 laps
It wouldn't surprise anybody to see the dominant driver keep dominating, but it's not always that simple, especially at Indy.
Alex Palou has twice started from the front row in his Indy 500 career. In 2022, he led 45 of the first 68 laps from second on the grid, before a mistimed yellow sent him all the way back to 30th, and he could only recover to ninth.
In 2023, he led 36 of the first 60 laps after starting from pole, and he probably could have led more had he not spent time swapping the lead with Rinus VeeKay saving fuel. Then VeeKay spun into him in the pits, and he once again had to battle back from 30th before finishing fourth.
He is set to enter this year's Indy 500 having led 14 consecutive race laps, the most for any race winner since Takuma Sato led the final 16 to win in 2020, and he has a good chance to extend that streak after taking pole. The first hybrid era Indy 500 featured only 23 lead changes, the second fewest of the DW12 era (2012 to present).
Sure, he probably would have led every lap from pole on the road course had it not been for an ill-timed yellow, and he's earned the right to be this year's Indy 500 favorite. But the Indy 500 is unlike any other race when you factor in the inevitable differences in pit strategy over the course of 500 miles. Chief among them is the fact that the leader almost always uses significantly more fuel than anybody else.
No driver has led more than 100 laps since Scott Dixon led 111 in 2020, and that was when the race was held in August at an unusual time of day with no fans in the stands, to the point where it almost looked like an over glorified practice session.
In a normal year, it hasn't happened since 2019. That year, Simon Pagenaud led 116 laps and won from pole. He is still the only driver to win from pole since Helio Castroneves in 2009, and even that race was far from straightforward.
Katherine Legge embarrasses Kyle Larson
39 drivers competed in the Coca-Cola 600 a year ago without first competing in the Indy 500. 29 of those drivers still ran more total mileage than Kyle Larson did across both the Indy 500 and the Coke 600, as he crashed out of both early. And by the way, he's still winless in the NASCAR Cup Series since.
On paper, Katherine Legge shouldn't have a problem surpassing Larson's 595 miles, even if she can't run all 1,100. But she hasn't finished an Indy 500 herself since 2013, even after competing in both 2023 and 2024, and the fact that she was approved to run on an intermediate 1.5-mile Charlotte Motor Speedway oval at the Cup level raised some eyebrows, given her past struggles.
Plus, with all due respect to B.J. McLeod's team, everybody knows she won't be anywhere close to competitive at Charlotte in a Live Fast Motorsports car, and that's assuming she even qualifies. If the entry list gets any more cars, somebody is guaranteed to miss out.
The one positive she has going for her is her fans won't claim she's the "best in the world" just because she can drive more than one vehicle. Then again, she won't ignorantly compare herself to Max Verstappen, mistakenly thinking he only drives F1 cars, either.
I do think she'll eclipse 600 total miles, at least, even if she's not competitive in either race. Larson's two Memorial Day Double attempts didn't even total 1,100, but he was relatively competitive at Indy in 2024, qualifying in the top five and running in the top 10 before a late speeding penalty.
Andretti's annual Houdini act continues
Andretti Global has become the New York Yankees of IndyCar. Every year, it's their year, until it's actually time to show up and prove it. Then their top driver in Indy 500 qualifying runs 18th, the driver with the most poles in IndyCar history runs 20th, and their top driver in the championship runs 26th.
We actually thought things would be different this year, after they looked solid in the open test and throughout the week of practice, but Fast Friday proved they were in trouble, and of course, they were.
However, this is a team that has indeed raced better than they've qualified at Indy. Everybody says it, but Andretti actually does it.
Marcus Ericsson finished second in 2025 before his post-race penalty dropped him to the back, and Kyle Kirkwood finished sixth before the same. They started ninth and 23rd, respectively, and they're slightly deeper in the field this year.
But Ericsson is a former Indy 500 winner, and he dropped to the back at one point in 2025 and still battled back to take the lead before he was passed by Palou with 14 laps to go. As for Kirkwood, he drove from 15th up to second in 2023 before his spectacular turn two crash, so he too has proven he can slice his way through the field on multiple occasions.
As for Will Power, he hasn't finished in the top 10 in the Indy 500 since 2019, and after a rough start to his tenure in the No. 26 Honda, he is simply in need of a good result. But let's not forget he drove from last to first at Phoenix Raceway in the season's first oval race after a qualifying crash, before late contact knocked him out of contention.
The real question seems to be whether Andretti will be strong enough to convert their race pace into their first Indy 500 victory since they won the race three times in four years from 2014 to 2017.
Meyer Shank Racing is a pretender
Just in case anybody forgot the premise of this article, this means that I think Meyer Shank Racing is not a pretender. Just wanted to clear that up.
Yes, it's bizarre that, for the second year in a row, Felix Rosenqvist schooled everyone in the top 12 qualifying session, only to turn up in the Firestone Fast Six and be nowhere near the pole position, to the point where he didn't even end up on the front row.
But a fourth place starting position is still his best since joining the team, and the 2025 race was arguably the most compete oval race of his career. He finished fourth after starting fifth.
Additionally, Helio Castroneves has his best starting position since 2021, when the "Drive for Five" began after he won the race for the record-tying fourth time, and he's proven that he can still pass a lot of cars. He drove from 27th to seventh in 2022, 20th to 15th in 2023, 20th to seventh (before settling for 20th) in 2024, and 22nd to 10th in 2025.
Marcus Armstrong quietly qualified 17th, one year after making up 12 positions from 30th, and has become an underrated oval star himself, earning his first oval podium finish at Iowa Speedway in 2025 and adding a fifth place finish at Phoenix in March.
Their technical alliance with Chip Ganassi Racing has clearly been beneficial. It showed in qualifying, and it's been showing on race day, and while that second series win continues to elude them, it feels like they're closer than ever to achieving it.
Live coverage of the 110th running of the Indy 500 is set to be provided by Fox starting at 10:00 a.m. ET on Sunday, May 24. Start a free trial of FuboTV now and don't miss any of the action from Indianapolis Motor Speedway!
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