IndyCar: The rising star who could become McLaren's worst nightmare

A.J. Foyt Enterprises made the somewhat surprising announcement last month that they had signed David Malukas for the 2025 IndyCar season and beyond.

Malukas spent the 2022 and 2023 seasons competing for Dale Coyne Racing with support from his father's HMD Motorsports team, and he signed with Arrow McLaren for the 2024 season. But after missing four races to start the season due to a wrist injury he suffered in a preseason mountain biking accident, he was released by the team.

Meyer Shank Racing called upon him to replace the struggling Tom Blomqvist in June, and he has thrived ever since.

He has qualified lower than 14th place just once in nine races, his average starting spot is 9.1, and he recently finished in a season-high sixth on the streets of Toronto.

He led laps after starting on the front row and was headed toward a podium finish at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway before being taken out in a wreck, and he added a second front row start at the Milwaukee Mile.

He has singlehandedly elevated the No. 66 team back into the top 22 in the entrant standings, meaning it is now in position to make the Leaders' Circle and earn a $1 million payout from IndyCar after it looked like an early favorite to miss out.

There were rumors that Malukas would re-sign with Meyer Shank Racing, which have since confirmed a new technical alliance with Chip Ganassi Racing from 2025, or even sign with Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing to replace the Arrow McLaren-bound Christian Lundgaard next year.

Instead, he made the unlikely move and signed with A.J. Foyt Enterprises.

Whether he replaces Santino Ferrucci behind the wheel of the No. 14 Chevrolet or Sting Ray Robb behind the wheel of the No. 41 Chevrolet remains to be seen.

Given A.J. Foyt Enterprises' existing technical alliance with Team Penske and Malukas' reference to the partnership in the announcement of his decision, many have been led to believe that the move positions him to eventually move to Team Penske once Will Power retires.

While Power is under contract through at least 2025 and has given no indication that he is thinking about hanging it up at that time, it's hard to argue that Malukas isn't now in pole position to make that move at some point down the road, given what he has achieved in his IndyCar career thus far.

As a rookie with Dale Coyne Racing in 2022, he posted a podium finish, two other top 10 finishes, an average finish of 14th, and a championship finish of 16th. Alex Palou, now a two-time series champion (and current points leader) with Chip Ganassi Racing, posted the exact same stat line with Dale Coyne Racing as a rookie in 2020.

Malukas added another podium finish and five other top 10 finishes in 2023, and though he got off to a late start to the 2024 season, he has picked up where he left off with a new team, despite having been told time and time again that driving after suffering his wrist injury would never be the same.

But perhaps most notable is the success Malukas has had in the road and street course races, which includes a third place qualifying effort at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course that likely would have translated to a top five finish if not for an issue in the pits.

During his first two seasons in IndyCar, Malukas was labeled an oval specialist due to his multiple podium finishes at Gateway and his fourth place finish on the high banks of Texas Motor Speedway, something he addressed with Beyond the Flag when speaking to us last year.

"I understand the [oval specialist] tag,” Malukas said. “We’ve been having a lot of good spells when it comes to oval racing, and we’ve been doing really good, and I don’t know, I just feel very comfortable. It kind of seems like I have this really good connection with ovals, coming from a good car, being comfortable with making moves, and just having a really good time.

“I feel like all of that as a collective is just what kind of gives us those results. But I’m really happy, of course, it feels great, and yeah, I don’t know, it kind of seems like I’m getting a little bit of like a tag, where it’s like a more of an oval specialist. But we have to work on trying to make sure we get that tag for all of the types of courses. That’s the goal.”

Now Malukas has solidified himself as a very capable all-around driver, and he is set to join a team that have solidified themselves as that "next team up" behind the top tier (Chip Ganassi Racing and Team Penske) and tier two (Andretti Global and Arrow McLaren) amid their best season in more than two decades.

That best season in decades reached an even greater high at Portland International Raceway two weekends ago, when Ferrucci delivered the organization their first pole position since 2014.

It's clear that Malukas hasn't skipped a beat after his injury from a physical standpoint. Add in the motivation to get back in the cockpit, plus the additional fuel to the fire from having been released by McLaren after not being given the chance to actually compete for the team, and the 22-year-old Chicago, Illinois native has a chance to become McLaren's worst nightmare if he does indeed end up at Team Penske in the coming years.

Assuming no unexpected changes are made for 2025, Team Penske will have made just four full-time driver additions to their IndyCar roster over the last decade and a half.

McLaren have made five in the last 12 months.

Two of them, Malukas and Palou, never ended up driving for the team. Another one, Lundgaard, has yet to do so. Another one, Theo Pourchaire, was fired two races after he was said to be the No. 6 Chevrolet's full-time driver for the rest of the 2024 season as Malukas' replacement.

And the other one, Nolan Siegel, is struggling in the seat that had been promised to Pourchaire. Given McLaren's history (which, despite CEO Zak Brown's claims, is hardly Palou's fault), it would not be surprising to see them eventually bail on him as well.

That list doesn't even include Callum Ilott, who was never designated as a "full-time" replacement for Malukas since he only made select appearances.

Anyone who follows motorsport knows that Brown already has two of the world's top motorsport stars in Palou and Max Verstappen, for lack of a better phrase (and, subjectively, a more respectful one), living rent-free in his head.

Now Malukas is potentially set up to give him a similar headache.

Team Penske don't make knee-jerk decisions when it comes to driver changes, and they don't go around signing unproven rookies. In 2014, they added CART champion, Indy 500 winner, and overall motorsport legend Juan Pablo Montoya to their roster. That paid off with an Indy 500 win – and nearly a championship – the following year.

In 2015, they added Simon Pagenaud, who had just reeled off three consecutive top five championships finishes for Sam Schmidt's team in his first three full seasons in the series. That paid off the following year with a championship, and it paid off three years after that with an Indy 500 win.

In 2017, they added Josef Newgarden, who had, for several years, been considered the "next big thing" should Team Penske land his signature. Then a five-year veteran, Newgarden signed with Roger Penske's team, and he immediately won the championship.

He has since added a second title and back-to-back Indy 500 wins, and he has been by far the series' winningest driver over the last seven-plus years. He has reeled off eight consecutive multi-win seasons since joining the team.

Don't forget that Newgarden, just weeks after suffering a broken clavicle and a fractured wrist in a nasty wreck at Texas, came back to dominate the race at Iowa Speedway in 2016, a win that went a long way toward Team Penske signing him for 2017.

Even Power in 2009, for that matter, broke his back in a crash at Sonoma Raceway. In every one of his IndyCar starts since, he has been a full-time driver for Team Penske. He won the first two of those starts to open the 2010 season and has gone on to win two championships and an Indy 500.

So unlike another top team, maybe Team Penske won't view Malukas' injury history as a negative either, given how he has bounced back.

Then most recently, in 2021, Team Penske signed Scott McLaughlin, who had no IndyCar experience but had competed with Penske in Australian Supercars and won multiple championships.

And as silly as it sounds, he did gain some valuable open-wheel experience when he won the COVID-19 IndyCar iRacing Challenge championship in 2020. He has already finished as high as third place in the standings and won seven races, and he has emerged as a race-winning contender at almost every venue the series visits, highlighted by his recent oval championship.

Should Malukas, who has tested for Team Penske before, run well for A.J. Foyt Enterprises for a year or two or more, he would fit that mold of what Team Penske have shown to be looking for whenever they have made a very rare change to their driver lineup: experience, talent, the ability to win, and the will to overcome adversity.

Keep in mind, even Newgarden recorded no top 10 finishes in his rookie season. Malukas is already trending well above that pace.

And if Malukas does indeed join Team Penske a few years from now, that scenario could turn out to be a lot more than McLaren would have wanted to deal with when they made what they believed was the right decision to release him simply because his contract allowed it, less than a day after he missed his fourth start – only to replace his replacement a few weeks later anyway.