Dale Coyne Racing's Santino Ferrucci has been named as the 2019 Indianapolis 500 Rookie of the Year after finishing as the best-placed rookie of the race.
While often the award is given to the highest placed rookie in the race, a vote is put in place to ensure the opportunity for some drivers who don't finish are given the chance to claim the honour.
In 2017 Ed Jones finished third in the race while driving for Dale Coyne, but it was Fernando Alonso who scooped the award after leading 27 laps and putting himself in contention for race victory before his Honda blew with 21 laps to go.
The 20-year old finished in seventh place, while other rookies in the form of Marcus Ericsson and Jordan King – who finished 23rd and 24th respectively – both made mistakes on pit road during the race.
Ferrucci was able to keep himself out of trouble during the build-up to the famous race, qualify well and beat two previous winners in Ryan Hunter-Reay and Tony Kanaan.
The Connecticut-born driver also picks up a bonus $50,000 due to winning the award, this is on top of the $435,404 he won for his seventh-place finish.
Ferrucci also narrowly avoided getting caught up in a pile-up in Turn 3 when team-mate Sebastien Bourdais collided with Graham Rahal on lap 178. The former Formula 2 driver spoke about how he avoided the incident in spectacular fashion by cutting in the grass on the inside.
"I saw a little bit of the grass stick up getting towards the corner and the spotter comes on the radio and says, all right, just don't go high. Don't go high," he said.
"Then I see everybody starting to wreck, and I'm just like, middle of the track, and then I floored it because I thought that was the smart thing to do, then I saw the grass, which to me was the only hole, and that looked like the most intelligent place to go.
"So we mowed the lawn in retrospect, and we came out just fine."
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