David Malukas finished second in the Sonsio Grand Prix on Saturday, nearly winning the first race of IndyCar’s famed Month of May line-up.
The young Team Penske driver held the top spot for the final pit stop sequence, but Christian Lundgaard was closing quick after pitting one lap sooner.
Lundgaard’s warmer tires allowed him to make a bold move through the first sequence of turns, holding a side by side battle right up until the high speed kink on the back straight.
Malukas backed out just in time to prevent a wreck, but admitted after the race that the move was proper and it was a clean pass for the win.
“Lundgaard was just so fast,” said Malukas after the race. “I was trying everything I could sideways pretty much 50% of those laps.
“I could see he was trying to set up for the undercut. We ended up having some little issue, and he managed to stick around the outside.
“Probably could have been maybe a little bit more, you know — a little bit more aggressive, but I thought I have some fair racing. Yeah, I mean, it was a proper move. It was very good.
“Yeah, I don’t know. It was also that last site we were struggling with pace. Not really too sure what went wrong. We’ll go back and study it and see what we can find.”
Malukas was still quite pleased with the result of the weekend, commenting that what he thought was going to be his toughest weekend of the year turned out to be one of his best.
He now sits third in the points after finishing inside the top 10 for five of the first six races of the year.
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