The Indy 500 is supposed to be a grind. 500 miles, 200 laps, fuel strategy, tire wear, the whole production. And then every once in a while it spits out an ending so close that you need a photo and a calculator to figure out who actually won. Sunday was one of those days. Felix Rosenqvist edged the field by 23 thousandths of a second, and the broadcast booth was scrambling to confirm the result before the cars even cooled down.
The finish itself, by the slimmest margin the race has ever produced.
For context on how absurd that gap is: the average human blink takes roughly a tenth of a second. Rosenqvist's margin of victory was less than a quarter of a blink. You could not perceive that gap with the naked eye if you were standing on the bricks. The stoolgambling account did the math so the rest of us didn't have to, and the visual is genuinely insane.
A side-by-side of the 0.0233-second margin against how long a blink actually takes.
The PMT crew was watching live and reacted the way most casuals reacted, which is to say they screamed first and looked up the driver names later. Will Compton straight up admitted he had no idea who was in the red car, which is honestly the most relatable take in the world for anyone who tunes in to IndyCar exactly once a year on Memorial Day weekend. The point of the Indy 500 is the spectacle, and the spectacle delivered.
Compton's real-time reaction to the finish, name recognition optional.
PFT, meanwhile, was doing PFT things in the lead-up, floating the galaxy-brain theory that you'd rather be running third than first heading into the final laps. Drafting strategy at Indy is a real thing, slingshot passes have decided this race plenty of times, but the bit hit different once an actual photo finish materialized 90 minutes later. Sometimes the dumb tweet ages into prophecy.
PFT's pre-race draft-strategy theorizing, before anyone knew how close this would actually get.
Dont know anything about racing, but Im hearing that you’d rather be in third place right now then in first. is Conor Daly gonna win this
115 years of this race. Wars, depressions, rain delays, the whole American century. And nobody had ever finished one closer than Rosenqvist did on Sunday. The race usually sells itself on tradition and pageantry, but every now and then it remembers it's also a sport, and it gives you something you've literally never seen before. This was one of those years.