MADISON, Ill — With David Malukas’ third place finish, he was the biggest mover in the NTT INDYCAR SERIES leaders circle standings in going from +49 above the cutline to +71. That moves him from 17th to 16th and in a great position of staying on the good side of the top 22 bonus program.

It was a solid outing for the ECR duo of Rinus VeeKay and Ryan Hunter-Reay who both picked up top 15 finishes. VeeKay was 11th and went from +72 to +78 and Hunter-Reay’s plight from 23th to 14th on Sunday gained him three points to +11.

Even Santino Ferrucci’s drive from 26th to 13th gained him four points in going from +24 to +28. The rest of the drivers were all outside the top 15 but it definitely tightened things up.

Conor Daly did his job with RLL’s No. 30 Dallara-Honda taking them from -2 to +1 with his 16th place result. Rookie Linus Lundqvist making his INDYCAR oval debut lost a point going from +2 to +1 but the key is he kept the car above the cut line too.

Agustin Canapino dropped from +5 to -1 with being 22nd while Devlin DeFrancesco’s 19th place result had him go from -3 to -4.

Standings With 2 Races Left

14. No. 15 RLL Honda +85

15. No. 21 ECR Chevy +78

16. No. 18 DCR Honda +71

17. No. 77 JHR Chevy +62

18. No. 14 Foy Chevy +28

19. No. 06 MSR Honda +25

20. No. 20 ECR Chevy +11

21. No. 60 MSR Honda +1

22. No. 30 RLL Honda +1

23. No. 78 JHR Chevy -1

24. No. 29 Andretti Honda -4

25. No. 51 DCR Honda -38

26. No. 55 Foyt Chevy -53

Only the top 22 receive the bonus money which is reportedly $910k and goes up from 21st from 22nd and so on.

On Monday, a couple of loose ends were tied up here with Tom Blomqvist being named as the permanent replacement for Simon Pagenaud in the 60 ride for the final two races of the season and Juri Vips as the fill-in for Jack Harvey’s former ride in the No. 30 Dallara-Honda for RLL.

These two are tied for the final two spots above the cutline right now and with Blomqvist having 1 career start and 0 laps in race conditions (opening lap crash in Toronto), it makes Vips’ learning curve less extreme and less daunting over his debut this weekend.

With 5 of the bottom 6 overall in the standings being rookies, with 4 of the 6 being on the outside looking in, it’s going to take someone to step up over these next two races to shine.

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Odds And Ends

Pole winners bad luck – You would think since qualifying means a lot, the pole winner would have success. In fact, it’s the opposite in Gateway. There’s not been a pole winner here since Helio Castroneves did it in 2003. For Iowa, the pole winner is now 1-for-19.

Honda kept Chevy from being undefeated on ovals. With Scott Dixon’s win, Chevy now is 4-for-5 instead of a perfect 5-for-5. Chevy had won 13 of the last 15 short oval races entering Sunday.

Only the best win at Gateway. Names like Paul Tracy (1997), Alex Zanardi (1998), Michael Andretti (1999), Juan Pablo Montoya (2000), Al Unser Jr. (2001), Gil de Ferran (2002), Helio Castroneves (2003), Josef Newgarden (2017,2020, 2021, 2022), Will Power (2018), Takuma Sato (2019) and Scott Dixon (2020, 2023) all won on the 1.25-mile oval in Indy Car competition.

This was just the second time in the last 7 races that the driver who led the most laps won the Bommarito Automotive Group 500. In 2018, Scott Dixon led 145 laps but finished third. In 2019, Santino Ferrucci led 97 laps but finished fourth. In 2020, Pato O’Ward (94 laps in Race 1) and Takuma Sato (66 laps led in Race 2) finished third and ninth respectively and last year, Power led 128 of 260 laps and didn’t win. On Sunday, Dixon led a race-high 123 of 260 laps in his win.