The Closest Indy 500 Ever, Parked at SEMA: Felix Rosenqvist's No. 60 Honda

The margin was 0.0233 of a second. On May 24, 2026, Felix Rosenqvist (@frosenqvist) beat David Malukas to the line to win the 110th Indianapolis 500, the closest finish the race has ever produced. Five months later the car that did it sat on Honda Racing Corporation's (@hondaracing_us) display at the SEMA Show in Las Vegas, aeroscreen on, behind a placard and a floor sign telling people not to touch.

It is not a customer build, and nobody can buy one. But it belongs on a SEMA floor for the same reason a great shop car does: it is proof of what the people behind it can do. Autocosmos' preview of the display listed the Indy winner alongside the Passport Baja Spec hybrid Trophy Truck, the Honda-powered Aston Martin Aramco AMR26 Formula 1 car, an Acura ARX-06 and the Civic Type R HRC Concept, which made its North American debut there.

The rest of the display leaned the same way. Autocosmos also listed Hunter Lawrence's and Jett Lawrence's championship Honda CRF450RWE motocross bikes, a 1969 Honda N600 that ran the 1970 Baja 1000, the Hasport Prelude Club Racer and a 2009 Acura ARX-02a. AutoGuide's tour of the booth describes current IndyCar machinery parked next to the Aston Martin Formula 1 car.

We shot it on Thursday, Nov. 5. Up close, the livery is tan with green Morgan Wallen Radio graphics down the sidepods, SiriusXM across the aeroscreen frame, RE/MAX on the nose, Root on the mirror and Firestone script on the bodywork. A small Swedish flag sits beside the cockpit, next to the driver's name.

How the closest finish happened

Two late crashes set it up. According to Fox Sports, Caio Collet's crash on Lap 192 brought out a red flag. Rosenqvist led the restart on Lap 196, but Marcus Armstrong, his Meyer Shank Racing (@meyershankracing) teammate, took the lead in a four-wide restart. Then Mick Schumacher's car hit the outside wall on Lap 197. Motor Sport reports that brought out the seventh and final caution and set up a one-lap shootout.

Racing resumed at the end of Lap 199 with Armstrong in front. Fox Sports describes the last lap: Malukas went by Armstrong into Turn 1, Rosenqvist got past Armstrong in Turn 4, and then he edged Malukas, in Team Penske's No. 12, right at the line.

Meyer Shank Racing had two cars in that fight. Armstrong, in the No. 66, held on for fifth, so both MSR entries finished in the top five, per Honda's results. Helio Castroneves, the man who won the team's first 500 in 2021, was also in the field in a third Meyer Shank car and finished 25th after a mechanical failure, Honda reports.

The official gap was 0.0233 second. The previous record, 0.043 second, had stood since 1992, when Al Unser Jr. beat Scott Goodyear, according to Motor Sport, and Fox Sports gives the same old mark. Scott McLaughlin, Pato O'Ward and Armstrong completed the top five.

Fox Sports also counted an event-record 70 lead changes, breaking the 68 set in 2013, and an average speed of 162.021 mph. Alex Palou started from pole and led a race-high 59 laps before finishing seventh, per Fox Sports and Honda. Rosenqvist's reaction, as quoted by Fox Sports: "Unreal; I still don't believe it."

Scott Dixon, the 2008 winner, summed up the paddock's mood, as quoted by Motor Sport: "How about those Swedish meatballs!" Malukas, for his part, lost the 500 by 0.0233 second in a Penske car. Palou left Indianapolis still leading the championship, by 42 points according to Honda, and the rest of his season went the way the placard on the SEMA floor describes.

What the win meant

It was Rosenqvist's first Indianapolis 500 win and, per Fox Sports, the second IndyCar win of his career. Fox Sports notes he is the third Swede to win the race, after Kenny Brack in 1999 and Marcus Ericsson in 2022.

For Meyer Shank Racing it was a second NTT IndyCar Series win, and both have come at Indianapolis. Helio Castroneves won the 2021 race for the team, his record-tying fourth 500. Fox Sports and Honda both note the team's two Indy wins.

For Honda it was a 17th Indianapolis 500 victory, according to Honda's race report, which also quotes team co-owner Mike Shank on his driver: "He deserves this more than anybody I know in the paddock." Honda's results also show Armstrong, Palou, Romain Grosjean and Takuma Sato inside the top 10 in Honda-powered cars.

The hardware on the stand

Honda's placard calls it the actual car Rosenqvist drove to victory and describes its power unit as a 2.2-liter Honda Indy twin-turbo V6 hybrid, built and developed by HRC. Autocosmos' preview of the display gives the same description.

Up close, the details are the ones you only notice when a car is standing still. The No. 60 is painted on the roll hoop above the driver's head, the HRC logo sits on the engine cover, a Honda wordmark and an NTT IndyCar Series decal are stacked beside the cockpit, and the slicks still carry Firestone sidewall lettering. Everything you see is the race car, not a show replica, according to Honda's placard.

The placard makes a broader claim too, that Honda dominated the 2026 IndyCar season, winning the drivers' and manufacturers' championships, Rookie of the Year and the Indy 500. The record backs it up. IndyCar crowned Palou, in a Chip Ganassi Racing car, as champion for the fifth time, his fourth title in a row. Honda and HRC USA won the manufacturers' championship, per IndyCar, and Honda counts it as its 12th. Dale Coyne Racing's Dennis Hauger, also Honda-powered, was Rookie of the Year.

On a show floor full of 1,000 hp builds, an IndyCar is an odd kind of star. Sitting still, it makes less noise than a lifted diesel idling in a parking lot. What it has is a timing sheet. The difference between first and second at Indianapolis this year was 0.0233 second, and the car that found it was sitting a few feet from the aisle, close enough to read the sponsor decals.