David Malukas shares AJ Foyt Racing has "last stepping stone" left for holistic IndyCar success

After a dismal start to the 2025 IndyCar season, AJ Foyt Racing has witnessed a turnaround in fortune in terms of results, as David Malukas has often spearheaded the team's respectable performances. While he has been a fierce competitor on track during oval and street course races, the 23-year-old revealed how there's one stepping stone left to trundle before his team could make holistic progress.

2013 was the last time an AJ Foyt Racing driver won an IndyCar race. Though the team has faced a dearth of results since then, its technical partnership with Team Penske has seemingly worked wonders.

Santino Ferrucci brought in a myriad of top-10 results last year, and with the arrival of David Malukas, many expected the results string to get even stronger. While the start of the 2025 IndyCar season was not up to par, this quickly changed at the Indy 500.

Malukas and Ferrucci brought home a double top-five finish at the fabled race for the first time for the squad since 2000. These strong results were then continued at the Detroit and St. Louis GP.

With the major overturn in fortune, the 23-year-old driver explained how building a solid road course car remains the sole hurdle left for AJ Foyt Racing to become a consistent threat for the front runners:

"Going into Detroit, like we were already close to finding a good street course car after St. Pete and Long Beach and I feel like at Detroit we managed to figure it out and short oval cars have been brilliant in years past. So, then one question that I had when going into this next weekend, in Road America it's the one challenge that we have to step up, is finding a road course car that I like. "So that's kind of the last stepping stone, but other than that I think we've all kind of managed to figure things out."

After the Indy 500, David Malukas has only qualified in the top five with the AJ Foyt Racing.

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David Malukas affirms his faith in AJ Foyt Racing's ability to perform in the second half of the season

David Malukas at the 2025 NTT Indy Car Series Bommarito Automotive Group 500 - Source: Getty

David Malukas did not have the same luck on raceday at the Detroit and St. Louis GP, as he had during qualifying. Despite this, he led the most laps at the WWTR race among 13 other drivers who led the 260-lap race.

Reflecting on the team's impressive run of performance, the American-Lithuanian driver said, via IndyCar:

"I do think that the recent success … is giving us confidence, and I think the second half of the season is going to be a really good turnaround for AJ Foyt Racing."

Malukas sits 12th in the championship standings, as he scored 147 points in the eight race weekends held so far.

Edited by Hitesh Nigam