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‘Big Dave’ time has arrived

It’s ‘Big Dave’ time for David Malukas at Team Penske. IndyCar’s No. 1 representative of Gen Z no longer drives for an underdog team; the ‘Lil’ Dave’ era is officially over.

With Malukas, it’s a roll of the dice from an organization that doesn’t like to gamble. It’s fond of sure things and odds tipped heavily in its favor, which makes this hiring unlike any other in decades for Roger Penske.

The team with 17 IndyCar championships, 20 Indianapolis 500 victories, 308 pole positions, and 246 IndyCar wins has gone all-in on a 23-year-old from Illinois with zero wins or poles to complement two of the series’ best drivers in Josef Newgarden and Scott McLaughlin, and that makes for a fascinating development to explore.

The last time anything remotely similar happened at Team Penske was in the previous century when Paul Tracy, the 1990 Indy Lights champion who crushed the field with 10 wins from 14 races, made a one-off IndyCar debut with Dale Coyne early in 1991 and sat on the sidelines until Penske took a flier on the Canadian with an extra entry to close the season.

It was a handful of races to finish 1991 followed by a more robust part-time deal in 1992, and by 1993, Tracy was elevated to season-long status for Penske. He’d only contested 15 IndyCar races before going full-time, and once he got the nod in ’93, Tracy won 31 percent of the races – five out of 16 – which matched the win tally of eventual champion Nigel Mansell.

Tracy was the clear No. 1 new talent of the era, an obvious star in the making to embrace as the ageing legends on Penske’s roster like Rick Mears and Emerson Fittipaldi were reaching the end of their open-wheel careers. Penske was lauded at the time for giving the rookie a chance, and while it came with an expensive learning curve, and no championships were produced across two stints with the team from 1991-’94 and 1996-‘97, Tracy’s 11 wins and 21 podiums more than validated Penske’s bold move to hire outside of the usual champions and Indy 500 winners.

In modern terms, this was Penske taking a Pato O’Ward, Colton Herta, or Kyle Kirkwood off the unemployment line and jumpstarting an IndyCar career to their mutual benefit.

With the exception of Tracy, and a few others Penske tried in 1999 when the team was at its lowest point, nothing about the acquisition of Malukas fits Penske’s time-honored practice of recruiting IndyCar race winners or seasoned champions from other disciplines to lead the program. McLaughlin was new to IndyCar, but he wasn’t new to Penske, not after reeling off three Australian Supercars titles for DJR Team Penske.

Malukas isn’t an O’Ward type, or a Tracy, or a McLaughlin. He doesn’t fit or conform to any time-honored models Penske has used to select IndyCar drivers. But that doesn’t mean he can’t or won’t succeed for Penske. He’s just a non-traditional selection at a team that embodies tradition.

Admittedly, that’s part of the charm with this signing. For the Malukas we’ve known, he’s an unserious character out of the car who’s welded to social media before transforming into someone who’s exceptionally fast in qualifying and isn’t afraid to bang wheels and race side-by-side with the best in IndyCar.

The bones of an exceptional talent reside within a driver who’s has become a fan favorite and an occasional thorn in the sides of his rivals. But the latter part – the occasional part – won’t be accepted at his new team.

Malukas has some big wheel tracks to follow in taking over the No.12, and Penske will be looking for him to make his presence felt early. Joe Skibinski/IMS

Will all that Lil’ Dave has been – and whatever he develops into as ‘Big Dave’ – be enough to deliver for Penske? And what kind of expectations will he face as the pilot of the No. 12 Chevy?

Win now. No training wheels. No gradual ramping up. Victory at St. Petersburg.

Penske’s reached its status as the best IndyCar team of all time by fielding drivers who are permanent threats, and for those who fall short of that mission, their names get peeled off the cockpit in short order. I can’t recall a single Team Penske driver signing that went into the relationship with lowered expectations. The only contemporary exception was with McLaughlin, and that was simply a case of giving him the time to learn a brand-new form of racing in an unfamiliar car at unfamiliar tracks before it was reasonable to ask for wins.

McLaughlin stood on the podium in his first oval race, and in his second season, won three times, earned two poles, and placed fourth in the championship. Penske hired McLaughlin because he saw something exceptional in Supercars to deploy in IndyCar. With Malukas, there are no such excuses to offer. He’s driven for three teams across four seasons, made 61 starts and reached the podium three times.

Penske isn’t looking to 2026 as an introductory year – a yearlong grace period – for Malukas, who turns 24 on September 27. Big Dave is expected to arrive at the first race to deliver big results in the No. 12 Chevy.

Yes, he’s replacing a living legend in Will Power, in the Verizon car Power made famous with two championships and a trip to victory lane at the Indy 500. But that’s part of the challenge as well. Malukas needs to become his own man in an entry everyone associates with its former driver.

The next question to pose is whether Malukas is ready for the job.

For where Team Penske finds itself in September of 2025, I’d have to say yes. If this was a team that fought Alex Palou to the bitter end and was a season-long factor in the championship, the answer about David’s readiness would be different. But he isn’t joining one of the top two teams of the year.

It’s important to understand the state of the team Malukas is entering, and for where it’s at based on the results it produced, the lofty stature associated with Penske – something it fully earned prior to 2025 – was not maintained last season. Penske was the fifth-best team in IndyCar, stuck behind Ganassi, McLaren, Andretti, and Meyer Shank. It won one race with Power. It won a second with Newgarden. McLaughlin went winless. The Penske drivers placed ninth, 10th and 12th in the championship while Malukas was 11th in a Penske-engineered AJ Foyt Racing entry.

He was right there with Penske’s best after 17 races, so yes, he’s ready in the context of what the surprisingly uncompetitive Penske team achieved in 2025. But that’s not what we expect from a Penske driver. This organization won’t accept another year of being the fifth-best team with its lead operators barely cracking the top 10.

Penske’s punt on the then-unproven Paul Tracy in the 1990s delivered armfuls of wins and podiums. David Madison/Getty Images

The bigger question to ask is whether Malukas is ready to be part of the solution to restore Penske’s front-running standard. That’s the expectation looming over Newgarden and McLaughlin, who haven’t won a championship for Penske this decade, but have been close with three straight runner-up finishes by Newgarden from 2020-’22 and a pair of thirds from McLaughlin in 2023 and 2024.

Of all the areas of improvement for Malukas to make, this is the one where a new version of himself – Big Dave – needs to rock up in St. Pete and show something different from the driver we’ve known across those 61 races with Coyne, Meyer Shank, and Foyt.

The concern here is centered on consistency. Malukas is wickedly fast. He’s particularly quick in qualifying. I won’t be surprised to see him start ahead of Newgarden and McLaughlin at a semi-frequent clip. But on race days, it’s been hard to predict where he’ll finish in any given event, and that’s a worrisome reality.

Looking to last season, Malukas captured 11th in the standings with just five finishes inside the top 10; the other 12 races were completed with his No.4 Foyt Chevy sitting anywhere from 12th to 26th.

And while he wasn’t to blame for a number of the poor finishes, it’s the consistent ability to avoid mistakes, make the right calls on changes to the car between pit stops, to conserve tires or fuel at the right times and then burn those resources at the right times that would allow him to become a fixture inside the top 10. We just haven’t seen that version of Malukas in more than select events with his previous teams, but that’s what Penske needs from him if he’s going to fulfill the potential offered by the No. 12 Chevy entry.

The journey in leaving Lil’ Dave behind and developing into Big Dave is one of taking the best of Fridays and Saturdays and becoming a consistently formidable challenger on Sundays when meaningful points are awarded. For Malukas, next year will be a season of discovery as he tries to become that every-race menace to the other teams.What would a successful season look like? Wins, obviously, and I’d be shocked if he doesn’t end the year with two or three to his credit. But I’m less concerned about wins for Malukas and more interested in seeing him place fifth or sixth in the standings through inverting his 2025 output to secure 12 top 10s. That’s the hallmark of major performer.

Frankly, that was Team Penske’s 2025 as well: Power, Newgarden, and McLaughlin were either nowhere at the finish line, or somewhere at the sharper end of the results. They, as a whole, lacked consistently good or great finishes, and for Newgarden and McLaughlin, the season ahead entails a necessary return to form for both veterans. They’ve been that gold standard, so there’s nothing new to channel.

For Malukas, it is a new mission to complete under immense pressure with no guarantee it will be achieved. He’s never been in this situation. The last time Penske attempted such a thing, Malukas had yet to be born. Simply put, both sides have a lot to risk.

But be prepared for a few surprises. That’s been Malukas’s story at every step of his burgeoning career. Newgarden was the top dog at Penske from the moment he arrived in 2017 and didn’t relinquish the position until Power won the championship in 2022. Since then, he’s been beaten by Power and McLaughlin every season. Mclaughlin has been a rocket and led the team in 2023, but has also been beaten by his teammates.

Malukas lands with Penske in a moment where nobody stands out as the clearly-defined leader like a Alex Palou at Ganassi or O’Ward at Arrow McLaren. Yes, this is a move outside of Penske’s usual playbook, but if ever there was a perfect time to insert a wildcard like Malukas to see what he can do against Newgarden and McLaughlin, it’s now. Measuring against his teammates is the natural thing to do, but he’s on an island when it comes to comparisons. Beating the other two will speak volumes if it happens, but not if they’re out of title contention. Proving he can be a strong and reliable finisher on road and street courses and on three sizes of ovals is where Malukas will stand or fall.

If I had one former Penske driver for him to study, it’s an ageing ace who wielded the No. 4 Chevy in 1993. The untold aspect of Paul Tracy’s amazing full-time debut for Penske in the No. 12 Chevy is he was beaten by teammate Emerson Fittipaldi, who was nearly 47 years old. Fittipaldi won three times to Tracy’s five, but had 12 top 10s from 16 races while his young counterpart was, more often than not, either spraying champagne or stepping out of a broken car well before the checkered flag waved.

At half of Fittipaldi’s age, it’s a lot to ask of Malukas, but the Brazilian’s formula for success is the blueprint to study and try to execute.

Tracy was third in the standings, all boom or bust. Fittipaldi was second, seeing the big picture at all times, winning when possible and banking points when it wasn’t. Sound familiar? It’s the same formula Scott Dixon used to win his first of six titles in his early 20s. It’s the same formula Palou used to win his first of four championships while in his early 20s.

IndyCar only invites the top five drivers from the championship to its banquet at the end of the season. Held last week inside the Speedway, it was a strange affair to have Roger Penske seated directly in front of the stage without any of his drivers present at the table. Expecting Malukas to be crowed as the next IndyCar champion is unreasonable, but if he wants to impress his team and the paddock as a whole, getting an invite to the banquet as one of IndyCar’s five best would be one hell of an achievement.