David Malukas puts Alex Palou in the wall at IndyCar's Detroit GP as Indy 500 curse strikes

The Indy 500 curse continued this year as Alex Palou crashed at the IndyCar Detroit Grand Prix. The reigning world champion was looking to battle for his sixth win of the season, but was pushed by David Malukas into the turn 1 barrier, which ended his impressive run of races.

The Chip Ganassi Racing driver had beaten all odds by winning the Indy 500 last weekend (May 25) and putting an end to the speculation surrounding his ability to race in the premier open-wheel racing series. However, winning the 500 also comes with a set of caveats.

Every Indy 500 winner since 2001 has not been able to win the subsequent race. Moreover, last year's fabled race winner, Josef Newgarden, had finished a lowly 26th at the Detroit race.

So, this time, it was Alex Palou's turn to seemingly face the ramifications of taking home the elusive victory. Callum Ilott's PREMA Racing car had crashed at turn 1 and caused a full caution period.

Subsequently, when the circuit went green, the Spaniard found himself in the middle of the pack, a fair way off the front. But, his ambitions to prove the curse wrong were put to rest by David Malukas as he outbroke himself into turn one and bumped Palou into the barrier.

David Malukas was penalized for bumping Palou into the barrier with a drive-through penalty, which saw him plummet down the field.

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An unfortunate weekend for Alex Palou

Alex Palou at the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix - Source: Getty

Alex Palou has been in impressive form since the start of the season. Despite qualifying eighth at the season opener in St. Petersburg, the CGR driver went on to win the race.

Since then, his qualifying performance has not faced a dip, and he even won the 109th running of the Indy 500 after qualifying sixth for the race. So, when the triple champion qualified sixth around the nine-turn circuit this weekend, the paddock envisioned that he would emerge victorious yet again.

However, this premonition was made false by David Malukas bumping the championship leader into the barrier. Reflecting on his race weekend, the 28-year-old shared how the incident was an unfortunate one after he was putting in a recovery drive, as he said in the interview on FOX Sports (via X):

"I haven't seen it yet, but for sure somebody hit me behind. Very unfortunate, we did an amazing recovery this weekend, didn't really have much pace in the beginning and I thought we were running good to sneak into the podium... It doesn't feel great but nothing we could have done there."

Meanwhile, the closing phase of the Detroit Grand Prix witnessed a massive crash with Louis Foster suffering a suspected suspension failure and going into the rear of Felix Rosenqvist's car, leading to the first red flag of the 2025 season.