How Malukas turned the corner in his return to IndyCar

David Malukas is known for his playful personality, but don’t mistake his lighthearted approach to life for a lack of steely resolve.

The Illinois native lost his job with Arrow McLaren and missed the first half of the 2024 racing season after a mountain biking crash broke bones and did significant damage to muscles and tendons in his left wrist. Owing to the immense and constant punishment IndyCar Series drivers receive to their hands and wrists while fighting to turn the heavy cars – with upwards of 500 lbs of downforce piled on at many tracks – without the assistance of power steering, the injury was akin to a runner breaking an ankle.

Forced to the sidelines for month after month, Malukas eventually reached a point in his recovery where mustering the strength to turn an IndyCar, corner after corner, lap after lap, became possible, albeit while clenching his teeth to deal with the pain firing into his left wrist with each kickback from the steering wheel. But it was like that runner coming back and sprinting before the breaks soft-tissue had fully recovered, which was agonizing at times.

And then came the realization that the injuries weren’t going to completely go away; the bones would mend, but the complex musculature – the interconnected array of levers and pulleys beneath the skin that allow fingers to clench and articulate and generate force through grip strength – was permanently compromised to some degree.

It’s a heavy realization to make and accept at the age of 23, but Malukas – who just finished second at the Indianapolis 500 with AJ Foyt Racing and moved to 10th in the drivers’ standings – says he’s undaunted by the injuries that require a wrap to be applied to his wrist before every session to add some of the missing stabilization required to do his job.

Learning to push through the pain has been key to Malukas's comeback. Joe Skibinski/IMS Photo

“The hand's been OK,” Malukas told RACER. “I had some issues at the start of the season with just coming back into racing and beating it up again after the offseason break. At the end of last season, I had another surgery to remove scar tissue and try to get more movement out of it. So that also put me out of doing a lot more PT (physical therapy) in the offseason to prepare for it, but obviously nothing can really match just getting beat up in a real car.

“So it took a few races to get it back to that level. But my hand’s probably going to be wrapped for the rest of my racing career, to be honest, just to give it extra support, because movement is so limited with the wrist that having it wrapped just gives it some extra help with kickback. If there's a big hit with the steering wheel, the wrapping stops my wrist from flying all the way back and causing quite a bit of pain.”

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To help, the Foyt team changed every aspect of the No. 4 Chevy’s cockpit to make it easier for its young star to overcome those limitations. He’s also been putting in the work in the gym, adding muscle mass to his upper body to apply more leverage while turning the wheel. Altogether, the combined efforts of driver and crew are working.

“We had a new seat made, new steering wheel and everything,” he said. “The steering wheel is really high, so then I also had to start working on my shoulders a lot more because I'm just holding the steering wheel so high, just so I have space to get my left hand underneath, just because movement is limited trying to do that.”

Like many IndyCar drivers before him who walked with permanent limps or had limited ranges of motion in other joints, Malukas deals with it and doesn’t let it become a weakness. Given time, and due to his inherent silliness, he wouldn’t be opposed to exploring cybernetic solutions in the future – not quite turning his wrist and hand into something seen in the Terminator movies – but with Malukas, you never know.

“It's just gonna be like that and the pain just goes in and out; obviously, it’s gonna be a bigger issue when I get older, but hopefully more technology comes out at that point with robotics…hopefully some cool stuff to become bionic,” he said with a laugh.

“The movement is 50-60 degrees compared to full motion. It's very, very limited, but the doctor still said it's a miracle to get that much.”