Pato O'Ward is looking to put Palou's dominance on hold and become an Indianapolis 500 champion

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Pato O'Ward smiles as he walks through Gasoline Alley, seeing the Arrow McLaren No. 5 shirts.

Sure, he's popular, but O'Ward wants something more — to be called an Indianapolis 500 champion.

After three near misses in his past four races on the Brickyard's iconic 2.5-mile oval, the two-time runner-up is hoping to finally sip the milk and celebrate with all of his fans and everyone else in the grandstands at the Brickyard.

“It’s cool. It’s obviously a big part of why we do what we do, right?” O'Ward said as he tries to become the race's first winner from Mexico. “We want to be here to entertain people, inspire people. At the end of the day it is the greatest event in the world. I might be a little bit biased. But it’s going down this Sunday.”

Few drivers have come as close as O'Ward without eventually making it to victory lane here. He finished second in 2022 and 2024, third in 2025, fourth in 2021 and sixth in 2020 as an Indy rookie. His only finish outside the top five came in 2023 when he was 24th.

This year, O'Ward thought he finally had the car to dethrone defending Indy champ Alex Palou only to see it, the one he qualified sixth, severely damaged in a crash Monday. That forced him into a backup car.

The good news: It's the same one he won twice with last season.

The bad news: Palou again is the betting favorite after taking his second Indy pole last weekend, as he tries to become the seventh back-to-back winner in race history.

That means everyone else in the 33-car field will be chasing the Spaniard with four IndyCar titles and three wins this season.

“I know I’m hungrier than ever just because I know what comes with it (the 500 win) and what it means,” the Chip Ganassi Racing driver said. “I don’t feel more or less pressure. It's not like because I won once, I need another one. It’s more the opposite. It's more like I want to go back-to-back.”

Alexander Rossi, the 2016 race winner, seemed perfectly set up to win his second race, too, when he qualified a career-best second, next to Palou on the front row. But his crash also forced the Ed Carpenter Driver into surgery for an injured middle finger and an injured right ankle Monday night and into a backup car Friday after he'd been cleared to drive. The Californian will wear a specially designed brace and a protective boot on race day.

“We're probably going to be able to keep the swelling down,” Rossi said. “Everything is ready to go, the range of motion is staying good enough to do what we need to do.”

Who else is trying to make history?

Four-time race winner Helio Castroneves is making his fifth attempt to become the first five-time winner and at age 51, the Brazilian would also be the oldest winner.

Team Penske hopes to add to its record 20 Indy wins with David Malukas, Scott McLaughlin and two-time 500 winner Josef Newgarden. Malukas qualified third, McLaughlin is ninth and Newgarden who had the fastest car on Carb Day, starts 23rd.

A victory by 2008 Indy champ Scott Dixon would be the largest gap between wins in race history.

Katherine Legge will try to become the first female and just the second driver to complete racing's “double” — 1,100 miles of racing in Indianapolis and Charlotte, North Carolina, on the same day. She'll be qualifying for the Coca-Cola 600 on Saturday before returning to Indy where she will compete for HMD Motorsports with A.J. Foyt Racing.

And Sunday's race will be the first since 1957 without an Andretti, a Foyt or an Unser on the grid.

But for O'Ward this race is about just one thing — winning.

“I don’t have any worries about (the car),” he said. “I know it’s going to behave like it’s supposed to. Like I said, it’s a very good car. I really like this car.”

Palou just keeps extending his lead. He came to Indy with a 15-point advantage over Kyle Kirkwood of Andretti Global, which grew to 27 despite his fifth-place finish in the Indianapolis Grand Prix.

It could expand even more Sunday because Kirkwood is starting at No. 25. But the standings are the least of Kirkwood's concerns this weekend.

“Of course, we’re not stoked where we are starting,” the Andretti Global driver said. "We also are very confident with our cars. That 12 points, hopefully we’ll get that back in the future, but we’re not letting ourselves think about it. Monday we’ll be focused on points.”

Rossi won the 500s centennial race, but it's A.J. Foyt Enterprises driver Santino Ferrucci who will be making his 100th IndyCar start on Sunday.

Ferrucci is the first driver to post top-10 finishes in each of his first seven starts with a career-best third coming in 2023. But he's never won a race. He's starting from the No. 5 spot Sunday.

Six drivers in IndyCar history have won their 100th career start but none came at Indy.

“That would be quite the day,” Ferrucci said when asked about the possibility of becoming the first to do it. “Honestly, I think Sunday, we have a great car, we have a great crew, there’s no reason as to why we won’t be there.”

AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing

Alexander Rossi prepares too drive during practice for the Indianapolis 500 auto race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Indianapolis, Monday, May 18, 2026. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)

Alex Palou, of Spain, walks off the track after a photo session before practice for the Indianapolis 500 auto race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Indianapolis, Monday, May 18, 2026. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)

Alex Palou, of Spain, leads a pack of cars during practice for the Indianapolis 500 auto race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Indianapolis, Monday, May 18, 2026. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)

FILE - Pato O'Ward is introduced before an IndyCar auto race, Aug. 31, 2025, at Nashville Superspeedway in Lebanon, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV, File)

Pato O'Ward, of Mexico, drives through the third turn during qualifications for the Indianapolis 500 auto race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Indianapolis, Sunday, May 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A human smuggling case against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whose mistaken deportation helped galvanize opposition to President Donald Trump's immigration policies, was thrown out Friday.

Abrego Garcia's deportation to El Salvador last year became an embarrassment for Trump officials when they were ordered to return him to the U.S. Abrego Garcia claimed that both the timing of the criminal charges and inflammatory statements about him by top Trump officials demonstrated that the prosecution was vindictive.

U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw, ruling from Nashville, granted Abrego Garcia’s motion to dismiss for “selective or vindictive prosecution.”

The ruling amounted to an extraordinary rebuke of a Justice Department that under President Donald Trump has repeatedly been accused of targeting defendants for political purposes. The Trump administration touted the charges against Abrego Garcia last year at a press conference in which then-Attorney General Pam Bondi declared, “This is what American justice looks like.”

“Kilmar Abrego Garcia is a victim of a politicized, vindictive White House and its lawyers at what used to be an independent Justice Department," his criminal defense attorneys said in a statement after Friday's ruling. "We are so pleased that he is a free man."

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Without Abrego Garcia’s “successful lawsuit challenging his removal to El Salvador, the government would not have brought this prosecution,” said Crenshaw, dismissing claims of “new evidence” against him.

Crenshaw stopped short of finding the government acted with “actual vindictiveness,” a rarely-met standard that usually requires evidence like a prosecutor admitting that charges were filed in retaliation against someone. But the judge did find there was enough evidence of “presumptive vindictiveness” — including the timing of the indictment, statements made by then-U.S. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, and the sustained oversight of the case by other top Justice Department officials — that the case against Abrego Garcia was thoroughly tainted.

The government’s own explanations weren’t convincing, Crenshaw wrote.

Abrego Garcia was charged with human smuggling and conspiracy to commit human smuggling, with prosecutors claiming that he accepted money to transport within the United States people who were in the country illegally.

The charges stem from a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee for speeding. Body camera footage from a Tennessee Highway Patrol officer shows a calm exchange with Abrego Garcia. There were nine passengers in the car, and the officers discussed among themselves their suspicions of smuggling. However, Abrego Garcia was eventually allowed to continue driving with only a warning.

In the Friday ruling, Crenshaw wrote that the timing of the charges was central to the presumption of vindictiveness. Homeland Security had been aware of the traffic stop for two years and had closed the case against Abrego Garcia when it deported him. Once the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that he should be brought back to the U.S., they reopened the case. While the government bore the responsibility to rebut the presumption of vindictiveness, prosecutors did not call as a witness the person who reopened the case, to explain why. Instead they offered only “secondhand testimony.”

Abrego Garcia's deportation violated a 2019 immigration court order granting him protection from deportation to his home country, after the judge found he faced danger there from a gang that targeted his family. Abrego Garcia is a Salvadoran citizen with an American wife and child who has lived in Maryland for years although he immigrated to the U.S. illegally as a teenager. The 2019 order allowed him to live and work in the U.S. under Immigration and Customs Enforcement supervision, but he was not given residency status.

Meanwhile, Trump administration officials have said Abrego Garcia cannot remain in the U.S. They have vowed to deport him to a third country, most recently Liberia.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia and his wife, center, hold hands as people rally in support of him at a news conference outside federal court after a hearing in his case on Tuesday, May 12, 2026, in Greenbelt, Md. (AP Photo/Michael Kunzelman)