A few more racy thoughts

And just when you thought the 109th Indianapolis 500 couldn't get weirder ...

It gets weirder!

A day after Marcus Ericsson did what Marcus Ericsson does at Indy -- get to the front and damn near win the thing -- news came down that his car and those of teammate Kyle Kirkwood and Callum Ilot of Prema Racing were being relegated to the back of the field for failing post-race inspection. And for the second time this month, it was because of unapproved parts on their machines.

First Team Penske; now Andretti Global. You'd think two of the premier teams in IndyCar would be smart enough not to put unapproved parts on their racecars, but, noooo. You'd also wonder why they'd have unapproved parts lying around anyway. Benefit of the doubt suggests maybe the offending parts weren't unapproved at one time, or were in the process of being approved by IndyCar, or ...

Oh, hell. Benefit of the doubt runs out of road pretty quickly on this one.

In any event, the penalty means Marcus Ericsson did not finish second to Alex Palou Sunday, at least officially. It means Kirkwood did not finish sixth, either. It means they finished 31st and 32nd.

Consequently, A.J. Foyt's team had even a better day than it had already; with David Malukas moving up to second in the revised official finish and Santino Ferrucci moving up to fifth, it meant A.J.'s boys put two entries in the top five. No other team in the field could say that.

But (to once again paraphrase Mac Davis in "North Dallas Forty"), we haven't even gotten to the weird part yet.

The weird part is this: The penalties meant Scott McLaughlin, who never even made it to the start after crunching his ride on the pace lap, did not finish last.

Or next-to-last, for that matter. Or even next-to-next-to-last.

No, sir. In the official record, McLaughlin will go down as having finished 30th. Never started the race, but still finished 30th.

So he's got that going for him.

Or not going for him. Or ... something.