The Felix Rosenqvist Borg-Warner Trophy sculpture was unveiled this week at William Behrends’ Indiana studio, months after Rosenqvist claimed the biggest win of his career. He arrived not quite knowing what to expect, and admitted the wait had built into something close to nerves.
“Yeah, my heart was definitely beating when they’re unveiling it. It was a high tension moment,” Rosenqvist said.
The unveiling is one of IndyCar’s oldest rituals. Every Indy 500 winner sits for Behrends, who spends weeks turning reference photos into a slab of sterling silver bound for the side of the trophy. Rosenqvist’s win at the 110th running of the race in May ranks among the most dramatic the event has produced, so the ceremony carried extra weight.
Behrends works alone until the reveal itself, which means the driver rarely knows how the likeness has turned out until the cloth comes off. That blind trust, more than the sculpting itself, seems to be what rattles even the calmest racers.
A High-Tension Unveil at the Studio
Rosenqvist’s nerves were not really about the sculpture failing to look like him. They were about whether Behrends had captured something true, rather than just a face on a trophy. That distinction mattered to him from the moment the cover was lifted.
The pressure sat with Behrends too. He had never met Rosenqvist properly before the photo session, and had only a narrow window to turn raw images into a finished likeness ahead of the ceremony.
The Tired Morning After and Asymmetrical Ears
Behrends had very little to work with. He photographed Rosenqvist the morning after the race, once the adrenaline had drained away and exhaustion had taken over completely.
“He was telling us last night when we photographed him in the morning after the race, he had gotten about an hour and a half of sleep. Well, last night he’s telling us this and I’m thinking, ‘Oh, yeah, thanks.’ I’ve been working from those photos for about two weeks. That’s the only face I know is that of the tired, puffy one in the photo. So, I was nervous when I unveiled it. But as it turns out, he liked it,” Behrends said.
The result won Rosenqvist over almost instantly, and one detail told him the sculptor had done his homework properly.
“He got my asymmetrical ears right, so that was like the first tell that he’d done an amazing job. It makes it more personal and a little more history to it than just bolting the face onto the trophy,” Rosenqvist said.
Behrends, who has sculpted every Indy 500 winner since Arie Luyendyk in 1990, pointed to the simple challenge of adapting to a new subject after so many years on the job.
“He’s a different face and different structure,” Behrends said.
Rosenqvist’s image also breaks new ground for the trophy itself. He becomes the first driver shown with full facial hair among the 113 faces now circling its base, a small but permanent mark of individuality on an otherwise uniform gallery of champions.
Record Finishes and Modern History on Sterling Silver
Rosenqvist’s victory earns its own chapter regardless of the artwork. He started fourth, led 25 laps and steered through a record 70 lead changes, the most in Indy 500 history. He beat David Malukas to the line by just 0.0233 seconds, the closest finish the race has ever produced.
The win also carried the largest winner’s purse in Indy 500 history, in what was Rosenqvist’s eighth start at the Speedway. It capped a year of change for the Swede, who drove for Meyer Shank Racing at the time of his win before agreeing to return to Arrow McLaren for the 2027 season.
None of that context is lost on Behrends, whose Indy 500 sculptures now number 37 since he took the job over in 1990. The Felix Rosenqvist Borg-Warner Trophy image joins a list that reads like a history of the sport itself, cast piece by piece in the same Indiana studio year after year. We covered the sport’s wider storylines through the season in our earlier report and our mid-summer motorsport round-up, while the full detail from this week’s unveiling sits in Motorsport.com’s report on the unveil.
Reflections on Fellow Champions and the Reality Settling In
Before the ceremony, Rosenqvist wandered the studio to look at the other drivers already immortalised there, starting with a friend.
“I actually went straight up to Marcus’s because he (Behrends) has a few of them,” Rosenqvist said. “It’s probably like 10 of them on display and then there’s like a lot of the mini ones. But I went up to the Marcus one and just did a voice impression of him and sent it to him.”
He then checked on Tony Kanaan’s likeness, making sure the nose looked right, before working his way around the room to more familiar faces.
“Alex Rossi is actually smiling on his, which I thought was a fake thing, like that can’t be real. But yeah, he’s up there smiling at me right now actually,” Rosenqvist said. “So yeah, it’s kind of fun to just see all the little faces. You obviously have some relationships with these guys as well, so it’s super, super cool.”
Asked whether the size of his own achievement had sunk in, Rosenqvist admitted it was still arriving in stages.
“Yes, and I think more and more every day, especially now after the season,” he said. “The fun thing is, after Indy, your racing life kind of goes on like normal. And even the past winners like the Helio’s (Castroneves) and the Marcus’s and the (Josef) Newgardens of the world, like they’re there racing, too, just normally. So, you kind of jump on the same train. You don’t really think about the fact that you won it too much. And I think you also save it a little bit for later because you truly want to enjoy it, so you just kind of push it aside for a while. But yeah, now it’s definitely becoming more real.”
With the season finished, that reality is catching up with him fast.
“We have the Sweden trip coming up in December and just a bunch of things with the Borg-Warner Trophy. You keep seeing the replays (of the finish). I still haven’t rewatched the whole race, which is something I really have to do. It’s one of those where a few days after I don’t really think I truly believe that I won it. And now it’s slowly settling in,” Rosenqvist said.
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