Insider: Here are the winners and losers from the Indy 500

INDIANAPOLIS – After a wild month of May, the 103rd Indianapolis 500 is in the books with just about a million different storylines emerging from Sunday's sensational race. Unfortunately, I couldn't write about all of them (today), so I picked six.

Here are three winners and three losers from the race that was: 

Winners 

Simon Pagenaud and Ben Bretzman: Well, duh. They won the Indianapolis 500. But Pagenaud and his Team Penske engineer deserve plenty of extra attention for the road they forged together dating back a decade. 

The two of them started working together in sports cars racing in 2009, earned a shot together at Schmidt Peterson Motorsports a couple years later and were members of Team Penske by 2015. 

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They won everywhere they went, including the NTT IndyCar Series championship in 2016. But on Sunday, the reached a new level together — the pinnacle of motorsports to be precise.

It's been a lot of fun, Pagenaud said Monday, but it hasn't been easy. 

"We've gone through up and downs," Pagenaud said. "It's a little bit like being a couple, you have to get along.

"But he knows me better than anyone. When he sees my face, he knows exactly what I feel about the race car. He can set the car up now without even talking to me. Just see what I react, what my body language is. It's very special."

Bretzman is a sensational engineer all year, Pagenaud said, but in May they both took it to a new level as they swept the month, winning the IndyCar Grand Prix, the 500 pole, then the race itself.  

"I think Ben this month was a notch above," said the Frenchman. "I think he just (rose) to the level, to the expectation of what this race is. I think he had a lot of drive, as well. I think he felt how good I felt lately. So I can't thank him enough for all the hours."

NBC: Whether you were a fan of the broadcast or not, there is no arguing with the results. After years of plummeting TV ratings, NBC swooped in and put the 500 back on track, delivering a 3.9 overnight rating — up 15 percent from the final ABC broadcast. In an fast-changing media landscape where solid TV ratings are growing more and more difficult to come by, NBC delivered. 

Now, is NBC thrilled by a 3.9? I doubt it. I didn't see executives taking victory laps around IMS today nor anyone making public declarations of victory. From what I've gathered this month, they're aiming for bigger and better. As well they should.

But for Year 1, a 15 percent bump isn't bad. Now, we'll have to see what they can do next year for an encore.

The Indianapolis 500: Sunday's race should go down as one of best in recent vintage. Some will want to argue that the first 100 or so laps weren't particularly memorable, but how many races do we remember for their beginnings? How many NFL or NBA playoff games do we look back and talk about the first half? Sports are about the closing moments, crunch time, athletes delivering in the clutch.

In the case of Sunday's race, it was all about those final 13 laps. They were breathtaking. Pagenaud, Takuma Sato and Alexander Rossi delivered a heart-stopping shootout for the ages. All three were hellbent on making their mark on history, and all three pushed themselves and their cars to the limit to do so. 

It was exactly as my colleague Zak Keefer wrote yesterday: The end of Sunday's race was everything you want the Indianapolis 500 to be.

"A 500-mile race decided in 13 furious laps, the stakes immense, the nerves bubbling, the fans on their feet, ecstasy and agony separated by two tenths of a second.

"In other words: the Indianapolis 500 at its very best."

Losers

Meteorologists: Well, we did all that worrying for nothing. Forecasters predicted storms on Sunday afternoon, yet by the time most had left IMS that night, not a single drop of rain had splashed onto its hallowed grounds. 

That's Indiana for you. 

And while it'd be nice to say no harm, no foul — predicting Mother Nature's whim isn't easy after all — IMS did seem to suffer just a tad due to the faulty forecasts. 

About two hours before the green flag waved, IMS President Doug Boles told IndyStar that ticket sales were down in the three to four days leading up to the race and that matching last year's attendance of around 300,000 would depend largely on a late-arriving walk-up crowd. 

"We're going to have to have a good day to be right on target," Boles said.

While IMS didn't appear to have a bad day — to the naked eye it looked like the stands were packed — it wouldn't be stunning if the crowd fell slightly below last year's estimated attendance of 300,000. 

If it did, you can blame it on the rain … that never came. 

The David vs. Goliath storylines. For much of May, the story of the month was David conquering Goliath. It was Kyle Kaiser and Juncos Racing bumping Fernando Alonso and McLaren from the race. It was DragonSpeed and Ben Hanley qualifying comfortably on Saturday while teams like McLaren and Arrow Schmidt Peterson Motorsports had drivers on the bubble. It was Ed Carpenter Racing squeezing three of its cars between pole-sitter Simon Pagenaud and the rest of the Penske fleet. 

But on Sunday, while there were a few nice underdog stories to be sure (Dale Coyne Racing rookie Santino Ferrucci finishing seventh and Clauson Marshall Racing's Pippa Mann coming in 16th) it was a day largely dominated by Goliath. Roger Penske won his record 18th 500 while three of his cars finished inside the top five leaving the other two spots for former Indy 500 winners in Alexander Rossi and Takuma Sato. 

Meanwhile, Juncos' Cinderalla story ended in heartbreak as Kaiser crashed early and finished 31st. Hanley's car suffered a driveshaft issue, as the team settled for 32nd. And despite having three cars starting in first two rows, ECR cars managed only one top-10 finish (Ed Carpenter, sixth). 

While the month may have belonged to David, Goliath recovered — and dominated –when it mattered most. 

Marco Andretti: Safe to say that was not the way Marco or anyone else in the Andretti family was hoping to celebrate the 50th anniversary of their family's lone 500 victory.

It is a shame that Marco Andretti, who was driving a sleek replica of his grandfather's racing-winning car from 1969, to have never been in contention. Though starting 10th, he endured problems early and could never recover, finishing last (26th) among cars still racing at the end.

"I picked a terrible day to have the worst race of my career," Andretti said afterward. "I don't know. It's pretty embarrassing. Today was, for sure, the wrong day to have a bad day. I wish I could say more, but we're just not quite sure yet what happened with the No. 98 car. We came into the day behind from the start and didn't have what we needed." 

Follow IndyStar Motorsports Insider Jim Ayello on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram: @jimayello.