Written by Archie O’Reilly
“Makes it look easy, doesn’t he?” said Chip Ganassi. “He doesn’t sweat.”
Well, Álex Palou admits he does sweat a little bit. But it was the Spaniard’s state of calm and composure that yet again got him over the line for a 12th career IndyCar win to kick off his sixth season in the series.
The two-time defending champion, with three titles from his first four years with Chip Ganassi Racing (CGR), commenced his quest for the championship three-peat by ousting six-time champion teammate Scott Dixon for a CGR one-two on the streets of St. Petersburg.
Starting eighth, Palou almost seamlessly found his way to the front of the field with his usual timing and execution after the final round of pit stops, edging Dixon out of the pits after an unlikely undercut strategy success.
“Normally it’s overcut, especially on a street course where out-laps are really tough on cold tyres,” Palou said. “But Dixon was catching traffic at that moment. We were going to do the opposite of [Dixon’s] No.9 car. We were trying to win, so if he was going to stay out, I was going to come to try and get advantage of the traffic he was going to get to.
“If he was going to pit that lap, we were going to try and stay out and pray for traffic laps to just go fast. Got lucky this time. I’m very glad. I’m very pleased of the strategy they called.”
Palou recalls being as low down the order as 14th in the opening 10 laps after a race-start caution, which saw Palou and the spate of fellow alternate-tyre starters pit to get rid of the high-degradation softer compound.
“It doesn’t seem too bad,” he added. “But when you drop positions on a street course, it’s actually tough to gain them back and you expose yourself to mistakes or to accidents.”
Plagued by a faulty radio, Dixon’s strategy of staying out an extra lap in traffic surprised Palou. But Palou’s own gradual progress as the race progressed placed him in the perfect position to pounce in the final quarter of the race.
But after initially building a comfortable gap to Josef Newgarden behind, with the Team Penske driver having taken advantage of Dixon’s cooler tyres with a late lunge into Turn 1 following his out-lap, it was far from straightforward for Palou.
For almost 10 painstaking laps, he found himself stuck behind the Juncos Hollinger Racing machine of Sting Ray Robb at the tail end of the lead lap. All the while, Newgarden was able to scythe into what had been a comfortable advantage.
“It’s similar to when you’re on the highway and there’s somebody that is driving like 40 miles an hour in the left and won’t move,” Palou said. “And then you pass him and he’s trying to go faster than before and he passes you again.
“It’s that kind of frustration, especially when he’s able to use the OT (overtake) and you, as the leader, don’t want to burn 50 seconds of OT to pass a lapped car. But he can do that to try and stay in front of you, especially if he’s from another engine manufacturer.”
Palou finally got past Robb - driver of a Chevy-powered car versus Palou’s Honda - into Turn 1 on Lap 96 of 100, after which Robb immediately pulled over to let by the fellow Chevy of Newgarden.
“It’s a shame,” Palou added. “But honestly, I know that’s the rule and there’s been some races where that was beneficial to me, to be second and to have the first one trapped in traffic. This time I was the one that started losing my gap to Newgarden and it went from five seconds down to 0.9.
“We lost a bunch of track time but at least we didn’t lose any track position.”
There has long been debate about IndyCar’s rules pertaining to to-be-lapped cars being able to fight the lead cars in their bid to stay on the lead lap. Unlike championships such as Formula One, there is no command blue flag, which means cars on the tail end of the lead lap do not have to cede their position.
“I wouldn’t like the blue flag,” Palou said. “Yes, today I would have said: ‘Yes! Blue flag… please get this car out of the way!’
“But there’s many times where I’m last and I don’t want to get lapped. Maybe I would modify the OT rule because that would be, I would say, more fair because that way you don’t allow the car in front of you to burn 50 seconds off OT.
“I think Sting Ray went from 70 seconds of OT down to zero in like 10 laps. As the leader, you cannot burn all that OT because you might need it in case there’s restarts or Newgarden attacking you.
“I would modify some stuff but I like the fact that you don’t have to give up your position.”
Palou’s difficulty passing the slower car of Robb is reflected in a downturn in overtaking numbers compared to 2024; compared to 122 passes (97 for position) in 2024, there were only 75 passes (53 for position) in the 2025 Grand Prix of St. Petersburg.
The biggest change since last year has been the addition of the hybrid system, which offers increased horsepower in bursts but also adds weight to the cars. Palou does not put overtaking challenges solely down to this, though.
“I would say that probably having the tyre rule that we had here and that Lap 1 incident made the strategy a bit boring,” he said. “You wouldn’t see much stuff going on apart from those five, six cars that started on [primary tyres]. But if we wouldn’t have had that first lap incident, I think it would have been a great show.”
Palou held on to win by an ultimately comfortable 2.8669 seconds ahead of Dixon, who passed an ailing Newgarden on the final lap amid a shortage of fuel for the Penske driver.
“Couldn’t be happier,” Palou said. “It’s been a long off-season and a tough off-season for everybody at CGR and HRC (Honda Racing Corporation).
“[St. Pete] was one of the places that we’ve been struggling in the past and we wanted to get a little bit closer to the competition. I wanted to be here in Victory Lane but I did not expect to be here in Victory Lane. That shows the amazing job that all the men and women did at Chip Ganassi Racing during the off-season.”
Despite winning the championship last year, Palou was not content with the slight downturn from 2023, with two fewer wins, four fewer podiums and 112 fewer points scored. A first win at St. Pete and first opening-race win since his debut victory with CGR at Barber Motorsports Park in 2021 is the perfect start to 2025.
“It’s massive,” Palou said. “It helps, showing everybody in the building: ‘Hey guys, all the work that you’ve done means a lot and that we start leading the scoreboard.’ It doesn’t mean much for the championship yet but it means a lot for the momentum that we can carry towards the next couple of races.
“‘21 was a bit different. It was my first time with the team or leading the championship, so it was a bit of: ‘Oh my goodness, what are we doing here?’ Where now I think we’re a bit more used.”
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