INDYCAR PHOTO
THERMAL, Calif. (Sunday, March 23, 2025) – Perfect Palou, yet again.
Alex Palou once again made the impossible possible, completing a late
dash from a nine-second deficit to pass pole sitter Pato O’Ward and
drive away to win The Thermal Club INDYCAR Grand Prix on Sunday, staying
perfect in two NTT INDYCAR SERIES races this season.
Palou earned his 13th career victory in the No. 10 DHL Honda Chip
Ganassi Racing car, beating O’Ward’s No. 5 Arrow McLaren Chevrolet
to the finish by 10.1854 seconds. Christian Lundgaard finished third in
the No. 7 Arrow McLaren Chevrolet as the team captured two of the three
podium positions for the first time since May 2023.
“What an amazing weekend,” said Palou, who started third. “We had
a really fast car since practice, and everybody at Chip Ganassi Racing
on the 10 car executed perfectly. We knew it was aggressive to start
with the used reds (alternate tires), and we knew that we were looking
toward the end of the race with that 10 car, and we did it.”
Two events into the 17-race season, Palou leads second-place O’Ward by
39 points in the championship standings.
“It’s tough seeing this guy beat us all every single event,”
Lundgaard said. “We’ve got to find a way to stop him.”
Colton Herta finished fourth in the No. 26 Gainbridge Honda fielded by
Andretti Global, while Felix Rosenqvist rounded out the top five in the
No. 60 SiriusXM Honda of Meyer Shank Racing.
Palou rallied from a nine-second deficit with 15 laps remaining in the
65-lap race, the first caution-free NTT INDYCAR SERIES event since
October 2020. He selected the more grippy, faster Firestone Firehawk
alternate compound tires during his last pit stop at the end of Lap 49.
O’Ward made his final stop at the end of Lap 50, taking Firestone
Firehawk primary compound tires.
Three-time and two-time reigning series champion Palou passed O’Ward
for good on Lap 56, diving under his rival entering Turn 7 on the
abrasive 17-turn, 3.067-mile natural terrain road course. Palou’s
superior tire grip allowed him to rocket away from the field. His lead
blossomed to three seconds on Lap 58, mushrooming to six seconds by Lap
61.
The winning move was set up by the Chip Ganassi Racing team’s decision
to take alternate tires on Palou’s last stop. That helped him pass
Lundgaard for second place on Lap 50 – one lap after Palou’s final
stop – after a spirited joust over multiple corners.
Then Palou set sail for O’Ward and reeled him in with astonishing
pace, pulling to within 4.9 seconds by Lap 52 and 1.3 seconds by Lap 53
as O’Ward coped with slower traffic and less grip from his tires.
“We took a gamble; it didn’t work out for us,” O’Ward said.
“We had used our new reds (alternate tires) at the start because we
didn’t really quite know what the deg (tire degradation) was going to
be like. The blacks (primary tires) really kind of took a turn for the
negative at the end of the race, and that was it. We didn’t stand a
fighting chance.”
Palou became the first driver to win the first two races of the season
since CGR teammate Scott Dixon opened 2020 with three consecutive
victories en route to his sixth championship. Palou’s titles have come
in 2021, 2023 and 2024.
NTT P1 Award winner O’Ward controlled most of the race from the pole.
He led 51 of the first 55 laps, surrendering the top spot only during
pit stops.
But O’Ward and 25 other drivers left Southern California empty-handed
after another masterpiece of tactics and temerity by Palou and
strategist Barry Wanser. In the season-opening Firestone Grand Prix of
St. Petersburg presented by RP Funding on March 2, Palou and Wanser made
the quick shift to alternate tires early in the race and then Palou
executed flawless, blazing in and out laps surrounding his last pit stop
to ensure victory.
The next race is the 50th Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach on Sunday,
April 13 (4:30 p.m. ET, FOX, FOX Sports app, INDYCAR Radio Network). A
Spanish-language telecast will be available on FOX Deportes.