New IndyCar year, same Palou… or is he better again?
- Archie O’Reilly
- 29 minutes ago
- 8 min read
“I was asked to describe how Álex was today,” Barry Wanser begins, “and it was certainly perfection. The whole team, the pit stops were perfection. Everyone on the team did a great job.”
Sitting beside his Chip Ganassi Racing (CGR) team manager and strategist, Álex Palou was never going to admit as much about his own performance. Partially out of the humility he still carries himself with, despite his history-making IndyCar success. But also because, even with all he is achieving, he genuinely believes he can still improve.
Ominous, right? For this is a driver coming off a third successive IndyCar championship, bringing his total to four crowns in five years with an eight-win season, won by 196 points.
And really, there is little disputing his claims. As he headed to St. Petersburg to open this season, he had never qualified better than seventh on the Floridian streets and had an average start below 10th. On Saturday, he broke his St. Pete Fast Six duck to start fourth.
In the scheme of things, that transpired to be a little win to validate Palou’s point. Because what came on Sunday was frankly cataclysmic. A beatdown so eerily familiar to so many of Palou’s wins but a beatdown never before seen on these streets.
His lead standing at 12.4948 seconds as he took the chequered flag, Palou delivered a schooling of the field greater than anybody else has managed in the 23 editions of the Grand Prix of St. Petersburg. And for all any onlookers could know, there could very easily have been other drivers in this otherwise ultra-competitive field producing near-perfect days.
But Palou and his No.10 have redefined and continue to redefine what ‘perfection’ really means. Over the half-decade of his emergence into an IndyCar great in record time, there has come a realisation that perfection for Palou is something in a different stratosphere.
“Every time I’m on the podium, second or third, he’s first,” laughed Christian Lundgaard, third-place finisher in this season’s opener, with a hint of irritation. “It’s pretty annoying.”
It is not Palou’s first win in St. Pete; he is now the two-time defending winner. Victory in 2025 kicked off a run of five wins in six races at the start of the season, but it was a success that was somewhat owed to shortcomings from his competition, including a radio-less runner-up teammate in Scott Dixon, at a margin of a comparatively meagre 2.8669 seconds.
So after his eight wins, 13 podiums, 14 top fives and 15 top 10s of 2025, is this latest win really emblematic of the fact he is set to rise to new heights again in 2026? The body of hard work raved about from CGR’s off-season, enjoying the success but continuing to strive for more, would suggest they are confident they can improve again.
But there is also an acknowledgement that the rest of the field could make greater gains after an ailing 2025. Indeed, Palou admitted in the off-season that he knew replicating a season which put him in such rarefied air would be extremely tough.
“[It is] closer than it seems,” Palou again insisted after his St. Pete win. “It looks very good on TV. It looks very good on paper. It’s actually super close.
“If you don’t make that decision on the tyres or that decision on fuel or the pit stop doesn’t go well, you suddenly are not P1. You don’t have clean air. You start pushing more and suddenly you are P4. You can go from a race that you win by 12 or 10 seconds to finishing P4 and it only takes one action not to work for it to go bad.
“It’s not easy to win races. Although it might seem like it, it takes a lot of stuff to go well.”
The reality, though, is that Palou and his team are so regularly flawless in all of those aspects to an extent that nobody can seem to match or, in some quarters, even fathom how to eclipse. And the first case study from 2026 would suggest there should be no ruling out the prospect of something similar to 2025 playing out this year.
It was the type of race we have seen so often from Palou. The type of race the competition has proven almost perennially unable to defend against as it unfurls.
For the first stint, despite starting on the faster, softer new alternate tyres versus the leaders’ fresh primary tyres, he was content to hold position behind the fuel-saving pair of Scott McLaughlin and Marcus Ericsson. He was typically patient and composed, lurking in third having decisively taken the position from rookie Dennis Hauger on Lap 1.
As always, almost controlling the race from third, he upped the ante when the pit cycle came around. Palou ultimately extended his first stint three laps longer than leader McLaughlin and two laps longer than Ericsson ahead, meaning he avoided the scuffles in the midst of which the pair emerged and executed an emphatic overcut to comfortably lead the race.
“I was a little bit surprised by the fuel-saving that the No.3 (McLaughlin) and the No.28 (Ericsson) were doing,” Palou explained. “Felt like it was more in our favour. I didn’t know if we were going to have enough tyres at the end to make it but we did. We had a couple of clean laps and that’s what gave us the lead.”
Waiting those extra laps, despite being on the softer, in-theory higher-wearing tyres, proved decisive for Palou. And as that middle stint progressed, on used alternate tyres against those on exactly the same compound, he was able to build a lead in excess of 10 seconds.
There were points where he was lapping the best part of an entire second quicker than the cars behind. And with that came a familiarity to proceedings.
For Palou, it was a familiar loneliness. Not one that he minded, of course. But he was cruising out front, seemingly. No doubt, it was not actually that way; his laser focus and precision never drops. With such a margin at the head of the field, there is always a balance to strike between caution and making a statement with a car so strong.
“Especially on street courses, it’s not good to relax for the tyres,” Palou detailed. “The bumps, how they feel… you might start feeling even worse if you go at lower speeds. I try and keep a pace that’s good for the car and my driving. Every time that I try to stay calm or to drop the pace, it’s been bad. I was just trying to push; not quali laps but I was pushing.”
By the time he stopped for a second and final time, Palou had over a 14-second lead as those behind squabbled and struggled while he reigned with his pristine management.
He did have to fulfil his primary-tyre stint last up - on a used set of the slower tyres - while the rest of the top nine all finished on alternate tyres. But even then, with Palou exceptional on the harder tyres, nobody could make inroads. Not Kyle Kirkwood, breaking to within six seconds before fuel concerns arose. Not McLaughlin. Not the charging Christian Lundgaard.
There was scarcely a threat as the Spaniard secured an authoritative 20th career victory in his 99th race, as he approaches his 100th start at Phoenix Raceway next weekend.
“Incredible… I don’t know what to say from this team anymore,” Palou uttered. “It’s been a long off-season. I was sad last year that the season ended. I just wanted to continue going because I knew it was so magical and so tough to get such a great car, such a great team behind me. This team has done it again here this weekend.
“It’s very early on but that shows all the preparation they did. I had by far the best car today.”
Palou has now won 22.22 percent of his races in the series, inclusive of the races in his rookie season with Dale Coyne Racing. This was his 45th podium, equating to a 45.45 percent success rate through his IndyCar career.
Winning is normal to Palou now. But in Victory Lane, after cries of “We are back, baby!” on the radio on this occasion, each success continues to be celebrated with the same gusto.
“I don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing but I have really short memory,” Palou suggested. “I try and forget about stuff very early - or my mind just does. So for me, winning a race, it’s pure excitement. We are genuinely very excited.
“We’re genuinely very proud of the amazing work that everybody has done in the team. I knew we had the team and the ability to win but it’s never easy. I was so excited.”
Amid all of this, he continues to insist he still has weaknesses. That said, any weaknesses Palou has divulged in the past have been rather minute and hardly title-denying.
In 2025, the predominant weakness was self-earmarked as ovals, on which he was still a multi-time podium-sitter. But that was quashed anyway last year, with two wins and a finish atop the oval standings. He also detailed raw qualifying speed as something to work on, despite being a Fast Six regular. Anyhow, he doubled his poles tally from six to 12 in 2025.
He is now less candid about where else he needs to improve - just that there is room to do so.
“Unfortunately, yeah. I’m not going to say it here out loud, but I mean…” he paused. “I feel there are so many things. We didn’t start on pole; we started fourth [in St. Pete]. We could have done stuff better throughout the weekend.
“I feel like myself also driving-wise, you can always brake just a little bit later; it only takes one foot later to go a bit faster. You can always go on power a bit better. You can always set up your car better. So you can always keep on improving in all sports, which is the beauty of it. [I am] not going to tell you where everybody can beat me but…”
For the rest of the competition, this could be received gratefully, knowing there are holes to pick. But in reality, it is probably markedly more deflating that Palou is producing what he is producing while still feeling incomplete.
Right now, as much as drivers will put on a bold front, this is an IndyCar field left miffed.
McLaughlin suggested he missed out on winning Sunday’s curtain-raiser because CGR made the correct strategy choice against Penske. But when the No.10 team are able to make the right call and execute as they do every weekend, it feels it will take significantly more than merely a strategy decision to topple Palou’s empire.
After all, the next six drivers in the St. Pete finishing order after Palou were all on McLaughlin’s primary-starting gameplan, so it was hardly a poor strategy on which he was usurped.
Now, the pre-season questions surrounding how drivers can beat Palou will only ramp up again after this rampant start to the season. The narrative of the chase will rise and rise. Not that Palou is bothered; that is something he has come to embrace.
Already, the mood in the CGR camp is buoyant again. Ominously so.
As crew chief Ricky Davis said in the first slide of his pre-race presentation, presenting a long-time motto of his: “You can’t win them all unless you win the first one.”
And Álex Palou and his team are off to the perfect start once more.
