Palou relishing battle with closest IndyCar rival O’Ward

Credit: Joe Skibinski

“Oh, now it’s 100?” Pato O’Ward laughed as it dawned on him that Álex Palou’s lead in the IndyCar championship has once again reached triple figures after his Laguna Seca pole.

Off the back of two victories in three races, the Arrow McLaren driver had closed the gap to Chip Ganassi Racing’s runaway championship leader to 99 points post-Toronto. But Palou has reclaimed a point to reach a century again after taking his fifth P1 Award of 2025.

Whether a ’championship battle’ remains is certainly up for debate after Palou’s dominant, seven-win season so far. But he is relishing even the hint of a challenge from O’Ward, who will share the front row with him for Sunday’s Grand Prix of Monterey.

“I’ve said it to the team, I always think that it’s better to have your closest competitor close,” Palou said. “You want to be on the same kind of strategy. When you have somebody starting on like 17th, it might look good on paper but then suddenly they do a crazy strategy and they cycle to the front and you have no chance to fight for it on track. 

“It’s great. I think it’s good. It’s for sure making it more challenging and more interesting for everybody. I like it. Honestly, I like it.”

The prospect of O’Ward actually bridging still a near-two-race advantage for Palou in a four-race stretch is extremely unlikely. But as he brings the fight to a modern great at the peak of his powers, O’Ward himself is building his best career season to date.

“We’re obviously the only two that can win the championship now,” O’Ward said, with Palou’s next-closest challenger Andretti Global’s Kyle Kirkwood at 173 points back. “And I’m the one that’s chasing down pretty hard. 

“Much rather be next to each other than not. Usually if you’re next to him, it means that you’ve been qualifying well because he seems to be the master this year at that.

Credit: Joe Skibinski

“It just makes it that much harder whenever the one that you’re trying to beat is having as good of days or better. It just makes us push even harder and I think that’s going to be a great opposition and view going into Turn 2.”

Palou entered the 2025 season with seven poles across his first five years in IndyCar - his previous best single-season tally his three of last season. But his all-time pole total now sits at 12 with three qualifying sessions remaining this year.

Changes made to the car after Friday’s Practice 1 at Laguna Seca - unable to be tested in Saturday’s Practice 2, which was cancelled due to foggy conditions grounding the medical helicopter - worked perfectly. And with a 01:08.3413s lap in the Fast Six session, Palou emphatically defended his Laguna Seca pole from one year ago. 

“It’s been an awesome weekend, an awesome year,” Palou said. “The car was really good already in Practice 1. But we didn’t really know what was going to happen, didn’t know what the track conditions were going to be. 

“Everything [was changed from Friday]: front springs, rear springs, ride heights. We changed a lot of stuff. You wouldn’t believe it. It was a big job list. I had confidence because I’ve been experiencing awesome things from this team whenever we make changes.

“We trusted that they were going to be in the right direction. Super happy that we got to fight for pole, we got the pole and starting on the best spot.”

He is a victor at every one of IndyCar’s current road courses but Laguna Seca may be Palou’s strongest of all. He is a two-time winner at the iconic Californian circuit and has never finished off the podium in four visits to the track. 

Palou feels he left very little margin in qualifying to achieve his stellar lap time - as shown by an off-track excursion in the Fast 12 session. O’Ward felt the same but was still just shy of 0.3s behind Palou, albeit content with his best-ever start at Laguna Seca.

Credit: Joe Skibinski

“I was really happy with my Q3,” O’Ward said. “I thought it was going to be a little bit tighter than that. I didn’t think it was going to be two-and-a-half tenths. I didn’t have three-tenths to get Álex. We maximised what we had.

“It was a somewhat scrappy qualifying for me so I was just happy that we were getting the transfers through and then were able to put down a pretty good clean lap in Q3.”

For O’Ward, it was only a second Fast Six appearance in 10 road and street course qualifying sessions in 2025 - the other being his pole at the Thermal Club. It has been his best season to date in race trim amid a newfound level of consistency, but qualifying has been more of a struggle since the addition of the hybrid weight last July.

“We seem to be a little bit more of a stranger to the Fast Six,” he said. “We’ll see what we can continue knocking off this year.”

Palou lost the lead of the race to Kirkwood at the start last year so there may be hope for O’Ward, who realistically has to beat the pole-sitter for the title to remain a consideration in the final three rounds, at the drop of the green flag. 

But Palou has also learned from that moment, which he recovered from to win anyway.

“It’s one of those tracks that maybe it’s not a huge, huge difference between first and second,” Palou said. “I didn’t do a great job last year so hopefully I can do a better job this year.”

Drivers expect it to be an entertaining 95-lap affair given the evolution of the track’s repave in its third season, which has led to increased tyre degradation and reduced grip. This has resulted in a number of off-track excursions through practice and qualifying.

The track has been likened more to its state before being repaved in 2023, which has altered how the cars feel compared to last June’s event at the track, which was also pre-hybrid.

Credit: Joe Skibinski

“Last year already changed a little bit but this weekend it just feels like the track lost a tonne of grip,” Palou said. “It’s honestly good. It’s still super fast. It’s still a super cool track. But it’s making it more challenging. I think it’s going to open up different lines in the race and hopefully we’re going to see lots of overtakes.

“It’s one of those tracks that rewards a lot when you push it but it’s waiting for you to make a mistake everywhere. And also the sand makes it really challenging. You cannot even touch that… it just gets you. It just sucks you whenever you touch it.”

For the first time all season, the strategy from Palou and his No.10 team came under fire in Toronto last weekend. He ran essentially half-race distance before first stopping, ultimately finishing 12th for his second-worst result of the season.

Strategy is still an unknown factor this weekend but Palou is certainly not entering a conservative mode with sealing a fourth championship on the horizon.

“Looking back, it’s super easy to say that we made a mistake [in Toronto],” he said. “I didn’t want to get trapped in traffic. I thought we had a lot of pace. We thought that one caution was going to be okay for our strategy - and maybe two - but we got like four during the first stint. It was the wrong decision but ultimately we were trying to win. 

“I don’t know what we’re going to do tomorrow but we’re going to try and go for the win. We don’t want to give that up and just try and get points.”