Palou’s IndyCar championship a “crazy good situation to be in”

Written by Morgan Holiday

Credit: Dominic Loyer

An uncharacteristic mistake lost Álex Palou the race win at the Indy 200 at Mid-Ohio on Sunday.

After taking his third pole of the season and leading 75 laps of the 90 lap race, Palou lost control of his car going into Turn 9 and was forced to relinquish the lead of the race to his Chip Ganassi Racing teammate, Scott Dixon. With just five laps left he had no time to recover and finished second in the race, allowing Dixon to become only the third driver to win a race in the 10 races this year.

For anyone who has been watching IndyCar this year, it has seemed like there’s no way to beat the Spaniard who is now 113 points in the lead of the championship. But in Mid-Ohio, Dixon proved that if you’re in the right place at the right time, eventually even the best performing driver in the series will make a mistake.

It was a mistake by Palou’s own admission, as he said after the race.

“Big mistake, man. Big mistake,” he commented. “Yeah, nothing in particular happened. Just lost it a little bit. Then kind of got into the marbles and went out.

“Yeah, lost everything there. It was a big, big mistake by my part. The car was on fire today. The team gave me, as well, the strategy, the pit stops we needed to win the race.

“But yeah, man, it's not over until it's over, until you see the checkered flag. I was just trying to push. I was trying to open the gap a little bit more with Scott. I felt confident with the car.”

Also by his own admission, his blunder could have been much worse. With Christian Lundgaard just a few seconds behind him after he went off, Palou could have lost out to the Arrow McLaren driver as well without what he called “a good save.”

“Yeah, the issue was the marbles,” Palou said. “Getting into the marbles, then I had it felt like ice, and then I got into the curb and I couldn't get out of the curb and the RPM dropped a lot and I didn't have any power at all. I was full throttle, but it was just going so slow.

“Yeah, it could have been a lot worse. I could have ended up on the tires real easily, and the tires are not very far away from the curb in that corner.

“Yeah, all in all, it was a good save. I can say instead of a mistake, it was a good save. Yeah, I'll take it that way. It was a good save.”

Palou taking bigger risks

Credit: Dominic Loyer

Despite the mistake from Palou in Sunday’s race, his second place finish allowed him to extend his championship lead over Andretti’s Kyle Kirkwood to a whopping 113 points.

DIVEBOMB spoke to Palou ahead of the weekend about his season so far, and how being so dominant affects the way he races.

It’s looked easy for Palou thus far, the way he’s been all up unstoppable. But from the Spaniard’s perspective, it’s not as simple as it looks.

“It’s been tough,” he said. “I mean it’s been very fun and when you have a really fast car it’s easier. But it’s never easy, we need to work a lot to get our balance right in practice, try to execute in qualifying. 

“We’ve only had two poles this year, so we’ve been able to start up this year but not all the races on pole so we’ve had to work our way up to victory. It’s been a fun year.”

Of course, on Saturday Palou claimed his third pole of the season, beating out Christian Lundgaard and Kyffin Simpson in qualifying.

One might wonder if it’s getting boring, wiping the floor with his competition, but for Palou, this year has had a positive effect on his motivation and enjoyment of racing.

Credit: Dominic Loyer

“I would say it’s positive,” he told DIVEBOMB on Friday. “It’s a crazy good situation to be in, knowing that so far till today we’ve done an amazing job, everybody in the team.

“It allows you to be a bit riskier on strategies, you don’t need to be like ‘let’s just follow our competitors’, we can just be like ‘ok what’s the best thing to win the race today.’ Even if it can mean that we finish 15th I think that we’re able to take those risks and not think too much about our direct competitors yet. I know that time is gonna come, but so far we can just race and win.”

On Sunday a rare mistake cost Palou the race win, but there was strategy also at play. Dixon won on the two-stop strategy, starting from ninth on the grid, while Palou opted for three stops, which, according to him, was the riskier choice.

Speaking after the race about whether or not the race was an example of taking a risk that didn’t pay off, Palou said: “Yes and no. Maybe on strategy, yes. On driving, no. That was not just me trying to get faster laps or anything else. It was just being too close to the limit, and there was no need for that, and getting big consequences.

“But yeah, on strategy-wise, yeah, I think we could have run a safer strategy. It was just to do the two-stopper, try and slow down everybody out, and kind of put everybody on the two-stop strategy and just skip track position. That would have been I would say a lot safer, but we knew we had the fast car. We knew we thought we could win on a three-stop strategy, and that's the kind of aggressiveness that we're able to take.”

With just seven races left in the season, the chance the other title contenders have to eat into Palou’s lead is getting smaller and smaller. Even if he finished dead last in the next two races and Kirkwood won both of them, the CGR driver would still not lose his lead.

And while Mid-Ohio showcased a rare chink in Palou’s armor, it also proved that he doesn’t need to win every race to stay well ahead of the competition.

All photos in this article were taken by DIVEBOMB Photographer, Dominic Loyer. You can find Dominic's work on Instagram (@dominicloyer_photography)