Winners and Losers: Grand Prix of Portland
- Morgan Holiday
- Aug 12, 2025
- 5 min read
Written by Morgan Holiday
Will Power became the fifth race winner of the 2025 IndyCar season after taking victory in the Grand Prix of Portland last weekend. He took the win over Christian Lungdaard and Álex Palou, who sealed his fourth IndyCar title with two races still to go.
Who were the big winners and losers from IndyCar’s Portland weekend? DIVEBOMB takes a look.
Winner - Álex Palou
Palou’s season has been truly historical in almost every way, he’s taken eight race wins (so far) on his way to his third consecutive championship. He has only finished off of the podium four times in 15 races.
Portland wasn’t Palou’s best weekend of the year, he qualified a lowly (for him) sixth place after finishing last in the Fast 6 on Saturday. He jumped up in the race to come up with a third place finish, his first third place finish of the year. On top of that, missing out on the race win meant that he has officially lost his chance to beat the record for most race wins in a single season, though if he wins the final two races of the year he can still match the record of 10 wins set by Al Unser Sr. and A.J. Foyt.
But Palou didn’t need the best performance he’s had all year to clinch the title, and after Pato O’Ward dropped out of contention with an electrical issue, Palou became the 2025 IndyCar champion three races before the end of the year.
It’s a testament to Palou’s achievements this year that he was able to secure the title in Portland with a third place finish, and that it didn’t take a particularly special drive for him to do it. No matter what happens in the final two races, Palou has certainly already cemented himself as the star of this season and one of IndyCar’s greatest drivers.
Winner - Christian Lundgaard
Lundgaard went into qualifying on Saturday at Portland knowing that he needed a good result. Carrying a six-place grid penalty for an unapproved engine change meant that he’d be starting no higher than seventh, and a good result could minimise the damage.
And a good result was exactly what Lundgaard pulled out in qualifying as he finished fifth in the first session to advance to the Fast 12. Second place in the Fast 12 bumped him through to the Fast 6, and in the Fast 6 he set a lap time of 58.3939s to go fastest overall and secure pole position.
Now, with the penalty, pole position really meant a seventh place start for Lundgaard, who took it in his stride and started making moves early on in the race. He was able to recover all the way to second place, holding off Palou and even challenging Power for the win in the final stages.
He was unable to secure his first race win with Arrow McLaren, but he was able to put on a brilliant show that only solidifies what an excellent season the Danish driver has been having. He sits fourth in the standings with two races to go, and has proven that he’s able to keep up, and sometimes even outperform, O’Ward at McLaren.
Winner - Callum Ilott
Portland marks Ilott’s third consecutive top 10 finish and third consecutive appearance in the winners column.
Eighth place in Toronto, sixth place at Laguna Seca and now a second sixth place finish at Portland International Raceway. After a season full of languishing at the back of the pack, three top 10s in a row for Ilott is an astounding turn of good fortune.
On Saturday, Ilott finished 12th in Group 2 of qualifying, which put him 24th for the start of the race. A stunning 18 positions gained on Sunday tied him for the Biggest Mover of the Race with Graham Rahal (although the award went to Rahal for finishing in fourth place from 22nd on the grid). It was the exact same result for Ilott that got him the Biggest Mover award last time out at Laguna Seca, coming through from 24th to sixth.
Rahal and Ilott went on the same strategy, making their first pit stop on Lap 4 after an early caution and making a total of four stops in the race to cement their advantage over those doing fewer stops.
This pace for Ilott and PREMA (Robert Shwartzman finished further down the field in 15th for what is still one of his better results of the year) puts the team on an incredible upward trajectory coming towards the end of the year, and will be a huge excitement for IndyCar’s newest team after a tough start to their debut season.
Loser - Conor Daly and Christian Rasmussen
One of the big moments of the race was the contact between Daly and Rasmussen that resulted in the end of Daly’s race on Lap 13.
The battle began a lap earlier as Daly tried to overtake Rasmussen for 21st place around the outside of Turn 7, and the pair went off the track as Rasmussen tried to keep his position.
What followed was an embarrassing display of erratic driving on both of their parts as they continued to fight for position, and it was obvious from the moment the battle started that it was going to end in tears for at least one of them.
It was Daly who came out of their battle worse for wear in the end, as his race ended with a massive hit into the tyre barriers at Turn 11 after another failed overtake attempt on Rasmussen.
IndyCar seemingly deemed neither driver predominantly at fault, and no penalties were given out. Rasmussen went on to secure a 12th place finish, while Daly, out of the race, called him out for “inexcusable” behavior.
Ultimately, it was clear that both Daly and Rasmussen were using their emotions more than their heads in that battle, and it was a bad look for both drivers at the end of the day.
Loser - Pato O’Ward
Portland was O’Ward’s final chance to keep the title fight in play. Although no one realistically expected the McLaren driver to be able to make up the points deficit and beat Palou to the title.
Still, O’Ward did everything possible to keep the “championship battle” alive, qualifying second on Saturday and securing the top starting spot for Sunday after his teammate Lundgaard’s penalty.
O’Ward battled hard in the race and was fighting for the win when disaster struck on Lap 21 and an electrical issue with the car saw him roll to an eventual stop in pit lane. He eventually got going again and hunkered down at the back of the pack, finishing in 25th place, 10 laps down and the last of the drivers still in the race.
It was a devastating end to a frustrating title battle for the Mexican driver, who knows he could have easily secured the title this season if not for Palou’s historical run of good form.
Loser - Andretti Global
It’s hard to even say if Andretti Global was at Portland this weekend, for all the action we saw from their three drivers. Only one of them made it through the first session of qualifying, as Colton Herta and Kyle Kirkwood finished eighth and 10th in Group 2 to solidify their 16th and 20th place starts.
Marcus Ericsson fared slightly better on Saturday and made it through the Fast 12, though he finished 11th in that session and would start Sunday’s race from there.
In the race it was Herta who had the best result, jumping forward early on to secure a 10th place finish. Kirkwood and Ericsson, on the other hand, dropped back to 20th and 22nd respectively in a weekend to forget for the team.
Andretti is known to be an up-and-down sort of team, winning or finishing on the podium on good weekends and at the very back on bad weekends, and Portland was one of those bad weekends. They’ll be looking for redemption in the final two races of the year coming up, starting with the round in Milwaukee.
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