INDIANAPOLIS — Alex Palou is two-for-two this season.
After winning the season-opening race in St. Petersburg, Palou passed pole-sitter Pato O’Ward with 10 laps left, then pulled away to win The Thermal Club IndyCar Grand Prix on Sunday.
“What an amazing weekend,” said Palou. “We had a really fast car since practice, and everybody at Chip Ganassi Racing on the 10 car executed perfectly.”
Palou trailed O’Ward by nine seconds with 15 laps remaining, but the Chip Ganassi Racing driver was able to catch the Arrow McLaren car in five laps on the alternate red tires, which had more grip and were faster. O’Ward was on the primary black tires.
“We knew it was aggressive to start with the used reds,” Palou said. “We knew that we were looking toward the end of the race with that 10 car, and we did it.”
“We took a gamble,” said O’Ward said. “It didn’t work out for us. We had used our new reds at the start because we didn’t really quite know what the (tire degradation) was going to be like. The blacks 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.”
O’Ward’s teammate Christian Lundgaard finished third to round out the podium. Andretti Global’s Colton Herta was fourth and Meyer Shank Racing’s Felix Rosenqvist was fifth.
Palou is the first driver to win the first two races of the season since his teammate Scott Dixon won the first three of the 2020 season.
The IndyCar Series is off for two weeks before returning to action for the Grand Prix of Long Beach on April 13.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
