How Palou joined the Indy 500 stars as the rest of the cast fluffed their lines

Alex Palou’s magical 2025 season continued to roll along with a confident victory for Chip Ganassi Racing in the 109th running of the Indianapolis 500. Already a three-time champion in the IndyCar Series, the Spaniard’s fifth triumph in six starts this year was by far the most important individual race win of his career, delivering prize money in excess of $4million and the prestigious honour of claiming the Borg-Warner Trophy in America’s most historic and important motor race.

Palou caught 2022 Indy 500 winner Marcus Ericsson by surprise with a decisive pass for the lead on lap 187 of 200. With the leaders bottled up behind a pair of backmarkers, a shootout for the win never developed and the point was rendered moot when Nolan Siegel’s crash on the last lap brought out the caution as Palou led Ericsson into the final corner. Palou, Ericsson, and third-place finisher David Malukas were covered by just 1.1426 seconds, with a disappointed Pato O’Ward taking fourth.

It was another crushingly competent performance by Palou, who qualified sixth and ran unobtrusively among the leaders all day before taking command at the end to lead the final 14 laps. It was the only time he was out front all day.

“It’s amazing to win this race,” Palou said after averaging 168.883mph over the 500 miles. “This race means so much for me, for my family, for the IndyCar community, for our fans, and I would say motorsports in general. To say I’ve won only one oval race, and it was at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway just makes it extra special. I already lost my voice, and I haven’t even started celebrating yet.”

Palou’s day contained little drama other than a close call in the cramped pitlane and a couple of scary moments on restarts. Having made his final stop several laps earlier than Ericsson, he laid back in the opening phase of the stint conserving fuel and tyres before moving past Malukas. Most expected Palou to wait until the very end to try to pass Ericsson for the lead, but the presence of Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing team-mates Louis Foster and Devlin DeFrancesco fighting for 14th place directly in front of them complicated matters.

When Ericsson left an opening into Turn 1, Palou didn’t hesitate. “We were not in the best position on strategy,” explained the 28-year-old. “We had the worst tyres, and less fuel than Marcus and a little less than Malukas. I knew it was going to be tough at the end and I was just not going to have a chance to overtake him. It was a bit too early to go for it, but I thought it was my best strategy to try to go with the traffic and get the win. I’m glad I made it work.”

Now boasting an Indianapolis win and presumably on his way to a fourth IndyCar championship (he has a 115-point lead over O’Ward, with a maximum of 53 points available per race weekend), Palou is already in the conversation about all-time Indy racing superstars. His Indianapolis victory was the sixth for team owner Chip Ganassi, whose roster of Indy winners includes Ericsson, Scott Dixon, Dario Franchitti and Juan Pablo Montoya. It was also Palou’s 16th win in 87 IndyCar championship starts.

Palou's only major concern was in the slippery pitlane, while strategy left him at a small disadvantage against Ericsson heading into the closing laps

Photo by: Brett Farmer / Motorsport Images via Getty Images

“I’ll tell you, that kid is a good driver,” Ganassi said. “It’s just incredible – he’s on a roll. I think he’s one of the greats – it’s that simple. Certainly we’ve had some great drivers on our team, and he’s right there, at worst, shoulder to shoulder with all the rest of them. You’ve got to talk about all the great champions we’ve had, and he’s clearly in that group now.”

Ericsson was despondent after his second runner-up finish at Indianapolis in the last three years, those coming on the heels of his 2022 victory in ‘The Greatest Spectacle in Racing’. At one point, a slow pitstop dropped the ex-Formula 1 racer to the tail of the lead lap. But savvy use of yellows and an effective long green-flag stint allowed the Andretti Global team to execute a strategy that gave its driver track position and a four- to six-lap advantage on fuel and tyres as the race drew to a close. That’s when the backmarkers trying to stay on the lead lap came into play.

“I had those lapped cars ahead and I was struggling a little bit in the dirty air,” Ericsson recounted. “Alex kind of got a run on me, but I didn’t think he was going to go for it. And that’s the thing that’s going to keep me up at night for a while – that moment and what I did and didn’t do.

"It’s going to keep me up at night thinking about what I could have done different in that last stint" Marcus Ericsson

“This is a ‘winner takes it all’ kind of race, and I had that race covered,” he quietly added. “It’s pretty painful. It’s going to keep me up at night thinking about what I could have done different in that last stint.”

With a win and a pair of close second-place finishes bookending a forgettable 2024 Month of May in which he nearly failed to qualify and was classified 33rd, Ericsson has experienced every aspect of the Indy 500’s emotional roller coaster. He’ll have a hard time putting this one behind him.

“It stinks,” he said. “Second is a good result but, here, it’s not a good result. Here, you’ve got to win.”

Contrary to Palou’s near-perfect start to the season, Prema Racing’s initial IndyCar campaign in the lead-up to Indianapolis could not have gone much worse, with rookie Robert Shwartzman posting the team’s best results with a pair of 18th-place finishes. It was therefore a complete surprise when Shwartzman emerged from the 500’s stressful and complicated qualifying weekend with pole position.

Rookie polesitter Shwartzman led the opening laps but that was as good as it would get for the Israeli/Russian driver

Photo by: Phillip Abbott / Motorsport Images via Getty Images

Shwartzman had been sixth-fastest for the Italian team on the opening day of qualifying, which was paced by Palou ahead of Team Penske entries driven by Scott McLaughlin and two-time defending Indianapolis winner Josef Newgarden. The Israeli/Russian improved to third on the first of two Sunday qualifying runs, behind Felix Rosenqvist and O’Ward. Then in the final ‘Fast Six’ session, Shwartzman’s 232.790mph average bested another two-time Indy winner, Takuma Sato. O’Ward filled out the front row, with Dixon and Rosenqvist joining Palou on row two.

Shwartzman is the first rookie to take pole at Indianapolis since Teo Fabi in 1983. Ironically, Shwartzman’s car carries the number 83 to represent the year Prema was founded. The last time a first-year team earned the Indy pole was 1984 with Tom Sneva and Mayer Motor Racing, run by ex-McLaren Formula 1 stalwarts Teddy Mayer and Tyler Alexander.

“Honestly, it’s unbelievable – it’s just a dream,” said Shwartzman. “I was fantasising in my dreams about what it would be like to win the Indy 500 pole, and then I was like, ‘Yeah Robert, get back to reality. You have a new car, new team, you are a rookie. How can you expect to be in this position?’

“I think the thing that made me sit here now is just the right mentality. You don’t need to have incredible experience. You just need to have good people around you as a team, who are conscious of what they are doing.”

Shwartzman led the first eight laps of the race, but his remarkable Indianapolis debut unravelled when he locked his brakes entering his box for his second pitstop of the race. The Prema Dallara mowed down four crew members, all of whom fortunately escaped serious injury. Another scary pit incident occurred when Alexander Rossi’s ECR entry caught fire from a fuel leak.

The path to pole position was made clearer for Shwartzman and Prema by one of Team Penske’s worst-ever days at Roger Penske’s beloved Indianapolis Motor Speedway. McLaughlin opened practice for the second qualifying day by writing off his car in a big accident. Then the cars of Newgarden and Will Power were flagged in technical inspection for an illegal modification to their attenuator, a Dallara spec part that acts like a bumper in rear impacts.

McLaughlin's crash before the green flag was waved was the conclusion of a miserable and controversial Indy 500 for Team Penske

Photo by: James Gilbert / Getty Images

Since the start of 2024, IndyCar has required all teams to return their attenuators to Dallara to bond a strengthening plate to the outer surface. Team Penske smoothed down the slightly protruding edge of the added plate, likely as much for aesthetics than to pursue any kind of performance gain. Penske withdrew the two violating cars from the ‘Fast 12’ session, and under the rulebook, they along with McLaughlin would start from 10th, 11th and 12th on the grid. McLaughlin was not penalised because his crashed car was found to feature a legal attenuator. And, adding a layer of intrigue to the matter, Newgarden’s 2024 Indy 500-winning car – now on display at the newly renovated Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum – was found to also be carrying the illegally modified spec part.

The next day, IndyCar escalated the penalties, moving Newgarden and Power to the back of the grid. Then Roger Penske announced the team was “parting ways” with three key managers, including Tim Cindric, Penske’s right-hand man since late 1999. The moves were deemed necessary for two reasons. This was the second IndyCar cheating scandal the extremely image-conscious Penske was caught in over the past 14 months (though not nearly as egregious as Newgarden’s illegal use of push-to-pass found at St Petersburg in March 2024).

But it was mainly optics: Penske owns and operates not only his racing team, but the IndyCar Series as a whole and the IMS. He was avoiding a potential uproar from fans and competitors about preferential treatment and multiple conflicts of interest.

"Congratulations to Alex; I’ve got to get on whatever he’s eating or sleeping, because he’s on a run like I’ve never seen before, one I don’t think the series has seen in 50 years or more" Pato O'Ward

Penske’s race day was nearly as bad. McLaughlin crashed on the pace lap while warming his tyres on an unseasonably cool day. “By far, the worst moment of my life,” stated McLaughlin. “I know it’s probably dramatic and whatever, but I put so much into this race. Everyone does, and I didn’t even get to see the green flag.” Newgarden retired with a faulty fuel pump two-thirds of the way into the race, while Power scraped home a lap down in 19th.

Generally speaking, it was a dull and processional race. This was the first Indy 500 for IndyCar’s new-in-mid-2024 hybrid energy recovery system, and the 60kg hardware adversely affected the handling of an already tail-heavy Dallara chassis. The pole speed was down by 1.5mph, and the small margin for error in unbalanced cars made it extremely difficult to pass, especially for drivers third or further back in a line.

Fuel saving strategies also played a part, as 14 of the 33 drivers led at one time or another. Front-row starter Sato led the most laps with 51, followed by 2014 winner Ryan Hunter-Reay’s 48. But neither figured in the final reckoning. Sato, trying for a third Indy crown, was 11th at the flag.

The race was delayed by 43 minutes by light rain, and the cold conditions (17C) likely contributed to a spate of brake problems like the one that led to Shwartzman’s ill-fated pitstop and Rinus VeeKay’s pitlane crash. The left-rear corner of Dixon’s car caught fire on the warm-up laps, and the New Zealander eventually lost three laps when the Ganassi team changed the left-rear caliper about a quarter of the way into the race. Dixon, the 2008 Indy winner still in search of an elusive second triumph, finished 23rd.

Malukas produced a strong showing as he is tipped to move into the Penske line-up

Photo by: Penske Entertainment

Malukas therefore wound up tops among the rest in the best finish of 2025 for AJ Foyt Racing, which now operates as a Penske satellite team. Malukas, a 23-year-old American, is being groomed for a future Penske seat, presumably to replace Power. The veteran Australian’s contract expires at the end of the season.

“We turned it up with about 15 laps to go and I was hanging on for life, trying to get something out of it,” Malukas said. “Those two lapped cars kind of ruined the fun for us and chose this winner. That’s just kind of how this track goes.”

O’Ward had the opportunity to complete a memorable double for McLaren following Lando Norris’s victory in the Monaco Grand Prix. But the Mexican turned in a strangely subdued performance in the race. Despite starting from the favourable outside of the front row, he led for just two laps and never looked like being a factor.

“We’ve seemed to have had every single result in the top five over the past five years except for the most important one,” O’Ward lamented. “Congratulations to Alex; I’ve got to get on whatever he’s eating or sleeping, because he’s on a run like I’ve never seen before, one I don’t think the series has seen in 50 years or more.”

McLaughlin’s pace-lap crash, which delayed the start even further, was a harbinger for a strangely flat race that produced few memorable storylines other than Palou’s almost inevitable victory and Ericsson’s heartbreaking latest close call.

Dixon, whose lack of multiple Indianapolis wins is the only blot on a historically successful copybook, was an also-ran by half-distance. Newgarden’s retirement took away the potential unprecedented-three-Indy-wins-in-a row angle; Helio Castroneves’ quest for an equally historic fifth victory was never on the cards, the 50-year-old Brazilian coming home 13th.

NASCAR star Kyle Larson had a 40-minute ‘fudge factor’ to facilitate his ability to compete in both the Indy 500 and the Cup Series Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway later the same day. The 43-minute rain delay could have had a critical impact, but Larson crashed on a lap 92 restart, eliminating any drama whether he would make it back to his ‘day job’ on time. Another crash put Larson out of contention at Charlotte in what will likely be his last attempt at the Indy/Charlotte ‘Double’.

Despite the lack of storylines, nothing could take away from Palou's masterful maiden Indy 500 win

Photo by: Jake Galstad / Motorsport Images via Getty Images