Alex Palou Finesses His Way To Win At St. Petersburg
Source: Penske Entertainment / other
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Laying the foundation of what could be his third straight NTT IndyCar Series championship, Alex Palou finessed his way from eighth to first on Sunday as he took the checkered flag at the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg.
The win is his 13th win in 83 starts now in the series.
“What an amazing job by everybody with the 10-car,” Palou said. “They gave me everything I needed to win. I said before the race we had a really fast car. It was a shame yesterday that we couldn’t maximize our qualifying, but everything worked out today.”
The day belonged to Chip Ganassi Racing despite their slow start to the weekend. Scott Dixon was able to steal second place in the closing laps of the race as Josef Newgarden, who had been battling Palou for the lead, appeared to run out of fuel on the last lap, forcing him to slow up and allow Dixon to take the runner-up spot.
Newgarden was able to roll across for third.
The day was led off with Scott McLaughlin out front having secured the pole the day prior. The first lap would see the day’s only caution with Will Power, Nolan Siegel, and Louis Foster getting caught up the back of the field through the first turn.
Once the dust settled from that incident, the race became about tire strategy. Firestone brought a brand new compound to the race this year for the alternate tires to be used by the drivers. The tires proved so soft that they were really fast, but only for a handful of laps before falling off significantly.
Many drivers opted to start the race on the alternates, gambling that a crash would happen early allowing them to pit and get rid of them. With the first lap caution, that’s exactly what happened.
The race fell into the hands of Christian Lundgaard at the halfway point with McLaughlin losing out due to the strategies playing out. However, Lundgaard had not yet used the alternate tires, as he is required to. Having to surrender the lead for that reason, the beneficiary of that move turned out to be Alex Palou.
“We were managing our strategy there, our tires, our fuel to try and get extra laps, and it worked,” Palou said. “My team was leading me there. I just had to follow instructions.”
He hanged back having started the race eighth. Letting the race play out in front of him. He pounced on his final pit stop. He pitted one lap earlier than his teammate Scott Dixon, who had been in the top five as well at that point. Palou’s subsequent out-lap was fast enough for him to undercut Dixon after hit pit stop, and Palou assumed the de facto lead.
Newgarden then pounced as well taking second away from Dixon due to Dixon having cold tires out of the pits. WithĀ 15 laps to go, Newgarden was over 4-second back of Palou. Newgarden came screaming back to eventually challenge for the lead. Newgarden may have been screaming a little too loudly as his fuel nearly ran out on the last lap, allowing for Dixon to reclaim second place.
“We were going for it there, but I don’t know what happenedĀ with the fuel there,” Newgarden said. “We just has some big shift and we had to go to super save mode to make it to the end. Just didn’t quite have enough to position ourselves where we needed to be.”
All this left Palou by himself to take the win.
“(Palou) drove a hell of a race,” said team owner Chip Ganassi. “You know our strategy was, we were 13th or 14th. We were 25-seconds back from the lead and we came back!”
The win gets Palou off to a good start in his pursuit of a fourth IndyCar championship. The series will have a couple weeks off now as they get ready to head to the Thermal Club for round two on Mar. 23.