IndyCar 2025 begins with another 'from nowhere' Palou win

For what feels like an eternity, the question opening any IndyCar Series season has been: ‘can anyone stop Alex Palou?’ or ‘does he have any weaknesses’?

On Sunday he came from what felt like nowhere to take a first win in St Petersburg leaving a trail of rapid and confused drivers in his wake.

Leading finishers

1 Palou
2 Dixon
3 Newgarden
Full results at bottom of page

An early strategy quirk denied what felt like the fastest driver - Scott McLaughlin of Penske - while fancy pitwork for Palou usurped Ganassi team-mate Scott Dixon, who’s still chasing a first win at this track despite his lengthy career.

Penske’s Josef Newgarden came from 10th on the grid to erase a five-second gap to Palou and harass him for the win, and just came up short of expunging the dark shadow of his win-then-disqualification last year in a story that came to dominate a large chunk of the season

And one other question we had - how would another Pato O’Ward McLaren team-mate reverse the trend of him destroying them - started with somewhat of a surprise as Christian Lundgaard ran an unusual strategy to star for a large chunk of the race but ultimately fell like a rock being on the wrong tyre late on.

Here’s how the race unfolded.

It was underpinned by a tyre compound battle and an early caution that appeared to give one side an advantage. With the soft tyres only expected to last a handful of laps, a lap one crash meant the cars that started on that soft tyre could pit, while the cars starting on the harder tyre would have to run that tyre at speed later on.

The caution was caused by Penske’s Will Power clipping Nolan Siegel with the usual St Pete lap one concertina effect at Turn 3 at least partly absolving Power of blame. Indy NXT champion Louis Foster was caught up in it too on his IndyCar debut with Rahal Letterman Lanigan.

Colton Herta - who started second for Andretti - led the group of early pitters, restarting in 10th, but had a slow second stop due to a stuck right rear wheel then needed an extra stop for a recurring fuel issue.

Also in that second stop, Dixon overcut Newgarden to inherit the lead of those on that strategy from Herta.

At the front, McLaughlin kept stretching his advantage but elected to switch to softs at his first stop, while Lundgaard led a group staying on the hards until right at the end of the race, creating three differing strategies.

The ‘Dixon strategy’ appeared to be the way to go but it wouldn’t be Dixon who made winning use of it in the end.

Having been behind his team-mate all race up to that point and qualified only eighth, Palou undercut Dixon at the last stop and spectacularly emerged with a four-second lead that he immediately set about extending to over five.

While Palou took the lead as Dixon emerged from the pits in second, the next time around last year’s on the road winner Newgarden attempted an optimistic overtake at Turn 1 and Dixon gave him the room to make the move work.

The gap was over five seconds on lap 83 but less than 10 laps later it was under a second as Newgarden harried Palou with nine laps to go. The nearly-lapped Sting Ray Robb was just quick enough to stay ahead of Palou for a while but clearly held him up, and the train caught the back of more traffic with six laps to go.

Palou then cleared Robb with five to go but Robb let Newgarden and Dixon through much easier, reigniting the fight.

Newgarden was absolutely spectacular in his Palou pursuit but ultimately came up just short after Robb moved aside, and was passed at Turn 10 by Dixon - who came back into the fight with the traffic holding up Palou - for second on the last lap!

Dixon gained extra kudos for his result when it became clear he’d done the race without any working radio communications so wasn’t getting the comprehensive fuel mileage information his rivals would have been.

While the eventual lead group ditched soft tyres after the lap-one caution, polesitter McLaughlin lost so much time when he eventually took them that he ended up fourth in a disappointing end to a race where it felt like he had the most pace.

And Herta was basically robbed through no fault of his own - having qualified second and been on the strategy Palou used to win, Herta finished only 16th.

But his Andretti team-mates Kyle Kirkwood and Marcus Ericsson finished fifth and sixth respectively in a strong start to the season for both.

Felix Rosenqvist took seventh - his new Meyer Shank team-mate Marcus Armstrong had fought for the lead but had a rear wheel come loose - ahead of Lundgaard, Dale Coyne’s new signing Rinus VeeKay and new Ed Carpenter driver Alexander Rossi.

O’Ward struggled to make the soft tyres work in qualifying so started only 23rd then had an early puncture. Recovering to 11th was one of the drives of the day.

A new era beginning

Fox Sports took over the coverage of IndyCar for this season and backed up a brilliant pre-season where it put IndyCar on the Super Bowl programming bill with Will Buxton having a seamless transition back to US motorsport as the channel’s lead commentator.

Joined by previous announcers James Hinchcliffe and Townsend Bell, the broadcast felt slick and without issue - which is basically as good a start as you could ask for in race one.

Results

1 Alex Palou (Ganassi)
2 Scott Dixon (Ganassi) +2.8669s
3 Josef Newgarden (Penske) +6.2044s
4 Scott McLaughlin (Penske) +8.6878s
5 Kyle Kirkwood (Andretti) +10.9709s
6 Marcus Ericsson (Andretti) +23.0835s
7 Felix Rosenqvist (Meyer Shank) +24.2895s
8 Christian Lundgaard (McLaren) +32.2045s
9 Rinus VeeKay (Coyne) +38.9443s
10 Alexander Rossi (Carpenter) +42.3385s
11 Pato O'Ward (McLaren) +42.7293s
12 Graham Rahal (Rahal Letterman Lanigan) +48.4992s
13 David Malukas (Foyt) +49.1500s
14 Santino Ferrucci (Foyt) +49.5216s
15 Christian Rasmussen (Carpenter) +52.3835s
16 Colton Herta (Andretti) +52.7048s
17 Conor Daly (Juncos Hollinger) +59.6324s
18 Kyffin Simpson (Ganassi) +1m00.1701s
19 Callum Ilott (Prema) +1m01.2309s
20 Robert Shwartzman (Prema) +1m02.3754s
21 Sting Ray Robb (Juncos Hollinger) +1 lap
22 Devlin DeFrancesco (Rahal Letterman Lanigan) +1 lap
23 Jacob Abel (Coyne) + 1 lap
DNF Marcus Armstrong (Meyer Shank)
DNF Nolan Siegel (McLaren)
DNF Will Power (Penske)
DNF Louis Foster (Rahal Letterman Lanigan)