'Unacceptable' - Palou error gives IndyCar title rivals huge boost

Penske’s Scott McLaughlin earned a first oval IndyCar win and jumped from eighth to fifth in the championship in the process, as points leader Alex Palou crashed out with a rare mistake he called “unacceptable”.

A repaved track combined with the IndyCar hybrid’s race debut on an oval - plus new tyres and less downforce than was allowed at a recent test - ensured the race would be a dramatic first instalment of what's now a traditional double-header weekend.

A long early caution period turned it into a two-stop race with plenty of excitement-sapping fuel saving, but the championship leader’s crash - which handed his title rivals the chance to make big gains - and polesitter Colton Herta’s bad luck split the race wide open for an entertaining final quarter.

McLaughlin's first oval win

McLaughlin had bagged his first oval pole at Gateway in 2023, added a brilliant Indianapolis 500 pole earlier this year, and then shattered the lap record in qualifying for race two here at Iowa this weekend, having bagged second behind Herta for the start of race one.

Herta held the lead until the first round of pitstops, but McLaughlin assumed the lead from there and looked thoroughly untouchable, despite a flurry of late restarts.

It’s McLaughlin’s second win of a season that's featured massive ups as well as errors and bad luck, too.

“Get me a beer!” he joked after his sixth IndyCar win, before acknowledging he has to focus on starting Sunday's race from pole. “I can call myself an IndyCar driver now, I’ve won on an oval!” he added.

He jumps ahead of Andretti drivers Herta and Kyle Kirkwood in the standings, and sits 59 points behind Palou - a deficit that stood at 105 points at the start of the weekend.

Pato O’Ward and McLaughlin's Penske team-mate Josef Newgarden rounded out the podium.

Palou's 'unacceptable' error

The race and championship were absolutely flipped on its head when the crashing Palou came to a halt on the main straight on lap 177 of 250.

"I just lost it out of [Turn] 4,” a crestfallen Palou admitted, after he had already fallen well down the order with a stall in the pits - now more common since the introduction of the hybrid - which dropped him down from third place at the first round of stops.

“Driver mistake; there's no reason why I had to push there," he added. "Just trying to recover from another driver mistake I had in the pits.

"So yeah, unacceptable. I'm very sorry for the #10 car. The car was good, [but] it wasn't our day."

With Palou's erstwhile closest rival Will Power getting a pitlane speeding penalty at his first pitstop, and then picking up damage after clipping Pietro Fittipaldi with 20 laps to go and finishing 18th, the points picture is somewhat different with O’Ward, fourth-place finisher Scott Dixon and McLaughlin the big winners.

O’Ward jumps to second in the points behind Palou following his win at Mid-Ohio last week.

Points before Iowa race one

1 Palou 329
2 Power -48
3 O’Ward -70
4 Dixon -71
5 Herta - 79
8 McLaughlin -104

Points after Iowa race one

1 Palou 336
2 O’Ward -37
3 Power -43
4 Dixon -46
5 McLaughlin -59
6 Herta -66

That result means a host of drivers have almost halved their deficits to Palou, although he starts the second race from second on the grid and with a point to prove.

What happened to Herta?

After leading the first stint, in the second Herta’s voice was almost impossible to decipher on the radio such was the vibration caused by a degrading front right tyre, and that’s ultimately what brought him into the pits.

As his car sat being serviced, he would have seen Palou grind to a halt just to his right. Because Herta was in the pits first he went a lap down and therefore had to take the wave around to get back on the lead lap when the other cars pitted, going to the back of the queue.

He fought back up to 12th and produced one of the saves of the season after losing the rear avoiding Marcus Armstrong as the Ganassi driver tried to get into the pits, and then managed to bring the car home 11th to cut his gap to Palou despite losing a place in the standings to McLaughlin.

He starts race two from fourth in a bid to score his first oval win.

Where did Newgarden come from?

Winner of six of the last seven Iowa races, Newgarden made up eight spots at the start as an uncharacteristic 22nd place in qualifying was almost redeemed in one move. He flew around the outside of Turn 1 with unfathomable bravery and up to 14th place.

It turned out to be the difference between Newgarden being involved in a crash or not as he had just cleared David Malukas when the Meyer Shank Racing driver spun on the first lap and collected both Juncos Hollinger cars, causing the long early caution that made it a two-stop race.

Newgarden continued to work forward and was into the top 10 by the final stop, at which his Penske crew helped him jump from eighth to third. That's where Newgarden finished to claim his fourth top-five result of the year.

He starts 14th in race two.

A remarkable comeback

Santino Ferrucci produced a performance that beggared belief as he went from front to back and then (almost) back to the front again.

The AJ Foyt racing driver started eighth and was running fifth when he was given a stop-go penalty for pulling out of line before the green flag.

The enforcement of the penalty was in part thanks to drivers pressuring IndyCar to police starts and restarts strictly after years of complaints of drivers getting a jump or being out of position going unpunished.

Despite the punishment, Ferrucci fought back like a driver possessed and was 11th after the Palou caution, before pulling off a succession of unbelievable overtakes in his typically aggressive style. He raced all the way up to sixth - just behind another impressive mover, Rinus VeeKay, who went from 13th to fifth.

An injury DNF

Dale Coyne’s Jack Harvey retired on lap 28 as he continues to suffer from a neck injury that caused him pain last week at Mid-Ohio.

He says he’s tried everything to battle through it - making his 18th place in qualifying all the more impressive. But Harvey will be replaced by Conor Daly for Sunday's race.

Daly will need to complete a special on-track session at 9am ahead of the 11:30am green flag.