Amidst 6 full-course cautions, Alex Palou takes his third street course win of the 2026 season at the Detroit Grand Prix. From pole position, he charged ahead of the field, closely followed by street-course specialist Kyle Kirkwood, who took P2 at the checkered flag. In spite of his top standing at the finish, all was not smooth sailing for Palou. The reigning NTT IndyCar series champion admitted that he didn’t feel in control of the race.
“Tough. Very tough today. It didn’t really feel like we were leading that much. I know that we were leading, but man, it was a lot of work with the restarts, and got myself into trouble on the first stint. We kind of started losing pace on the alternates. Will was struggling a little bit more. Tried to overtake him, but made a bad decision and put myself in a bad scenario, and lost two or three places.
“That was not great, but the team reacted super quick. We went for the undercut, and not only the undercut was going to work, but on top of that we were better for the yellow when it came out.
“It was not an easy day at all. It was not like a straight [win], there’s races where it’s just straightforward and whatever it looks like it’s going to be, it is. But today was plenty of action, struggling a lot on restarts, and didn’t know if we were going to make it with Kyle or not because he was on alternates and kind of — I think he had a small advantage on the first two restarts, but then at the end I think he just didn’t have enough grip on the tires.”
Palou back on top
The Detroit Grand Prix marks Alex Palou’s return to the podium and to the top step since IndyCar’s last street race, on the streets of Long Beach in mid-April. It was a welcome return for the 4x series champ, and one that was hard fought.
Palou was tired but exuberant when recounting how, despite being happy with performance at the IMS road course and Indy500, it didn’t give the same feel of standing at the top in Detroit.
“Yeah, I was happy with how we performed at Indy but not happy with the result, obviously. I think there was only — Felix was happy. The rest, we left with our hearts broken. But this helps. This helps recover a lot our hearts and our feelings.
“At Indy, we put so much effort. We put so much work and we focus so much on that that it just breaks your heart if you don’t win.
“But yeah, it feels great. It feels great to be back here on Victory Lane. I think last year or the past couple years we were not that strong on street courses, and this year we’ve been able to win at three street courses. Yeah, it just feels incredible.”
Not in a league of his own
If asked, many of the 2026 IndyCar field would say the Chip Ganassi Racing and Alex Palou were in a league of their own. The team and driver constantly conquering a wide range of situations and coming out on top, from chaotic races to on-the-fly tire-strategy calls. However, if you asked Paou, he would say differently.
The Detroit GP winner was honest in his assessment of his own skill, complimenting his teams abilbility to fill in where he may be struggling during any given race weekend.
“I have an amazing group around me that whenever I struggle with the car, they can fix it for me, like here at Detroit, we were not super happy last year. We came with a car that was similar to last year and kind of changed it to make it a lot better and we were on pole, so we had the fastest car.
“Not only that, I did a couple mistakes on track on the first stint, and the team alone, they put me from fourth to first, and that was just with a strategy call, which that’s our first step, but then you need all the crew, as well, to execute and to give you a great pit stop.
“For sure we have a great package. I don’t know how long that’s going to last. Like my feeling or the crew’s feeling or the strategy feeling, like you never know when it’s going to end. You need so much to go right for you to end. But you can see that it’s very tough to win races. Yeah, I wish we were in a league of our own.”
