The 109th running of the Indianapolis 500 (Indy 500) was quite the race for IndyCar. Spectators witnessed multiple collisions, yellow flags, several pit lane incidents just to name a few. For Palou, Sunday was a joyous day of celebration.
Throughout all the chaos happening around, Alex Palou continued his victory streak and charged ahead for an impressive Indy 500 win. The Spanish driver led the last 13 laps of the Greatest Spectacle in Racing as he made a decisive pass on Marcus Ericsson in the closing stages for P1.
The winning mindset
The driver of the No. 10 DHL Honda for Chip Ganassi scored his first oval win – but this is just the start. An Indy 500 win is a huge accomplishment but Alex Palou is already looking ahead towards the future. He mentioned last week that his career would not be deemed successful without this prestigious win.
“It means that we checked that box and we need another one now.
”I mean, yes. It’s amazing. It’s amazing to win this race. This race means so much for me, for my family, for the INDYCAR community, our fans, and I would say motorsports in general. To be an Indy 500 championship, it’s amazing.”
For Alex Palou, this was a clean race despite not being in the best place strategy wise. The 10 car team ran a new set of Firestone alternate tyres in the last push past Ericsson. The car was running lower on fuel than Ericsson and Malukas – the second and third place finishers.
“I knew that it was going to be tough at the end just because with less grip on the tyres and with some traffic, I was just not going to have any chance to overtake him. I saw that I had a small gap, and I wanted to take it. It was a bit too early to go for it, but I thought it was my best strategy to try and go with the traffic and try and get the win.”
Palou pushed a bit later to pass Ericsson and save fuel.
“When I was behind him, I was just saving fuel. We didn’t have enough fuel to go for it, so those first five, six laps or maybe a bit more that I was behind him, I was just trying to save some fuel so we could go hard at the end trying to stay in the lead.
“Yeah, I knew that was getting towards, like, late to pass him for the amount of laps that I had on the tyres, but yeah, glad we made it work.”
Consistent and Strategic
The Chip Ganassi driver knew that his car was one of the fastest in the pack. He also knew it wasn’t just speed that gave him the victory.
“I think it was a little bit of everything. My car was very capable. But I didn’t really have the best balance, especially towards the end of the tyre life. I would say from lap 20 onwards, I was struggling very much to follow very closely. So that’s why I tried to overtake Marcus as quick as they told me that the fuel was more or less okay to go to the end.
“There was a lot of fast cars out there. Mine was one of them, but I didn’t feel like we had tons of speed. I think I was able to get advantage of the traffic cars, as well, to help me tow up very good and not consume too much fuel, and thanks to Helio, I was able to read the traffic good. Like when I overtook Malukas, it was because I saw that there was people leaving on the pits when I was coming to Turn 1 on the TV, and then with Marcus, it was the same. I knew that was going to be probably my only chance.”
Palou knew how to work the strategy and use all his resources to ensure a clean and successful race. With all the unpredictable variables thrown at him, the Spaniard impressed with his consistency and ability to focus.
Bringing it home
On the last lap of the race, Arrow McLaren’s Nolan Siegel crashed his car in a single-car incident. This caused the caution flag to be thrown out with the checkered following shortly in an interesting turn of events. The last half of the race was relatively calm compared to the first half. Looking at how the first half went Palou expected at least another yellow flag which affected his strategy.
“Yeah, I was expecting another yellow for sure, so I was like close to telling me team, just let me go with the fuel, don’t even worry, because there’s going to be another yellow. I’m glad that I listened to them and that we had enough fuel.
“But yeah, that’s how it goes sometimes. You suddenly have a lot of back-to-back yellows or suddenly you have a really clean race. I think it’s because the pace was actually really fast at the end. Like the speeds that we were having with the traffic was quite high. So that played into the role of not having too much yellows at the end.”
The championship points leader discussed a bit on how it was racing the oval with the new hybrid system.
“Yeah, it was playing a role on passes and on defending. I would say that it played a bigger role defending from Marcus than the pass — the pass I would say that I deployed, but I think he did the same, so we were kind of on the same boat.
“But then it was all about trying to keep my hybrid without use until the exit of the corners so he couldn’t get around me. Yeah, he was close, I would say last lap he was very close into 3. But yeah, glad the hybrid worked for us.”
At the end of the day, Sunday was quite the day for Palou and his crew. Looking at what has been accomplished so far this season, the Spaniard’s winning streak is a force to be reckoned with. The Month of May has come to an end but not without another charge to the podium by Alex Palou.
