Alex Palou dominantly secured his fourth IndyCar win of the 2025 season at the Sonsio GP. It’s a fourth race win in five races so far for the reigning champion, who is setting the base for an impressive fourth title winning campaign and a third in a row.
A stunning weekend for Palou
Palou had secured an impressive IndyCar pole for the Sonsio GP during Friday’s Qualifying, demonstrating his incredible form via a strong performance in the area where historically the Spaniard had struggled the most. He took pole by 0.4s.
In spite of the top starting position, it was RLL’s Graham Rahal who led the field out of turn 1. Palou commented on his less impressive early stints in the post-race press conference as he got his used reds out of the way in the first one.
“I didn’t even get to lead one corner. He got a great start, and then he was really side-by-side to me. The only way I had to keep position was to force him like off-off. I thought he was already up front. So, yeah, from there I was, like, ‘okay, let’s be patient and hopefully we can have good pace to follow him, maybe overtake him on pit strategy.’
“But he had the great pace the first couple of runs. We were battling on our second stint, but I couldn’t really overtake him. Yeah, it was great at the end when I got to pass him. I think he was struggling a little bit with the used soft tyres. We were on good primaries, so it was great.”
The key move for the lead
He then went on to discuss the race deciding move he managed to complete over the more experienced driver on lap 58, as Rahal, on a different strategy, was having tyre management issues while on used softs.
“It’s easy for us to spot, especially here. You can see in [Turn] 14 whenever you leave a mark, and that means the car is sliding. Also, at Turn 4, and he was doing it for two or three laps. Yeah, I knew we were in a good spot. But then, we had the second yellow of the year, which that was exciting.”
While it was definitely fun for the fans to finally have a caution again for the first time since lap 1 at St. Pete, it was not a positive moment for Palou, who saw his IndyCar Sonsio GP race lead of over ten seconds gap to second placed O’Ward cut to nothing.
“I didn’t like that part. Obviously we lost some that we had. Yeah, my car was amazing today once again, and I was able to lead to the end.”
How the caution was not a turning point of his Sonsio GP
He expanded on his feelings about the moment, as it could have easily become a great chance for regret. Luckily, or rather instead because of his speed, that wasn’t the case.
“No, I thought there was going to be a caution in lap one today. Turn one is tough, but especially turn seven we’ve normally seen a lot of accidents. So when that didn’t happen, I was, like, Oh, man, there’s a chance that with everybody running the same strategy because we’re forced into doing that, there might be no yellows at all.
“I don’t know what happened. I don’t know if it was a mechanical issue or just a contact, but yeah, I didn’t like then to see the caution. Whenever there was a caution, I was, like, No, come on, I just got the lead, let me go. I’m happy that even with the restart we were able to hold.”
The Ganassi driver reckons the importance of such a beginning to his 2025, and savours the moment, which will be rather tough to recreate at a later point of his career.
“It’s crazy. I’m sad that it’s going to end at some point, and it’s going to be tough in my career to feel as good as I feel now. I know that, and that makes me sad, but happy at the same time. It’s amazing. I know I’m with the best team out here, and they give me the best tools they have, the best people to fight for races every single weekend, and it feels sweet.”
That elusive first oval race win
In his young but already incredible successful career there’s really only one achievement missing so far: a Indy 500 race win. Palou has had incredible performances at the track, including a pole position, has won the Indy GP, but is still missing the taste of the milk after the iconic race.
Asked if ending his string race win streak in Indianapolis would be additionally bad, the talented driver denied, as he admitted that losing the 500 is rather the feeling he is used to.
“There’s high chances of that, but hopefully we can change it. What if it doesn’t end, and suddenly we win the Indy 500? That would be pretty sweet. The normal thing would be not to win it. So if we can make it happen, it would be super special.
“I think we’ve done everything that we could in terms of results and the team as well working with our speedway car. I’m actually thinking to put this car in a road course wins to see if it’s going to be as fast at the speedway because these cars are really, really fast.
“Hopefully we can battle. I think the Indy 500 is a different game. I don’t think we’re the favourites, but we’re going to try everything we have.”
