Palou sees off Power and Lundgaard for Indianapolis Grand Prix victory

Reigning IndyCar champion Alex Palou scored his first victory of the season from pole position, but it was not a straightforward afternoon for the Ganassi driver.

Palou had a clear edge on pace over his rivals, but faced a strong threat from Christian Lundgaard at the start of the race and Will Power at the end.

Lundgaard surprisingly claimed the lead on the first lap despite starting the race on the harder primary tyres while Palou favoured the softs. The Ganassi driver attempted a forceful defence at turn one but ran too deep, allowing Lundgaard to duck around the outside of turn two and claim the inside line for the following bends.

From there Lundgaard held his lead throughout the opening stint. The race appeared to be slipping away from Palou when the pair pitted together and came out in the same order – only for Power to split them.

However Palou was content to bide his time in the second stint, getting his run on the primaries out of the way and minimising his time loss as he did so. Lundgaard and Power caught traffic at the end of the stint, and Power dived for the pits a lap before the RLL driver. He might have captured the lead, but encountered Marcus Ericsson at the end of his out-lap and Lundgaard scampered out of the pits narrowly ahead of the pair.

Palou, however, stayed out a lap longer and jumped the pair of them. With Lundgaard having to spend a second stint on primaries, he fell over five seconds behind the Ganassi driver while Power filled his mirrors. The trio pitted as one on lap 63, and Lundgaard lost precious time having to swerve around Power on his way out, losing second place to the Penske driver.

Luca Ghiotto’s retirement from his second IndyCar start triggered the race’s sole caution period on lap 66. Power made an immaculate restart, forcing Palou to defend hard, but was edged wide at turn one and with that his hopes of taking victory were gone. Palou pulled away to win by over five seconds while Lundgaard stalked Power to the flag.

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Palou’s Ganassi team mates Scott Dixon and Marcus Armstrong completed the top five, and Scott McLaughlin made it three New Zealanders in a row. The Penske driver was the biggest winner from the race’s sole caution period, as he was already in the pits as Ghiotto ground to a halt.

Colton Herta, who arrived at Indianapolis in the lead of the championship, was always going to be a strong candidate for an alternative pit stop strategy after qualifying 24th. He was also sent wide by team mate Ericsson shortly after the start, so he made an early first pit stop on lap 12 to discard his primaries and ran three stints on fresh alternates to haul himself back up to seventh. However it wasn’t enough to prevent Palou taking over at the top of the points standings.

Alexander Rossi was the first McLaren driver home in seventh. Team mate Pato O’Ward joined him in taking a fresh engine, but his had to be fitted after a failure in final practice, and he struggled all race long with a lack of grunt as he sank from fifth to 13th.

Behind them were Graham Rahal and Felix Rosenqvist, completing the top 10, the latter recovering from a poor start. Kyle Kirkwood was 11th ahead of Romain Grosjean, who was infuriated at being sent off-track by Santino Ferrucci at the start.

Josef Newgarden endured a poor afternoon, finishing 17th after tangling with Jack Harvey at the restart.

Race result

P.	No.	Driver	Team	Engine
1	10	Alex Palou	Ganassi	Honda
2	12	Will Power	Penske	Chevrolet
3	45	Christian Lundgaard	RLL	Honda
4	9	Scott Dixon	Ganassi	Honda
5	11	Marcus Armstrong	Ganassi	Honda
6	3	Scott McLaughlin	Penske	Chevrolet
7	26	Colton Herta	Andretti/Curb-Agajanian	Honda
8	7	Alexander Rossi	McLaren	Chevrolet
9	15	Graham Rahal	RLL	Honda
10	60	Felix Rosenqvist	Meyer Shank	Honda
11	27	Kyle Kirkwood	Andretti	Honda
12	77	Romain Grosjean	Juncos Hollinger	Chevrolet
13	5	Pato O’Ward	McLaren	Chevrolet
14	30	Pietro Fittipaldi	RLL	Honda
15	4	Kyffin Simpson	Ganassi	Honda
16	28	Marcus Ericsson	Andretti	Honda
17	2	Josef Newgarden	Penske	Chevrolet
18	18	Jack Harvey	Coyne	Honda
19	6	Theo Pourchaire	McLaren	Chevrolet
20	20	Christian Rasmussen	Carpenter	Chevrolet
21	78	Agustin Canapino	Juncos Hollinger	Chevrolet
22	41	Sting Ray Robb	Foyt	Chevrolet
23	66	Tom Blomqvist	Meyer Shank	Honda
24	8	Linus Lundqvist	Ganassi	Honda
25	51	Luca Ghiotto	Coyne	Honda
26	21	Rinus VeeKay	Carpenter	Chevrolet
27	14	Santino Ferrucci	Foyt	Chevrolet

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