Instant Recall: Sonsio Grand Prix
The crowd at Indianapolis Motor Speedway enthusiastically roared when a caution came out on Lap 69 of Saturday's Sonsio Grand Prix. The 10-second lead of the sport's dominant driver, Alex Palou, would be erased and a fierce battle would ensue.
But Palou put a quick damper on the celebration. Over each of the 12 laps that followed, he put more distance on second-place Pato O'Ward.
Palou led by .8944 of a second at the end of the first restart lap, 1.7151 seconds after the second. Then, in consecutive laps, his lead at the start/finish line was 2.4781 seconds, 2.6289 seconds and then 3.2153 seconds. By the time the checkered flags waved, the 28-year-old Spaniard was joyously weaving down the front straightaway with an advantage of 5.4840 seconds.
How does this driver keep doing this to a deeply competitive field?
'They just don't make a mistake,' O'Ward said of Palou and the No. 10 DHL Chip Ganassi Racing Honda crew. 'It's impressive.'
With a fourth victory in the season's first five races, the three-time NTT INDYCAR SERIES champion lowered his average finish to 1.2. In the past 50 years, the most comparable start was Sebastien Bourdais' rush out of the Champ Car World Series gate in 2006. The Frenchman won the first four races, then finished third for an average finish of 1.4. In 2005, Dan Wheldon won four of the first five Indy Racing League races, finishing sixth in the other. His average finish: 2.0.
Palou's latest victory was a mix of deft tire strategy – he saved a set of new, faster alternate Firestone Firehawk tires for the final segment – and precise driving. After Graham Rahal jumped him at the start with a fresher set of the alternate tires on his No. 15 Fifth Third Bank Honda, Palou patiently waited for his moment, overtaking the Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing driver on Lap 58.
No one else was close to challenging Palou, who led 29 laps and won this race for the third consecutive year. And if the first caution since the early moments of the season-opening Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg presented by RP Funding hadn't come, Palou might have won by 15 seconds or more.
Power was involved in that caution-causing accident in Turn 3 in St. Petersburg, finishing 26th. Since then, he has been championship caliber if not for Palou. Power has finished sixth, sixth, fifth and third in these races.
O'Ward hasn't been as consistent as Palou or Power, but this was his second runner-up finish of the season. He was the first car behind Palou at the conclusion of the season's second race, at The Thermal Club. The combination has him fourth in the season standings, but he fell to a staggering 100 points behind Palou.
Andretti Global's Kyle Kirkwood finished eighth Saturday. His point total is the closest to Palou's, but at 93 points in arrears, he effectively trails by nearly two full races. Arrow McLaren's Christian Lundgaard is 98 points out of the series lead after finishing 16th in this race.
For the record, the number of consecutive laps without a caution stopped at 408. But not even that could stop Palou.
Next up is the Indianapolis 500 presented by Gainbridge, a race Palou has not won. Should he win that, too, he will be on a pace similar to A.J. Foyt's 1964 season, when Foyt won the first seven races, including the '500.' Foyt wasn't beaten until Aug. 23 when Parnelli Jones won at the Milwaukee Mile. Foyt had transmission failure in that race and finished 26th.
Will Palou win Indy, too? History is waiting to see if he can.
'I will be shocked if he dominates that,' Power said. 'He'll be up there (near the front), but so will a lot of other people. But that would be something if he went on and did that. That would be one of the greatest motorsports moments I've seen in my career.'
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