
Will Power Confronts Alex Palou after Mid-Ohio Practice
Will Power yelled at Alex Palou after practice Saturday morning at Mid-Ohio, but it appears to be over the frustration that has mounted throughout the weekend while drivers tried to get a good, clean lap in practice.
As drivers manage their tires on the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, backing off and going slower on a lap is not rare. Power and Colton Herta talked about it yesterday when asked about what was the most difficult part of the 2.258-mile, 13-turn road course.
"[The biggest challenge] is probably people backing off, simply," Power said Friday afternoon. "It's incredible."
Colton Herta, sitting next to him, added that if it happens early in the lap, then it ruins the entire lap.
"You just don't really get laps," Herta said. "So you're kind of guessing the last half of the track, where to put it and how much speed to roll when you get the [softer tire] reds on."
"It definitely disrupts the flow of your work progress for sure," Herta added.
That's what it appeared Power was mad about when he confronted Palou after practice. Power is known as one of the more emotional drivers, often laying it out there but also getting over things relatively quickly.
It has been a vexing season for Power. The Team Penske driver is seventh in the standings and only has one podium finish (the Indianapolis Grand Prix in May). Palou is having an incredible season, as the Ganassi driver has six wins and a 93-point lead in the standings.
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Fox Sports
9 hours ago
- Fox Sports
INDYCAR Championship Format Works Just Fine, Despite Alex Palou's Dominance
NTT INDYCAR SERIES INDYCAR Championship Format Works Just Fine, Despite Alex Palou's Dominance Published Aug. 6, 2025 11:42 a.m. ET share facebook x reddit link The INDYCAR championship will quite possibly be decided this weekend at Portland International Raceway, even though there are still two races remaining on the schedule. Alex Palou enters with a 121-point lead on Pato O'Ward. He just needs to leave 108 points ahead and he can celebrate the title. If he's 103 points ahead, all he'll have to do is start Milwaukee. If he's 98 points ahead, he'd most likely clinch at Milwaukee. But no matter what, he'd clinch in the finale at Nashville. Alex Palou after winning at Laguna Seca As NASCAR fans debate their playoff system, there has been little debate on the INDYCAR side. When the mention of playoffs comes up, drivers quickly shake their heads when it comes to this idea. There's a good reason for NASCAR's playoffs. And there's good reason for a full-season championship in INDYCAR. The first is the length of the season. At 36 points races, the NASCAR calendar currently has more than twice the events of the 17-race INDYCAR schedule. Pato O'Ward — the only driver mathematically in the running for the title —prior to Laguna Seca ADVERTISEMENT With a 17-race schedule, it would seem that the championship has a better chance of coming down to the last race. It did for 17 consecutive seasons, until Palou clinched in 2023 with one race remaining. Last year, Palou didn't clinch until the finale. So that's 18 of the last 19 years (and likely to be 18 of the last 20 years) that the INDYCAR title came down to the finale. Not every season has been a 17-race schedule. But there's been enough consistency so that people shouldn't have the expectation that the championship will wrap up early. Palou is having one of those magical seasons of rare domination. After 14 races last year, Palou earned 484 points. This year he has 590. That would put him just 15 points better than the current 469 of O'Ward. Plus, open-wheel racing fans are used to seeing drivers wrap up the championship early. It has happened in various series, such as Formula 1. That isn't to say playoffs are bad. Palou after winning the Indy 500 The National Hot Road Association has started a playoff format in recent years, much like NASCAR's original Chase format, where the "postseason" doesn't eliminate anyone but is just a mini-season where points are reset prior to the beginning of the final series of events. The most important thing is for a racing series to find what resonates with its fan base and works within its system. INDYCAR could use a couple of more ovals but with a series that includes seven permanent road courses, six ovals (three more than one mile in length; three of one mile or shorter) and four street courses, that seems like a decent variety to determine the champion. Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR and INDYCAR for FOX Sports. He has spent decades covering motorsports, including over 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass. share recommended Who Is Colton Herta? INDYCAR's Youngest Winner On Golf, Drums & Rescue Dogs Item 1 of 1


Fox News
a day ago
- Fox News
Who Is Colton Herta? INDYCAR's Youngest Winner On Golf, Drums & Rescue Dogs
What were you doing at 18 years old? Well, Colton Herta was winning at racing's highest levels. In 2019, he became the youngest driver ever (and still is) to win an INDYCAR race with a victory at Circuit of the Americas. Considering his father, Bryan, raced in INDYCAR, owned a race team that twice won the Indianapolis 500 and is now a strategist for Andretti Global, it was likely Colton's destiny to follow the family's racing legacy. Herta, who moved from Nashville to Las Vegas in the offseason last year, talked about everything from growing up around racing and his drumming ability to his golf game and his rescue dogs. Who is Colton Herta? Who is Colton Herta? I'm a 25-year-old Southern California native, INDYCAR driver and American. How would your friends describe you? Probably, like, quiet. Not really outgoing. I guess maybe a little bit more outgoing on race weekends and for this sort of thing. But for the most part, I just keep to myself and avoid people. You're the youngest winner ever in the series ... does that mean you had no childhood? I guess not in the normal sense. From a young age, while kids were going to soccer practice and whatnot and on the weekends they'd go to soccer games, I'd get pulled out of school on Friday morning and go to the go-kart track for the weekend. So I guess normal in the sense that I knew a lot of kids my age from the go-kart track but definitely not the traditional sense of sports. I played normal sports growing up. I played soccer, football and baseball but never really past [ages] 8-10. Racing was always kind of a priority for me. And then, when I got older, my friends would be in high school, and I was living in England on my own. So very different. There are some similarities in my childhood that were normal and growing up, even though I did a little bit of a different sport. But then there are obviously some things that were very different. And it was a little bit higher pressure. Do you still play the drums? I haven't in a while. I can. I moved, and I never set up my drum set. I've just been too busy. And now, when I have free time. This season, I really haven't had any. Our season is pretty crazy right now. I enjoy golfing a little bit more. So I've been doing that more if I have any free time. In your prime, were you better than [fellow INDYCAR driver] Will Power on the drums? I don't know how good Will is. I've seen some videos. He seems like a really solid drummer. Do you know if you're better than [NASCAR driver] Bubba Wallace? I've seen Bubba play one time online. He seemed to be on a similar level with Will. If you had your drum set, what would you play? I never really liked playing to music. I like just jamming and messing around, learning new stuff and doing my own thing. I don't play golf because it takes coordination and patience. How are you finding trying to learn golf? It's a frustrating game. It's extremely difficult, but it's also extremely rewarding. And I think it's rewarding because ... you'll shoot 90 shots in your round and be happy with three or four of them. Those three or four are what keeps you coming back, that feeling of watching the ball fly. It's cool. And I've been fortunate enough to do some stuff around golf because of what I do. I've seen some pros play up close. I have a real appreciation for that sport because I know my inability in it and how amazingly easy they make it look. Living in Las Vegas now, you'd be able to do a lot more in the offseason than in Nashville? Nashville is difficult. I wasn't really into it until the offseason, too, until I moved to Vegas last offseason. So this is a little bit of a newer thing. Although I have played here and there, I never really fully got into it. I'm fully into it now. And you also have rescue dogs? Yes. If people are thinking about getting a rescue, what's the thing that people don't know about owning a rescue dog? For us, it's been pretty easy. For sure, there's probably stories and cases of dogs that are maybe a little bit less behaved or stuff because of trauma and what they've had to deal with. But for us, it's been really sweet. As long as you go to a reputable shelter, and they're honest for the most part and you know, you understand what you're getting into. And some people like the challenge of having a more challenging dog to train and whatnot. But our dogs have been really chill. I think we're lucky in that sense. What do you have? A Pit Bull and the other is half poodle, half Great Pyrenees. Is there a dog that you would like? My first dog growing up was a Golden Retriever. Gigi was her name. She was a great dog. I've always wanted to have a Golden Retriever. The Great Pyrenees mix — he acts quite a bit like a Golden Retriever. So maybe someday. And do the dogs come with you to the track? Sometimes. What's the key to having dogs in a motorhome? Oh gosh, I don't know. They're well-behaved, so they're good at chilling out. And I think if you have a super-hyper dog, it's not the place. But they're really good at just hanging out. And you just moved to Vegas recently. So what are you discovering about Vegas that makes it nice? Is it kind of like a getaway from Indianapolis and the Midwest? It's very different from the Midwest. There's a lot more to do than people think. There's the obvious, but I don't really drink or gamble or do any of that, especially in season. There's a lot of great hiking, mountain biking, the lake right there, right outside of Las Vegas, Lake Mead. So there's a lot of cool outdoorsy things to do. There's a lot of good backpacking. The golf is amazing out there. And important for me, it's really close to my family in California, too. So it's easy to get back. It's a lot easier to have babysitters for the dogs if I need to go somewhere. You talk about being close to your family. But of course, your dad is in the sport, and actually you compete against him on a weekly basis. What's that dynamic like? And do you ever tell him, "Well, you should tell me that strategy. Why are you keeping that from me?" He's open about what he thinks is a good strategy for the race. Maybe if he was on a different team, it would be different. But because we're technically teammates in a sense; he's on the 27 [car of my teammate]. For me, it was such a huge plus, especially growing up with somebody like that. Not only was it the reason why I got into this sport, but I think it's also the reason why I was able to be so successful really early on. It's a big part in me being ready and able to win my third start in INDYCAR. It's had a huge, influential role. It's helped me coming up, not only get with the teams that I've gotten with and get to know the people that I've gotten to know but also just from a standpoint of driving and understanding how to make myself better. He didn't have it easy as a race car driver. Is there anything that you ever saw when he was racing that made you think you might not want to do this because you've seen the highs and the lows? No, because I was so young. He retired when I was 8 years old. At that point, I just thought it was the coolest job ever. And I didn't really see that aspect until I was racing and especially later, when I got into cars. Because in go-karts, it's a lot more — and I credit him for making it this way — it's a lot more fun than it is like, "Oh man, I did bad this weekend." I would do bad and then go play with my buddies. Nowadays, if I do bad, I'm just pissed off for a while. It's different now. But from that aspect, I really grew up in a really fun environment, and I think that's what made me love it. When I was a kid, I was very independent. And much like a lot of kids, I didn't want to hear what my parents told me. So if they created an environment that wasn't like that — [if there was] pressure, no fun … who knows. I probably would not be here. Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR and INDYCAR for FOX Sports. He has spent decades covering motorsports, including over 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass.


USA Today
a day ago
- USA Today
How to watch IndyCar live in Portland in 2025, weekend schedule
The NTT IndyCar Series is ready for the upcoming action in Portland, marking the 15th official race weekend of the 2025 season. In 2024, Will Power won, with Alex Palou and Josef Newgarden rounding out the podium. IndyCar drivers and teams finally return to Portland, and they're ready to put on a show! Below, you can find more details about the on-track action in Portland this weekend! IndyCar live today: Portland Here are the upcoming practice, qualifying, and race times for the current race weekend on the IndyCar schedule (all ET). Watch IndyCar in Portland FREE on Fubo More: IndyCar schedule: Start times, TV networks, and more in 2025 We occasionally recommend interesting products and services. If you make a purchase by clicking one of the links, we may earn an affiliate fee. Motorsports Wire operates independently, though, and this doesn't influence our coverage.