Doyel: Alex Palou cements legacy as best of his generation, one of best ever, at Indy 500

Indianapolis Star

25-05-2025

Alex Palou is climbing out of the fastest car of his life, the one that just won the 2025 Indianapolis 500, and he's pulling off his gloves, his helmet, the protective sock on his head. He's trotting away from his racecar, parked there just across the bricks, and jogging toward the first turn. Now he's running, faster, faster, until he's sprinting.
He is running toward his family, his team owner, his IndyCar crew … but he's also running away. Away from the cruel whims of Indianapolis Motor Speedway, those bizarre quirks that often decide who will win the Indy 500 by deciding who won't. Away from the questions, the doubts, the nonsense that the best younger driver of his generation – just 28 years old, on pace to become one of the best drivers of any generation – won't or maybe just can't win on ovals. Six years into his career, the numbers entering the 109th Indy 500 were staggering:
Three IndyCar series championships, all in the last four years. Fifteen wins on street or road courses.
Zero wins on ovals.
None.
So there's Alex Palou after crossing the bricks, running toward Turn 1 and picking up speed, seeing his team rushing toward him, climbing over the wall. This is when Palou stops running. There's nothing to run away from. Not anymore.
Now his team is here, and everyone's jumping up and down and the IMS sellout crowd of 325,000 is roaring and Palou is surrounded by teammates. One of them shouts something that can be heard above the celebration:
'Now you're a real IndyCar driver!'
And Alex Palou starts to cry.
Picture gallery: See Alex Palou win 109th Indianapolis 500, celebrate
To win the Indy 500, sometimes it helps to lose it first. That's the story of Alex Palou in 2025, when he won this race in part because he lost it in 2021. Well, Helio Castroneves won it that year. It was Helio's fourth win, and the old master used all his guile and experience to survive Palou's clearly superior car.
'I don't know if he was waiting to pass, or he was going all out,' Palou said later that day. 'I'll have to ask him.'
In 2021 Helio had been biding his time, saving up for one shocking late pass, getting it on Lap 199 and then running into lapped traffic ahead. This was good for Helio, because he didn't have the car to hold off Palou by himself. But with slower cars ahead of him? Oh yeah. Helio had the car for that, because he just stuck close to the lapped traffic – essentially hemming in Palou behind him. Palou had the car to pass Helio, and everyone knew it. But he didn't have the car to pass Helio and the cars ahead of him.
And Palou knew it.
Why the trip down memory lane? Because it happened again in 2025 – happened Sunday – when Palou went into the final 14 laps trailing 2022 Indy 500 winner Marcus Ericsson, and it was Ericsson who had the superior machine. Well, maybe not the superior machine, but the superior fuel-and-tire situation.
Even an elite driver needs luck to win a race like this, to avoid the whims and quirks that make some lose a race like this – hang around, I'll show you some cruel examples from Sunday – and Ericsson had the luck. He'd chosen a conservative fuel-and-tires strategy, and not been forced to pay for it with a late yellow flag that would've allowed cars with less fuel and older tires, cars like the one driven by Palou, to coast under caution and conserve fuel and rubber for the final mad dash. Ericsson was going to win this race, if he could just avoi—
That.
Palou, like Helio four year earlier, was biding his time, saving up for one pass at the end, and doing it in the most shocking way of all: not waiting to the end. Palou may be just 28, but he's a wise old owl himself – three IndyCar series titles in four years, remember – and he chose Lap 186 to make his one final run at Ericsson. He got it, and guess what was waiting?
Lapped traffic.
Can't make this up.
Alex Palou has neither the fuel nor the tires to outrace Marcus Ericsson over the final 14 laps. But like Helio in 2021, Palou has enough of both in 2025 to get behind the final two cars on the lead lap, Devlin DeFrancesco and Louis Foster, and let them pull him along. With no need to pass anyone, and no real need to fend off Ericsson with daring aggression, Palou tucks behind DeFrancesco and Foster and basically coasts to the final two laps.
Now it's going to get real, because Ericsson can't afford to wait anymore. He has the fuel, the tires and the confidence. If he has to pass three cars in one move, that's what he'll try to do. He's not 24-year-old Alex Palou, circa 2021, with no oval wins behind him and three-time Indy 500 champion Helio Castroneves in front. Ericsson, 34, won this race in 2022, then was held off by Josef Newgarden's dragon blocking maneuver in 2023. He's not going to sit back and, maybe later, and ask Palou anything.
Ericsson is about to make a move, and Palou knows it. Palou starts weaving, a modified version of the dragon by Newgarden in 2023 and again in '24, and Ericsson is weaving with him and then, wait.
What?
Moments before someone can wave the checkered flag for the last lap, they're waving the yellow flag? Someone wrecked? This race is under caution?
Can't make this up.
Back in the pack, Nolan Siegel had crumpled into the wall. Out comes the yellow flag. The race will end as it began, under caution. Alex Palou had been strategically coasting since Lap 186, and now he can coast with no strategy, no fear, no challenge. The race is over. It's his.
Afterward, he will climb out of his car and start jogging, then running, then … well, you know what he did. But check out Marcus Ericsson. He gets out of his car and looks devastated. He's exhausted, but this is more. He has just been gutted by the cruel whims of Indianapolis Motor Speedway, those bizarre quirks that often decide who will win the Indy 500 by helping decide who will not.
Those quirks of IMS, those whims of the Indy 500 – they were working overtime this year, weren't they? And they started early, before the race even began, forcing one of the pre-race favorites, Scott McLaughlin of Team Penske, into the wall during the parade lap while causing something in 2008 Indy 500 champion Scott Dixon's car to catch fire near the brakes.
One crash and one fire … in the parade lap. Ever heard such a thing? Me neither, but clean out those ears to hear this:
The 2025 Indy 500 started under a caution. True story. McLaughlin's crash brought out the yellow flag, and it wasn't until the fourth lap that the race, finally, went green. And it stayed green for one whole turn.
Yes, one turn. That's when the whims of Indy 500 ran headlong into the Andretti Curse – and drove Marco Andretti into the wall. The right rear of his car was obliterated, his day over.
This was a who's who of Indy 500 drivers derailed by whims, by quirks: pole winner Robert Shwartzman (pit lane crash), two-time defending champion Newgarden (fuel pressure issue), 2016 champion Alexander Rossi (car caught fire on pit lane), 2014 champion and Lap 169 leader Ryan Hunter-Reay (stalled in pit lane), and favorite son Conor Daly (right rear) shortly after Noblesville's own had taken a mid-race lead in the Indy 500 for the third time in four years.
Doyel: Multiple Team Penske cars busted again, this time during Indy 500 qualifying
The whims, the quirks, threatened to severely injure two crew members, too. The fire that ended Rossi's day sent his crew member holding the fuel, Mike Miller, to IMS emergency room. The fire that ignited in Rossi's engine had followed the fuel to Miller's hands, who ignored the fire on his own body long enough to ensure the fire was out on the car. Crew members saw what was happening, and doused Miller.
Shwartzman's pit-lane misadventure also had other ramifications. Shwartzman's car, careening out of control as he approached his crew – 'At the moment when I braked,' Shwartzman told Fox Sports trackside, 'I was just a passenger' – pinned four of them against the wall. Three stayed with the car, but the fourth, fueler Spence Hall, flopped backward over the retaining wall, like a scuba driver slipping into the water.
Miller and Hall (right foot) avoided serious injury, their drivers said.
The whims, the quirks of this place also ended the race of Rinus VeeKay, who hit pit lane at about 120 mph – the speed limit was soon to become 60 mph – when his brakes locked up. Then, honestly, good fortune struck. Rather than plowing into pit lane at speeds in excess of 100 mph, VeeKay's car spun into the wall and skidded to a stop. His race was over, but nobody was injured. VeeKay will return for the 2026 Indianapolis 500 as the best 20-something driver alive without an Indy 500 win.
VeeKay will have that distinction because Palou is off the list, the most gifted driver of his generation outrunning the whims, avoiding the quirks, then sprinting down the track as champion of the 2025 Indianapolis 500.
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Threads, or on BlueSky and Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar, or at www.facebook.com/greggdoyelstar. Subscribe to the free weekly Doyel on Demand newsletter.