Unstoppable Alex Palou leaves Barber with third IndyCar win of the season
Another caution-less IndyCar race makes it 339 green flag laps since the last caution at St. Pete, which didn't really pave the way for Chip Ganassi Racing's Alex Palou (#10) third win of the season. But it certainly may have helped.
The three-time IndyCar championship winner again demonstrated his own masterclass of how to own the IndyCar field at the Children's of Alabama Indy Grand Prix at Barber Motorsports Park, finishing well over 15-seconds ahead of the rest of the field. At some point hearing from the team over the radio: "Everything looks good. Nice and smooth. Take a drink."
Palou set the pace from the moment the green flag waved for the start, running an almost unobtainable pace for the other cars in the field, winning directly from pole and making for his second-ever win at Barber, his first win claimed just four years ago with Chip Ganassi Racing.
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"It was the perfect day. I would say a perfect weekend. First time we were rocking that number 10 HRC livery. I'm super proud of everybody that has been working on the 10 car and Chip Ganassi Racing and HRC as well. Yeah, honestly it's been just a perfect day. The car was amazing — super fast, and I just had a ton of fun. I was a bit lonely there, but I loved it. It was an amazing day.
"I mean, we've always been really good here. I love this place, every single lap here just feels amazing in an IndyCar. So yeah, it's gonna be extra special from now on."
The rest of the field, whether on primaries or alternates, was left to gamble tire strategies — would using the required primary set at the start of the race get the difficult tire out of the way and allow them to utilize alternates for better control and speed for the rest of the race? Or would using them in the final laps of the race give an advantage over tires that were hanging by a thread (not literally)?
Where tire strategy worked: the handful of drivers who started the race on the black primary tires seemed to benefit the most, with the top seven cars using their primaries either right at the start, or at their second stop. But Alexander Rossi (#20), Kyle Kirkwood (#27), and Christian Rasmussen (#21) bet on the primaries for the end which didn't quite work out strategy-wise, as Rossi explained.
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"It's horrible," the Ed Carpenter Racing driver and Indy 500 winner told media post-race. "Like, we knew it was going to be bad at some point, but with where we started, we were just trying to get as much track position as we could on the alternate tire and build a big enough gap to the cars we were able to put them on. At the end, it was a lot of work to keep Nolan [Siegel] and Joseph [Newgarden] behind there, but, the team called a great race, and they were great in pit lane so I think that was the most we could do on the day."
Tire strategy will hopefully play a more interesting role going into Indianapolis next week for the Sonsio Grand Prix where cars will now be required to utilize two sets of alternate and two sets of primaries for the race. Qualifying for Indy's race on the roval kicking off the Month of May is Friday, May 9 at 4:30pm EDT, with race day on Sunday, again at 4:30pm EDT.
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