Alex Palou started Sunday’s race on pole and ended the afternoon with another victory to his name, but that result did not come easily.
Multiple pit strategies split the field in half when the yellow flags flew on lap 35, and it was not known until later in the race which was the best way to go.
Palou was part of the group that stayed on track during the early caution, with his Chip Ganassi Racing crew deciding that it would be better to take the track position, push hard the rest of the race, and complete an extra pit stop further down the road.
Others that were at the head of the field at the time, including Colton Herta and Kyle Kirkwood, went the other direction, and they spent the rest of the 95 lap race managing fuel mileage and very slowly working their way back through the field.
Palou described after his race win that he felt the strategy was too risky, but his loss of three positions in the opening laps forced the team to make the call.
“At the beginning of the race, I wasn’t really executing,” said Palou. “The car was really fast. I couldn’t overtake Kyle [Kirkwood]. That kind of put us in a bad position.
“The team had to do a really risky strategy, too risky in my opinion. But it worked out so I’m really happy that it worked out. Sometimes you need a little bit of luck.
“Yeah, it was risky. I mean, it’s motorsport. We knew we had the car for P1. I was P4 at that time. Finishing P4 today wasn’t a good race.
“I knew it was risky just in case we did, like, five laps, pull a gap. I know we were going to pull a gap. Imagine we have eight seconds ahead, then there’s a caution, we’re done. We have to make an extra pit stop to everybody.
“We’re going to be in the back of the queue. We’re not going to have any way to overtake 10, 15 cars. That’s why it was a bit risky.
“For my mind, it was just like, ‘Are we sure this is the right one?’ When [my strategist] said yes, I was like, ‘All right, let’s go fast.’ So that’s what we did.”
Palou led 48 laps on the day, including most of the second half of the race. Herta managed to make his way back up to second place on the other strategy, but did not have the pace to challenge Palou meaningfully.
The reigning series champion now commands a 23 point lead over Will Power, familiar territory for the Spaniard as the second half of the season gets underway.
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