DETROIT, Mich — Alex Palou left little doubt. Despite three late race restarts inside of 13 to go, Palou wouldn’t be denied in scoring his sixth career NTT INDYCAR SERIES victory in dominating fashion.
Power topped Will Power by 1.1843-seconds to win the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix to score his second win in the last three races.
“It was a busy race honestly,” Palou said despite leading a race-high 74 of 100 laps. “We had a really fast car. Yeah, we were really good on the first stint. I think we did the right strategy of just pushing. We knew the tire deg was going to be high. I think it was going to be high anyway if we were managing or not.
“I think we got a gap that gave us the opportunity to fight with Will. He did a tremendous job. At the end it was too busy for me. I wanted to be more calm end of the race.
“Honestly it was a great day for us, for the No. 10 Ridgeline car. Couldn’t be prouder of the work we did. My first win on a street course. My first win with a Ridgeline Lubricants car.
“I mean, it’s super special, but it’s more special because it’s my first street course win. I’ve been fast. We’ve been there. We’ve been on the podium many times on a street course, but I didn’t really had a win. Today we got it.
“Yeah, having a Honda car, all the power that we had, the fuel mileage that they gave us for this weekend obviously makes it extra sweet.”
Palou started off on the pole and led the first 29 laps before pitting for the first time for the Firestone primary tires. He’d inherit the lead back on Lap 36 and would lead until Will Power got by him on Lap 55. Palou got him back then pit immediately for the final time on Lap 66.
After a strong stop, he’d come out tops among those that have pit for the final time. He just had to wait for Josef Newgarden, Kyle Kirkwood and teammate Marcus Ericsson to hit pit lane for their final sstops first.
On Lap 76, Ericsson did. Palou took over the top stop and would lead the final 24 laps en route to the victory.
Power did his best to snag the win away, but never had enough and had to settle for second in his No. 12 Dallara-Chevrolet.
It was the second straight 1-2 finish between Ganassi and Penske, this time in reverse order of last Sunday’s 107th Running of the Indianapolis 500.
The two teams have won each of the last 10 series championships and have now won 6 of the 7 races this year and 40 of the 53 (75.4%) of the races with the Aeroscreen. Combined, Ganassi and Penske now have six of the top eight in points including 1-2-3-4.
“It was a really fun race. It was a lot better than I expected,” said Palou. “We had a lot more grip today than what we did. I think the track evolve a lot during the weekend.
“I will watch the race obviously because I had a clean race, let’s say. But honestly Detroit did a tremendous job. The fans were amazing. I was mind blowed of how many fans we had today being a first-time event. Also the podium on Victory Lane was really fun.
“Yeah, hopefully we can tweak some stuff and make it even better for next year. But, yeah, cannot wait.”
Felix Rosenqvist finished third with Scott Dixon and Alexander Rossi rounding out the top five in the wildly entertaining race.
Palou In A Class All By Himself
Alex Palou is showing everyone why Chip Ganassi fought so hard to keep him last season. It would have been just as easy for Ganassi to let Palou walk like most are expecting him to at the end of this season anyways. Why keep a dead-end driver one more season?
Sunday’s race in Detroit is why.
Palou led a race-high 74 of 100 laps from the pole en route to a dominating race on a dominating race weekend. It was his second straight pole after having 1 pole in his previous 52 starts and second win in the last three races.
“It feels amazing,” Palou said of this momentum.” You need to try to ride the wave while you have it. Yeah, happy that we have a wave and that we can ride it because we know the season is really long, you have some races that don’t go that well.
“Yeah, I mean, we are for sure. We got the pole. We got the win at GMR, got the pole at Indy, got the pole here and the win here. Obviously we’re in a roll.
“We’ll try and keep the wave rolling if we can because it’s a great moment for us. We know this is not going to get until the end of the season. We’ll try to get advantage of that. The next couple of races are really good for us. We’ll try and, as I said, keep it going.
“I mean, we didn’t really have a really good start of the season this year. I think we could have done a little bit better. Like our car was better than what we finished.
“No, honestly, we had a great, I don’t know, seven races if we count Laguna. They’ve been amazing. I had fast cars every weekend. Yeah, couldn’t ask for more now.”
So far, Palou hasn’t really had many races that didn’t go well.
He won by nearly 20-seconds in the GMR Grand Prix. He overcame Rinus VeeKay running into him on pit road last Sunday in Indy to finish fourth. Prior to May, he was eighth in St. Pete, third in Texas and fifth in Long Beach and Barber respectively.
He led 22 laps in Texas, two in Long Beach, 52 in the GMR Grand Prix, 36 in the Indy 500 and now 76 more.
This dominance has him opening up a 51-point lead in the standings. It was 20 entering this weekend. For a series that has seen the championship not decided until the final race for 18 straight years now, Palou is on a pace to maybe wrap this up early.
He’s 70 points clear of third, 82 points clear of fifth. When going back to last year, he won the season finale by a half-a-minute in leading 67 of 95 laps in the process. It was that weekend he and Ganassi patched things up and off he’s went since with an average finish of 3.5 over the last eight races. He’s led 255 laps in that span with three wins.
Prior to last year’s season finale, Palou had just two podiums in 12 starts. That’s because of his battle with Ganassi to leave and go to McLaren. His access was cutoff and it cost him results.
Still, while in that battle, he did have eight top 10’s. It’s just the fact that he had three podiums in the four races to start last season before these issues arose.
He’s by far the top driver in this paddock right now.
Strategy Helps Power, McLaren’s Score Top 5’s
Coming into Sunday’s race, no one truly knew what strategy was going to be the winning one. Due to the practice carnage, there wasn’t enough clean laps available to know not only what the right tire choice would be, but what kind of setups would work best for the two options of tires.
So, most of the field elected to start the race on the Firestone alternates. There were a few that elected to go off strategy and onto the Firestone primaries instead. That paid off massively.
Will Power, the three Arrow McLaren drivers, Rinus VeeKay, David Malukas and Graham Rahal were on the blacks at the start. Power quickly rose going from his 7th starting spot to 3rd by Lap 20. Two laps later, he was in second.
Power cut the gap from 10 seconds to 2 seconds before pole sitter Alex Palou hit pit lane for the first time on Lap 29. Power would take over until he pit on Lap 33. He’d cycle to second after that first pit sequence and remain there the rest of the way.
“Yeah, very satisfied. Good strategy. I mean, starting on the blacks, everything played out as we thought,” Power said.
The McLaren’s followed the same strategy.
Felix Rosenqvist started ninth and was fourth after the first stint. Alexander Rossi went from 12th to fifth. Pato O’Ward would have been there if not for an issue on his stop.
The trio would stay in the top five the rest of the way. On the Lap 91 restart, Power went for the lead going outside Alex Palou for the top spot. Power was too wide and got into Scott Dixon. Rossi meanwhile, benefitted the most in going from fifth to second while Power slid into third and Rosenqvist remaining in fourth.
On the ensuing restart, Power got back by Rossi for second. Rosenqvist battled back and hip checked Rossi to snag his fifth career podium while Dixon got back by Rossi to finish fourth in the aftermath.
“I guess we were worried when the yellow came. Everyone packs up. But then we got a yellow again, so that kind of helped us,” Power admitted. “We had 10 laps to push hard. I got Palou on the restart. Then they went off, he got me back. Yeah, I couldn’t get him. I tried everything.
“I think my one chance was when Dixon got into me a little bit, I was trying to switch back and get a run, get him into four. Apart from that, yeah, the next restart was in third so I didn’t have another shot at him.
“Very good job. Man, you’re never looking back on seconds as a bad day. Although the guy I was needing to close points to was the guy that won. We limited the damage.”
McLaren had two cars in the top five for the second time in three races while Rossi is starting to find his groove in netting four straight top eight finishes including three in-a-row in the top five. That’s propelled him from 14th in points leaving Barber to sixth in a three-race span.
“I think we needed it,” Rosenqvist said of this podium. “We’ve been pretty much up there every weekend. We had three DNFs which hurt.
“It seems this year in the championship a lot of the top runners have had tough races as well. I think we can recover if we keep the momentum going.
“It’s nice. I think all the boys and girls on the 6 car, Arrow McLaren, really deserved it. We’ve been up there sniffing for a long time. Hasn’t worked out.
“It was a fun race. Felt like we were just quick all through it. We went up every stage of race. We were in a position where we could maybe win it in the end. Yeah, it was a bit dicey on the restarts in the end. The second to last there, Dixon went wide. I had to grab the clutch. I think Will had the same. That potentially could have cost us a bit.
“I’m happy to finish on the podium after all the close calls.”
O’Ward’s Mistakes Keeping Him From Championship
Pato O’Ward came into the 2023 NTT INDYCAR SERIES season wanting more. He had been close over the last few years but hasn’t truly been good enough to knock off Penske and Ganassi from their throne on top of the series.
There’s a reason that Penske and Ganassi have won each of the last 10 series titles. If O’Ward and Arrow McLaren Racing was going to become the first team since 2013 to win a title not named Penske or Ganassi and the first team not named Andretti either since 2002, then they’d have to find more consistency.
The young Mexican start had two wins in each of the last two seasons. O’Ward also has had 9 podiums in that same two-year span (5 in 2021, 4 in 2022). Out of his 8 Top-5 finishes a year ago, only four of them landed on the podium.
That was the difference.
O’Ward’s had 13 starts of 7th or better (10 being 5th or better) over the course of the final 14 races in 2022. He only had 4 podiums to show for it.
That blueprint was there and the team worked so hard this offseason to fix it.
It all started off good for O’Ward this year too. While an engine malfunction while leading at the end of St. Pete happened, he still finished second. In the next race at Texas, second again. He was looking like a legitimate title contender.
Then came some mistakes. Over the next five races, including Sunday’s in Detroit, O’Ward has made some costly errors to which he will look back come seasons end and point to these moments to why he may not be in the position that he needs to be in to hoist the Astor Cup championship trophy in Laguna Seca this Fall.
O’Ward had a bad strategy call in the second round of qualifying in Long Beach. That took him from a potential pole to qualifying sixth. In the race, he tried to make up too much ground too often and it bit him. He’d finish 17th.
O’Ward rebounded in Barber to finish fourth and then another runner-up in May’s GMR Grand Prix. He was back in the hunt again.
Unfortunately, being overzealous on a late race restart in the Indy 500 took him from a top three to a crash in 24th and then compounding a bad pit stop to a mistake on track for another crash in Detroit left him in 26th.
While O’Ward was upset at Marcus Ericsson for his mistake at Indy, he should have been more patient in the process. Yes, O’Ward went from first to third on the opening lap of the restart, but it looked like he tried too hard to get a position back entering Turn 3.
In Detroit, he was on the right strategy as he was the same as his teammates to start the race and they were all in the top five after the first stint, but an issue on the stop left him a lap down. He was hoping to pass Santino Ferrucci on track to be the first a lap down and got in too hot into Turn 9 and found the concrete wall.
“Race went upside down on that pit stop,” O’Ward said. “It was all downhill from there.”
He went from three points out of the lead entering the GMR Grand Prix to 82 back leaving Detroit.
While you have to be aggressive in this series, O’Ward has found the limit and has unfortunately passed over it. He needs to reel it in a bit because he has a championship caliber car, but he’s getting in his own way.
It’s not too late, but he’s out of mulligans. Penske and Ganassi have won 6 of the 7 races this season and have 6 of the top 8 spots in the standings including 1-2-3-4. O’Ward has some work to do.
Grosjean’s Slide Continues
Romain Grosjean came into the Month of May riding a wave of momentum. The third-year driver had two straight runner-up finishes and knew that he was on the cusp of a victory. He was fourth in points and within 15 markers of the lead.
Then the slide started.
Grosjean only qualified 18th for the GMR Grand Prix. He’d finish 11th. For the Indy 500, he’d start just 19th. The Swiss born driver crashed in Turn 2 for a second consecutive year, this time on Lap 149 and finished 30th.
From coming into the month with momentum to leaving without it.
However, Detroit was going to be the start back. Grosjean had a chance of a win in St. Pete and was second in Long Beach. He even qualified third for Sunday’s Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix.
However, running into the Turn 8 run-off coming to his first stop dropped him from third to seventh. While running there at the end, he crashed in Turn 4 leaving him 24th at the end.
Mistakes after mistakes again.
Grosjean led 31 laps in St. Pete but crashed with Scott McLaughlin while battling for the win on Lap 71. In Texas, he crashed with two laps left while running in the top five. Now this.
Instead of a top two in St. Pete, a top five in Texas and a top 5-7 in Detroit, he finished 18th, 14th and 24th in those races.
That has dropped Grosjean from fourth (-15) entering the GMR Grand Prix to 11th in points (-128) leaving Detroit.
Kirkwood Rebounds For Top 10 Finish
Kyle Kirkwood started Sunday’s Detroit Grand Prix with Callum Ilott driving over the top of him. Literally. The team had to change his entire rear wing assembly but was able to get him back out. Despite that, he went from second to last to finishing inside of the top 10.
Kirkwood was able to get onto the Firestone primary tires while on pit lane for repairs and ended up running that stint long to Lap 37. With a fast car, Kirkwood picked car after car off over the course of the 100 lap race and found himself back in the top 10 in that final stint.
In fact, he led Lap 69 before pitting for the final time. By doing so, he came out in the top 10. He then picked a few cars off and found himself sixth for a remarkable rebound.
He had a fast car all weekend in being third quickest in both practice sessions and if not for crashing in qualifying, he had a pole winning car.
A week ago, Kirkwood flipped and was on his Aeroscreen in Turn 2. 7 days later, he’s sixth.
Top Stat
This was a massive race for Chevrolet with it taking place literally on their global headquarters’ doorstep. A week after winning the Indy 500, the bowties was after a win in their backyard.
“Look, it’s an important race for Chevy. World headquarters,” Scott McLaughlin said of the importance of this race being in Chevy’s backyard. “I’ve always said it, I always put more pressure on myself than anyone could put on me. It’s not just Chevy, it’s Roger Penske. Home race. A lot of partners here this weekend. I’m sponsored by a very big company that has a massive presence here, Gallagher, with Detroit Tigers. It’s a big town for them.”
Honda though took it to them and leave a perfect 3-for-3 on street courses. In fact, they took 2 of the 3 spots on the podium too and have now taken 6 podium trophies out of the 9 available on street courses this season.
It went Ganassi-McLaren-Ganassi in St. Pete, Andretti-Andretti-Ganassi in Long Beach and now Ganassi-Penske-McLaren in Detroit.
DETROIT – Results Sunday of the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix presented by Lear NTT INDYCAR SERIES event on the 1.645-mile Streets of Detroit, with order of finish, starting position in parentheses, driver, engine, laps completed and reason out (if any):
1. (1) Alex Palou, Honda, 100, Running
2. (7) Will Power, Chevrolet, 100, Running
3. (9) Felix Rosenqvist, Chevrolet, 100, Running
4. (4) Scott Dixon, Honda, 100, Running
5. (13) Alexander Rossi, Chevrolet, 100, Running
6. (12) Kyle Kirkwood, Honda, 100, Running
7. (2) Scott McLaughlin, Chevrolet, 100, Running
8. (11) Marcus Armstrong, Honda, 100, Running
9. (6) Marcus Ericsson, Honda, 100, Running
10. (5) Josef Newgarden, Chevrolet, 100, Running
11. (24) Colton Herta, Honda, 100, Running
12. (17) Devlin DeFrancesco, Honda, 100, Running
13. (8) Simon Pagenaud, Honda, 100, Running
14. (20) Agustin Canapino, Chevrolet, 100, Running
15. (15) Conor Daly, Chevrolet, 100, Running
16. (18) Christian Lundgaard, Honda, 100, Running
17. (25) Jack Harvey, Honda, 100, Running
18. (14) Rinus VeeKay, Chevrolet, 100, Running
19. (23) Helio Castroneves, Honda, 100, Running
20. (19) Benjamin Pedersen, Chevrolet, 97, Running
21. (22) Santino Ferrucci, Chevrolet, 97, Running
22. (26) Sting Ray Robb, Honda, 97, Running
23. (21) David Malukas, Honda, 85, Contact
24. (3) Romain Grosjean, Honda, 80, Contact
25. (27) Graham Rahal, Honda, 50, Contact
26. (10) Pato O’Ward, Chevrolet, 41, Contact
27. (16) Callum Ilott, Chevrolet, 1, Contact
Race Statistics
Winner’s average speed: 80.922 mph
Time of Race: 02:01:58.1171
Margin of victory: 1.1843 seconds
Cautions: 7 for 32 laps
Lead changes: 10 among 7 drivers
Lap Leaders:
Palou, Alex 1 – 28
Power, Will 29 – 33
O’Ward, Pato 34
Palou, Alex 35 – 55
Power, Will 56 – 64
Palou, Alex 65
Rossi, Alexander 66
Newgarden, Josef 67 – 68
Kirkwood, Kyle 69
Ericsson, Marcus 70 – 76
Palou, Alex 77 – 100
NTT INDYCAR SERIES Point Standings:
Palou 273, Ericsson 222, Newgarden 203, Dixon 194, O’Ward 191, Rossi 176, McLaughlin 175, Power 172, Herta 149, Rosenqvist 148, Grosjean 145, Kirkwood 142, Lundgaard 136, Ilott 116, VeeKay 108, Ferrucci 105, Armstrong 101, Rahal 99, Malukas 91, Daly 88, DeFrancesco 81, Castroneves 80, Harvey 78, Canapino 77, Pagenaud 72, Pedersen 61, Robb 55, Takuma Sato 37, Ed Carpenter 27,
Race Review Online 