Alex Palou vs. Josef Newgarden

Alex Palou and Josef Newgarden are not only 1-2 in points, but they’re also the last two drivers to win on these hallowed grounds of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway too. Palou won the May road course race here by 16.8006-seconds. He led 67 of 85 laps that day. The Spaniard has gone on to win four total races during the 2023 NTT INDYCAR SERIES season which also includes a win at Road America and Mid-Ohio.

Newgarden won the 107th Running of the Indianapolis 500 15 days after Palou’s win. It was his second Indy win (1 on the road course, 1 on the oval). Now, can either win this weekend?

Palou was 3rd in May 2021, had a fast car in May 2022 before going off course in the rain, had a podium going before his engine blew in Aug. 2021 and won by 16.8-seconds this past May.

Newgarden qualifies well (3rd, 5th last year) but also has just 1 podium in 13 Indy road course tries too. Out of his last five Indy road course races, he’s led just two laps. He was seventh in May. On natural road courses this season, he’s finished 15th, 7th and 2nd respectively.

Last year, Colton Herta (24th place) and Marcus Ericsson (11th place) tried the same feat and neither finished in the top 10.

The thing is, Newgarden has to hope for a good day or else this championship could be all but over.

Palou lucked out by having two late cautions last week in Nashville preserving a podium finish. He said he was a lap or two away from pitting before those yellows fell.

“We were, like, done,” Palou admitted. “We couldn’t really save that much fuel. It was impossible. We were already saving and losing like 2 seconds a lap, 2.5. They told me to go.

“We did one full lap of going because we wanted to get some lap time, try and pass some cars that were, like, 20th or whatever. Suddenly the yellow came. I was like, Yeah. Then another yellow that helped me a lot so I could at least be a bit more aggressive or defensive on the last restart.”

If that Lap 71 caution never flies, Palou likely does finish around 18th. That’s 12 points, plus one point for leading lap. He’d have 13 points for which Newgarden would move up to third and score 35. That’s a 22 point swing for which instead of facing an 84 point deficit, Newgarden would trail Palou by 58.

“Until they give us the trophy… I think Josef can win the last four races,” Palou said. “Why not? Everybody can do it. We can do it, as well.

“Yeah, on this championship, on this series, unfortunately I don’t think you can just take it easy, especially now with all the work we did. We don’t want to race to finish ninth. Maybe on the last race I would take that, absolutely.

“But, yeah, with Indy road course coming up, we won there on May, I think we know we have a fast car. We have an opportunity to win there again.”

Gateway is in two weeks for which Newgarden has won the last three at and is a perfect 4-for-4 on ovals this season. That could be a place Newgarden makes up some ground, but is it not enough?

What if Palou extends his advantage again?

54 points is a max points day. That means as we sit, over the next 3 races, Newgarden has to make up 30 points on Palou or this race is o-v-e-r.

Palou has finished 5th, 5th, 1st, 4th, 1st, 1st, 1st, 2nd, 8th, 3rd, 3rd over the last 11 races. Newgarden has finished 9th, 15th, 7th, 1st, 10th, 2nd, 12th, 5th, 1st, 1st, 4th himself.

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Which Penske Shows Up

Team Penske has the most Indy road course wins (8) and has the second most wins (9) on natural road courses during the Aeroscreen era. Penske also has the most podiums scored here with 14. They had 8 in the pre Aeroscreen era and 6 since (2020 and beyond). 

However, they’re also 1-for-5 over the last two years here and haven’t won the May particular event since 2019. At that time, this was their 5th straight win in the race. They’re 0-for-4 since.

It’s this race weekend to where they’ve been the best at.

Josef Newgarden led 34 of 85 laps in his win during the first doubleheader race of the Harvest Grand Prix race weekend in 2020. A day later, Will Power led all 75 laps in victory.

In August 2021, Power led 56 of 85 laps in another win. Last year, he finished third while Scott McLaughlin was fourth and Josef Newgarden in that summer race. 

Will they be the ones to beat this time around too?

They had 2 of the top 3 finishers in Barber. They were 7-12-16 here in May, 2-8-13 in Road America and 3-5-12 in Mid-Ohio.

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Can McLaren Get 1 Step Better?

It’s hard enough to get one Top-5 finish for a car in an organization in INDYCAR, let alone putting three. That’s exactly what Arrow McLaren Racing did this past May by finishing second, third and fifth respectively. That’s a feat in and of itself.

“Super stoked for the team,” said O’Ward then. “We put three cars in the top five. Fricking hard to do in this series with how competitive it is. Just stoked for everybody in the organization, for our 5 crew.”

O’Ward says that it’s not only good as a team, but to also do so at a track that they’ve traditionally struggled at was big. They always qualify well here, they just don’t finish.

Felix Rosenqvist started 6th and 1st respectively here last year but didn’t have a top five to show for it. Pato O’Ward qualified fifth and third but didn’t even have a top 10 to show for it. In fact, he finished fifth from his 2021 pole in the summer race here. What’s baffling is, O’Ward had four top 5 starting spots in his last five starts here, but three of his last four finishes had been 12th or worse. Rosenqvist had one top 5 in 8 tries.

They came out this year firing. O’Ward started fifth and finished runner-up. Rossi came from 10th to finish third. Rosenqvist went from second back to only fifth.

“Historically this hasn’t been the best of tracks for us. So this is awesome to see just the massive step forward we’ve taken here in race pace. Super happy to see that,” O’Ward notes.

On natural road courses this season, O’Ward was fourth in Barber, runner-up in Indy, third in Road America and 8th at Mid-Ohi for which I think he will be a threat. Rossi has finished eighth, third, 10th and 10th respectively on the same tracks. He won the last time out here in July, was third after starting 10th this past May and has 6 top 7 finishes in his last 7 tries here including 5 of which in the top 4.

At that point, McLaren was rolling. Pato O’Ward had 3 runner-up finishes in the first 5 races. Felix Rosenqvist had three straight top 10’s while Alexander Rossi had 3 top 8 finishes in the first 5 races himself.

Since?

Rossi has 2 top 8’s over the last 8 races, Rosenqvist has 3 top 10’s in the same span while O’Ward has just 2 top 5’s, both 3rd place finishes, since as well.

Can they turn it back on this weekend?

“Over the past few races, we’ve experienced a few struggles,” admitted Rossi. “But motorsport is never a straightforward journey; it’s a test of resilience. As we return to the site of our last podium, it reminds us that every race is an opportunity to learn and grow. We’re going to harness that past success.”

“Back in May, we had the best performance we’ve ever had on the Indy road course,” O’Ward quipped. “It will be awesome to go back to try and repeat that podium.”

Rosenqvist agreed.

“I’m happy to be back at our home track,” he says. “We had a great race here in May with all three cars. I love this track, and we’ll do everything we can to have that same success and get that first win for the team.”

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Can RLL Bring Same Pace?

This past May was a massive win for Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing. While they didn’t win the race, they won the pole, had all three cars rolling off in the top 4 Rows and if not for Graham Rahal being punted on the opening lap, likely would have had two cars in the top five at the end.

Christian Lundgaard was second in both practice sessions that weekend, qualified on the pole and finished fourth.

Despite saying on Friday of that race weekend that if he didn’t win, that he’d be disappointed, Lundgaard took a more mature approach after scoring his third career top five finish that day. He said that it was a relief that the race was actually over because the car was just too tough to drive on Saturday.

“Right now I’m satisfied,” he said. “It just wasn’t as quick today. There was a point of this race where I thought we weren’t going to finish at the top 10 with our balance. To end up with a top five is a win right now. And I think we need to look at the perspective of how our great performance wise and the positives to take from this weekend.”

Lundgaard started on the Firestone primary tires, just as the pole winner typically does here. It’s the safe play. With this track typically being a Firestone alternate race, he could go all out the rest of the way. Unfortunately, that just wasn’t the case for how his car was handling.

“Yeah, I mean, it was strange because that way that the reds were falling off,” he continued. “So I didn’t really understand how we got to balance so so wrong. But again, it’s things we need to learn from now. Of course, that’s not one of the best things and we’re not in the past. So these are the things that we need to learn.

“I don’t think we got it right today. I don’t think that call was the setup of the car was optimal for today’s race conditions and the tires. But again, it’s great points for us. I mean, I would rather be happy, be happy to say now we finished fourth.”

Lundgaard says that he gave it a little more than he had to, but the balance was the culprit to what not only kept him out of victory lane, but the podium too.

“I think we struggled a lot with balance today the car was from one one run to another run. It was a different balance. So it’s very, very difficult to to just understand the car. There was a point to where I didn’t really think I was gonna make it through just on balance that the car was so difficult to drive, but it’s here we’re in the top five. So that’s the positive nature of the race.”

He just didn’t have the balance and the right tire strategy to come out ahead. What did they learn though from that weekend to bring back and does it apply?

“We have learned a lot of things since we raced on the road course at IMS in May and it’s a continuous learning curve of course,” Lundgaard said this week. “I do think we’ll be competitive. It’s one of our strongest tracks and I think we’ve shown that as a team having had two cars in the Fast Six and having Graham qualifying eighth as well. I think we were the only team that had three cars in the top eight.

“We were competitive there and this gives us a chance to improve and make up for our mistakes in May. We weren’t on top of our strategy decisions and a lot has been learned since then. For sure the condensed weekend makes it more challenging but luckily this is one of the weekends and tracks where we know we will be competitive so we can be bold and experiment with other things and not necessarily worry about it for qualifying if it doesn’t work out in practice.

“It’s an interesting weekend and in the back of everyone’s minds that there will be NASCAR rubber on the track as well. Luckily, I don’t think it’s something that hurts us as a team. It will be hotter but, at the same time, looking at the statistics, the second Indy GP is the strongest one for the team the past two years and we’re going in off a pole from May so I don’t see a reason why we shouldn’t be competitive this weekend.”

Lundgaard has been stellar on natural road courses. He qualified sixth and finished there in Barber. He qualified seventh and finished there in Road America. He started 5th and finished 4th in Mid-Ohio. He finished runner-up here last July.  He’s also qualified 4th, 8th, 6th and 1st respectively.

Then you have his teammate Graham Rahal. What a story it would be to miss the Indy 500 then to come back with this team and win at least on the road course.

“I think we’re finally starting to make changes with the car, as I just said, that they’re responding the right way, the way you’d expect them to, and it’s nice. It’s nice to feel that,” Rahal said last month.

Rahal has 12 top 10’s in his last 13 tries too and has finished worse than 7th just once here since 2020 (8 races). He started on the front row in Mid-Ohio.

This is also Jack Harvey’s best track with 4 top 8’s including a podium and a fourth-place start in May.

“I’m excited to get back to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course,” he said. “It’s a track that I’ve always ran well and qualified well at, and on the whole, raced well at. We showed a lot of potential and promise at the race earlier this year in May so if we can iron out just a couple of these bits, trying to go out and get a top-10 and battle for the podium is what our expectation and target should be for the weekend. I’m excited to get back to a track that I’ve gone well at and just keep trucking away.”

Now that they’ve tasted a win in Toronto, can they win again in Indy? Lundgaard felt before Toronto, that this would be his best shot at picking up his first career win at.

“Luckily, we have another Indy GP later this year, in August, and we’ve been competitive there. I had my first podium, had my first pole there, so I might as well get my first win at the speedway,” Lundgaard said a few days prior to his Toronto win. “I really do think that we have that opportunity at that race. We just need to nail it during that weekend.”

Rahal will make his 15th INDYCAR start on the road course at IMS. After a second-place finish on the road course at IMS in 2015 and 2020, Graham finished fifth and seventh on the IMS road course in 2021 in May and August.

Last year in May, he started 12th and ran as high as sixth but the gamble for rain tires during ever-changing weather conditions challenged the field, including Rahal and Rossi initially, and others later. Slick track conditions and near zero visibility led to him running into the back of Kirkwood, which drew a penalty and a trip to the back of the field in 19th. He ultimately took the checkered flag in 16th place when the race went to the timed length after 75 of the planned 85 laps. In July, he started 17th and gained three spots at the start for P14 and by Lap 2 he was 11th.  He held the position through the FCC for Kellett.

He was 11th when he made his first of three stops, ninth when he made his second and seventh when he made his final stop, which he held until the checkered flag. He utilized the same black/red/red tire strategy the majority of the field ran. 

Earlier this year, Rahal battled from the back after opening lap contact from Kyle Kirkwood to finish 10th. Sixth place starter Kirkwood made contact with Rahal, who had pulled ahead in the first few turns of the opening lap. It sent him into other cars, and he ultimately had to pit to replace a right rear, punctured tire. A caution came out after that for two other cars, and he pit to top off before the race returned to green. He climbed into the lead for seven laps at one point and ultimately finished 10th to salvage his race. He is hoping for another strong event on the IMS road course for the team.

“I’m really pumped to get back to IMS for the Gallagher Grand Prix,” Rahal said. “I thought in May that we were really strong as a team, and we need to make sure we can kick off on the right foot again and that we’re doing the right things to make sure we’re competitive. Obviously, it’s not a given. Yes, we were good in May, but we need to make sure that it carries over into August which, in year’s past we kind of struggled to get that to transition to the hotter month. But hopefully we can do it and have a really good weekend.

“It’s a crazy schedule over the two days with everything happening in one day on Friday except for the race but I think we’re up to the task. As a team, we’ve put on a good performance before. I don’t see that changing so hopefully we can do well. The conditions are similar (to May), but the heat will be the biggest change and we don’t know whether it will be dry, wet or just how hot it will be. It’s important for us to have a really good event. We’re closing in on the end of the season and we’d like to finish on a good note. We haven’t had a podium on the 15 car so we’d like to make that happen. Let’s see how it all plays out.”

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Which Tire Will Be The Preferred One?

The INDYCAR race on the IMS road course is honestly a big strategy play. The 2022 race in May was purely a display of strategy among wet tires and slicks. That was an anomaly in a sense that was the first pure rain race here. The others are down to tire choice and when to use them on stints.

If you can make it past the opening lap, the cautions usually are few and far between (12 of last 13 races here have seen 2 or fewer) and the tire strategy in turn becomes the main focus.

Then there’s the tire strategy. The disparity between the two tire compounds is typically large meaning the blacks are slower initially but remain consistent over the course of a full fuel run while the reds have a great burst of initial speed but fall off more of the same period.

In Indy however, the reds didn’t typically fall off as much. So, the strategy was on which stints do you run the reds vs. the blacks.

This past May however, it swapped.

At that time when eventual race winner, Alex Palou, strapped into his No. 10 Dallara-Honda for the morning warmup practice session on race day, the race plan was already tentatively in place. They were just going to use this 30-minute session to confirm it.

However, what they quickly learned swayed them another direction.

“Well, we were going to do a bigger gamble before warmup, which was starting on used reds,” Palou said.

That session showed he and his team that reds were going to react a lot differently this year compared to the past. See, in most years, the reds had minimal fall off. They were the preferred tires. This year, they weren’t.

So, they decided to start on fresh reds and then go blacks the rest of the way. They were the only ones up front that decided to start on the alternates. That confused them. Among the top seven starters, they all went with the primary tire option. Palou didn’t.

“We knew that since practice, honestly, that we wanted to start on reds. I was surprised that not other people at the front started on reds,” he admitted.

“For us it was clear. We were struggling a little bit more than some of the guys on used reds in the warmup. But still it’s not like they were amazing. We knew that we didn’t want to use used reds. That’s why we started on new alternates, try to get the lead, try to get a big gap, like two, three, four, seconds, then work on our pace on blacks.

“Once I saw the starting grid with the tires, we were like, Okay, we’re in a good place. Still, you have to do it. We knew we were on the right strategy for the 10 car, but you still had to do it on track.”

Pole sitter Christian Lundgaard went primary to start, then red, red, black to the finish. Pato O’Ward, who finished second, went primary at the start, red, black, red to finish. Alexander Rossi started on the alternates in 10th and went reds, then reds again, then blacks, then reds.

Lundgaard went with the safe play by doing that strategy. With this track typically being a Firestone alternate race, he could go all out the rest of the way. Unfortunately, that just wasn’t the case for how his car was handling.

“Yeah, I mean, it was strange because that way that the reds were falling off,” he said. “So I didn’t really understand how we got to balance so so wrong. But again, it’s things we need to learn from now. Of course, that’s not one of the best things and we’re not in the past. So these are the things that we need to learn.

“I don’t think we got it right today. I don’t think that call was the setup of the car was optimal for today’s race conditions and the tires. I think we struggled a lot with balance today the car was from one one run to another run. It was a different balance. So it’s very, very difficult to to just understand the car. There was a point to where I didn’t really think I was gonna make it through just on balance that the car was so difficult to drive, but it’s here we’re in the top five. So that’s the positive nature of the race.”

Now, what happens this weekend?

If you go back to 2021, Conor Daly brought out the opening lap caution, but the rest of the way went green. From Lap 4 to Lap 85, it was all green flag racing. In turn, that meant this was a three-stop strategy race like we all thought it would be. The difference would come down to tire selections.

The pole sitter that year, Romain Grosjean, started off on the Firestone Alternate tires. They were the quickest and lasted as long as the Firestone primaries, so the guys that started on the Blacks pit early to get on the Reds. Well, Grosjean went with two straight stints on the Reds. The second one on scuffed reds.

Eventual race winner, Rinus VeeKay, started off on the primary tires and pit for the Reds on Lap 12. Grosjean, didn’t pit for his first stop until Lap 25. VeeKay, would pit again on Lap 36 for scuffed reds. Grosjean pit on Lap 43 but had to go to Blacks.

That was the difference.

VeeKay got him and made his move for the lead among their sequence. He’d be able to go with Reds the final time but already hold the lead while Grosjean was too far back before he could do anything about it.

Third place finisher that day, Alex Palou, went on the Reds until Lap 25 then put on Blacks on Lap 40. He’d go Blacks again on Lap 62 as he was one of three guys to finish the race on the primary tires.

That’s just a prime example on how this race played out on strategy and I expect a similar debate again this time around.

Plus, you have stock cars on track with Goodyear tire rubber to throw a wrench into things too. Friday will be purely INDYCAR and Indy NXT. Saturday morning you have Xfinity Series practice and qualifying followed by the Cup Series. All that rubber will be on the track to start the Gallagher Grand Prix after.

“It’s an interesting weekend and in the back of everyone’s minds that there will be NASCAR rubber on the track as well. Luckily, I don’t think it’s something that hurts us as a team,” Lundgaard said.