How Alex Palou Won The 2025 Indy 500: 'He's Just An Incredible Driver'
How Alex Palou Won The 2025 Indy 500: 'He's Just An Incredible Driver'
Breaking down how Alex Palou won the 2025 Indianapolis 500 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway despite not having the best car.
Alex Palou admittedly didn't have the fastest nor best-handling car.
He didn't lead the 200-lap spectacle until lap 187. His tires were fading on him quickly. And although he’d been the event's overall betting favorite, the three-time NTT INDYCAR SERIES champion who made his living dominating the tour's road courses over the years had never won on an oval track before Sunday.
So how did the Spaniard rise above the chaos, calamity and always-frantic late-race strategy that turned the 109th Indianapolis 500 presented by Gainbridge into an unhinged, unpredictable affair? After an eventful day where any aforementioned variable could’ve produced the winner, Palou’s car owner Chip Ganassi reckons there’s only one answer.
“He’s just an incredible driver, what can you say?” Ganassi said.
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The 28-year-old Palou, who was one contract away from signing onto McLaren’s Formula 1 team (Palou backed out of the developing deal in 2023), didn’t win Sunday’s Indy 500 only leading the final 14 laps by accident.
His five victories the opening six races of the NTT INDYCAR SERIES season have showcased Palou’s rising greatness, which isn’t limited to merely the raw talent that Ganassi saw when he hired him 2021.
It takes way more than a fast race car and sheer driving ability at the Indy 500. It takes mettle, tactfulness in traffic, smart but sometimes bold strategy, smooth pit stops, clean-nosed driving and a driver who understands that the race can’t be won on his merits alone.
“It’s incredible. Like, honestly, I think I get a lot of credit because I’m the only one driving the car, but there’s a huge team behind me that makes me very good on track,” Palou said. “We have fast cars every single weekend, that’s very tough to do here in IndyCars, especially nowadays. I was just taking the chances we’ve had so far this season, whenever we’ve had the chance to win, we’ve been able to execute.
“That takes not only the setup, but the strategies, the pit stops they did today. It’s amazing, it’s incredible. I can tell you guys this is not normal.”
And of course, the circumstances have to align for a driver at the right place and right time. Palou certainly benefitted from many challengers falling by the wayside:
- Scott McLaughlin wrecked on the warmup lap
- Fuel pump issues sidelined Josef Newgarden
- Brake issues put Scott Dixon three laps down by lap 30
- Kyle Larson wrecked on lap 91
- Midrace leader Ryan Hunter-Reay stalled on a lap-171 pit stop and never returned
- Takuma Sato (race-high 51 laps led) slid through his pit stall and lost 16 spots during midrace pit stops
- Frontrunner Alexander Rossi (14 laps led) caught fire during pit stops on lap 73.
Palou knew exactly how to execute when those circumstances aligned for him on lap 187 when he made his winning move around the eventually-disqualified Marcus Ericsson.
Pitting on lap 166, he had to save fuel and stretch his tire life to the finish as he stalked Ericsson patiently down the stretch. Usually, as seen over the last two Indy 500s won by Josef Newgarden via last-corner passes, the race-winning move comes on the final laps or even final seconds.
Palou couldn’t afford to wait that long, especially with Ericsson having seven-lap-fresher tires and only three drivers having older tires than him over the final run. That’s why he made his move with 14 laps remaining.
“We were not in the best position on strategy. We had worse tires and less fuel than Marcus, I knew it was going to be tough at the end just because with less grip on the tires and with strong traffic, (I was worried) I wasn’t going to have the chance to overtake him. I saw I had the small gap and I wanted to take it.”
When asked what exactly won him the Indy 500, Palou couldn’t single out one variable.
“It was a little bit of everything,” Palou said. “I thought my car was very capable, but I didn’t really have the best balance, especially towards the end of the tire life, like lap 20 onward. I was struggling to follow very closely. That’s why I tried to overtake Marcus as quick as they told me the fuel was good to go to the end. There were a lot of fast cars up there, mine was one of them, but I didn’t feel like we had tons of speed.”
Palou is all-too aware of how traffic influences an Indy 500 finish. In 2021 as a full-time IndyCar rookie, Hélio Castroneves passed him with two laps left, a culmination of Castroneves biding his time and waiting for the young Palou to open the door.
The Spaniard had taken the lead then with five laps to go, but he showed his hand too soon.
“I think I’m here because of 2021 for sure,” said Palou, who joins A.J. Foyt (1979, under USAC sanctioning and 1964, USAC) and Al Unser Sr. (1971, USAC) as the only drivers in modern IndyCar history to win a season’s five of first six races.
Ganassi, who’s fielded cars for and been around some of the greatest open-wheel drivers ever, puts Palou’s stature up against the likes of Dario Franchitti, Juan Pablo Montoya and Scott Dixon, all whom won six total Indy 500s and have at least one Borg-Warner Trophy apiece under Ganassi’s ownership.
“He’s clearly in that group now, clearly,” Ganassi said.
“The Indianapolis 500 is a big-damn race,” the car owner added. “He’ll always be known now as the Indianapolis 500 winner, it’s that simple. As he said last week, if he were to go his whole career and not win at Indianapolis, it wouldn’t be a complete career. I don’t want to say his career complete now. He has a lot in him yet.”