IndyCar News: Alex Palou Wins Farm to Finish 275 at Iowa Speedway

Polesitter Alex Palou held off Ganassi Honda teammate Scott Dixon to win Race 2 of the Iowa Speedway doubleheader and extend his IndyCar points lead.

By virtue of the Honda cars getting better fuel mileage than the Chevy-powered cars, race leader Josef Newgarden made a final pitstop under green and lost a lap to Palou.  The caution then came out when Colton Herta hit the wall, and Palou was able to pit under caution, giving him the lead back.

Alex now joins AJ Foyt, Zanardi, Montoya, da Matta, Paul Tracy, Sebastien Bourdais, all with seven wins in one season. The record is 10, by the way, set by AJ Foyt back in 1964 and the late great Al Unser back in 1970. 18th career win and climbing for Alex Palou.

“it’s so fun to race in INDYCAR with these teams, with these different tracks. It’s different challenges that you have. You go to a street course and you need different techniques than on a road course, and then you go to an oval and you have superspeedways, and then you come here and it’s completely different from IMS.”

“It’s super fun, keeps you awake, keeps you having to push every single weekend, and honestly, I was already super happy yesterday with our first pole here. But to be able to get our first win here and fighting on track, it’s been a good day.”

“I was told I made 28 on-track passes today. I think that’s my max. I was passing so many cars I felt like I was Lightning McQueen or something. It’s the first time that I’m not getting overtaken every single lap on a short oval. It was fun.”

From there, Palou had to hold off Dixon over the final 11 green flag laps to win by 0.528s, his 7th win of 2025.

“This was definitely an interesting weekend for us.”, Dixon stated. “I think all the cars yesterday weren’t typically great on the high lines. On the 9 car side at least we threw the kitchen sink at it, at least try something different, use it as a bit of a test session.”

“It was a bit iffy at the start. We were a bit off on COP and bars and all that kind of stuff, but once we got it dialed in, it was pretty good. I think we were able to manage the stints
quite well, tire life was quite good, and that enabled us to save a bunch of fuel and extend the windows when we needed to. I think today, for most people, it was about catching the caution and going as long as possible.”

“I think Race 1, for a lot of our group, we couldn’t really utilize the high line, so it made it tough. Today I had a lot more fun in Race 2. I could see fellow teammates, and they were having a lot more fun too because we could actually use the high line.”

“I think as the track degrades, as we’ve seen from last year and the repave in the corners, I think it will definitely get a lot better. Today was definitely good. You saw a ton of cars passing.”

Marcus Armstrong made it a Honda 1-2-3 because of the great Honda fuel mileage. He was 2.74s behind Palou at the finish.

“My day was good really. I was pretty happy with our pace toward the end of the stints. Even last night, I thought we found our feet a bit towards the end of the race. We made a few changes today that I actually think were a bit of a backwards step, but nevertheless, we were always very strong towards the end of stints when the tires were going off.”

“I was always racing Scott (Dixon), so he looked a lot quicker today than he did yesterday in my opinion, and then he was very quick at the beginning of stints, and I was sort of hanging on a bit, especially on restarts.”

“But we’ve been saving fuel for two days straight now, and we caught that yellow at the end, so that was good.”

“There’s always something to learn from Scott (Dixon). Every day is a school day for me. Mid-Ohio was a proper schooling. Raced him all day, and he ended up finishing like half a
minute ahead of me. There’s always something to learn, which is so cool. ”

David Malukas was the top Chevy finisher in 4th, 4 seconds behind Palou.

Pato O’Ward, the winner of race 1 on Saturday, rounded out the top 5.

Race 2 started just like yesterday’s, with a yellow on Lap 1 when Rahal Letterman Lanigan’s Devlin DeFrancesco spun and collected Team Penske’s Scott McLaughlin in Turn 4.  This ended both drivers’ races for today.

The next incident occurred on lap 50 when Juncos Hollinger’s Sting Ray Robb spun, resulting in contact with the rear in Turn 2.

On Lap 130, Team Penske’s Josef Newgarden was on pit road for service when the yellow came out when Andretti Global’s Marcus Ericsson made contact with the SAFER Barrier in Turn 4.  Alex Palou was scored as the leader on that lap, and the leaders pitted on Lap 134.

On Lap 177, Team Prema’s Callum Ilott spun and made contact with the SAFER Barrier in Turn 4.

The final yellow came on Lap 254 when Andretti Global’s Colton Herta made contact with the SAFER Barrier on the backstretch.  This allowed the field to make their final pit stop.

Palou led the field to the green flag on Lap 264 and led the final laps of the race to win his seventh race of the season, the most wins by an INDYCAR Series driver since Sebastien Bourdais won eight races in 2007.

Iowa Race 2 Results

Race Statistics
Winner’s average speed: 135.761 mph
Time of Race: 01:48:39.2641
Margin of victory: 0.5280 of a second
Cautions: 5 for 58 laps
Lead changes: 6 among 3 drivers

Lap Leaders:
Palou, Alex 1 – 64
Newgarden, Josef 65 – 128
Palou, Alex 129 – 182
Kirkwood, Kyle 183 – 191
Palou, Alex 192 – 240
Newgarden, Josef 241 – 248
Palou, Alex 249 – 275

NTT INDYCAR SERIES Point Standings: Palou 515, O’Ward 386, Dixon 342, Kirkwood 335, Lundgaard 300, Rosenqvist 298, Armstrong 267, Power 244, Herta 244, Ferrucci 237, Malukas 237, McLaughlin 234, VeeKay 211, Newgarden 207, Rasmussen 207, Rossi 194, Simpson 191, Daly 184, Rahal 169, Ericsson 164, Siegel 156, Foster 150, Shwartzman 145, Robb 120, DeFrancesco 115, Ilott 111, Abel 88, Takuma Sato 36, Helio Castroneves 20, Ed Carpenter 16, Jack Harvey 12, Ryan Hunter-Reay 10, Kyle Larson 6, Marco Andretti 5

Lucille Dust reporting live from Iowa Speedway