Alex Palou pulls off undercut to win at St. Pete

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Fresh off his third NTT INDYCAR Series title, Alex Palou kicks off the 2025 season with a victory.

The driver of the No. 10 Chip Ganassi Racing Honda pulled a successful undercut stop of teammate Scott Dixon on Lap 72 and took the lead from Scott McLaughlin on Lap 74. With 10 laps to go, however, Sting Ray Robb held him up for five laps and Josef Newgarden cut the lead to half a second. With five to go, he overtook Robb into Turn 1 and pulled away to a 2.867 margin of victory.

“Yeah, huge. Couldn’t be happier,” he said. “It’s been a long off-season and a tough off-season for everybody at CGR and HRC. They’ve been working really, really hard to try and — I mean, we were speaking on Thursday during media or Friday that it was one of the places that we’ve been struggling in the past, and we wanted to get a little bit closer to the competition.

“I wanted to be here in Victory Lane, but I did not expect maybe to be here in Victory Lane. That shows the amazing job that all the men and women did at Chip Ganassi Racing during the off-season. One-two for the team, I don’t know what Chip said, but I bet he’s pretty happy.”

Dixon overtook Newgarden right next to the deadline room on Bay Shore Drive to finish runner-up for the fifth time on the streets of St. Pete. All while he dealt with radio issues the entire race.

“It was kind of tough just to see what we were doing, kind of mileage-wise,” he said. “I knew it was going to be a lot tighter, obviously; once the first caution happened, it was going to be a strict kind of two-stopper.

“Kind of worked on the warm-up laps and kind of for the first 10 and that was about it, but ultimately cost us the race, I think, with not coming in when I should have, I think, with about maybe the same lap as Alex. We caught that traffic with about five or six cars and lost about two or three seconds on that in lap, so that was a bit of a nightmare.”

“Yeah, it was a good day,” Newgarden said. “A podium is always solid. I think I said that on Friday when I was in here that ultimately we need a good day just to get points on the board. That’s kind of going to be most important for this weekend, so we accomplished that.”

Pole sitter McLaughlin (who led a race-high of 40 laps) and Kyle Kirkwood rounded out the top five.

Marcus Ericsson, Felix Rosenqvist, Christian Lundgaard, Rinus VeeKay and Alexander Rossi rounded out the top 10.

Race summary

McLaughlin led the field to green at 12:28 p.m. Coming through Turn 3, Will Power hit the back of Nolan Siegel and slammed the outside wall. Louis Foster spun out, also. Most of the field pitted under the caution to switch onto Firestone blacks (except for Pato O’Ward, who stayed on Firestone reds). Nine cars stayed out.

Back to green on Lap 8, Rosenqvist looked to McLaughlin’s inside but backed out and McLaughlin pulled away from the field. By lap 12, he pulled out to a 1.140-second lead. By Lap 15, however, Rosenqvist cut the gap to seven-tenths of a second. Ten laps later, McLaughlin pulled back out to a 1.737-second lead. By Lap 30, he pulled to a four-second lead.

Rosenqvist pitted from second that same lap and switched to Firestone reds. McLaughlin followed suit the next lap and switched to Firestone reds. Marcus Armstrong pitted from the lead on Lap 34 and stayed on Firestone blacks. Colton Herta pitted from the lead on Lap 35 and took Firestone reds, but has trouble with the right-rear tire. Newgarden pitted from the lead on Lap 37 and stays on Firestone blacks. Dixon pitted from the lead on Lap 38 and remained on Firestone blacks.

McLaughlin cycled back to the lead on Lap 40 but pitted five laps later for Firestone blacks. Herta made an unscheduled stop on Lap 47 because his team short-filled him on fuel his first stop.

Rossi, who had yet to run a different tire compound, pitted from second for Firestone reds on Lap 63. With Dixon hounding him, Lundgaard pitted from the lead for Firestone reds on Lap 68. Dixon pitted from the lead for Firestone blacks on Lap 72, but Palou’s undercut cycled him out ahead of Dixon. McLaughlin pitted from the lead on Lap 74 and Palou cycled to the lead.

“I caught about five or six cars on my in lap,” Dixon said. “I think I lost about two or three seconds just on my in lap. They did the right thing; they could see the traffic coming. I had no communication, so didn’t know. I’m sure they were trying to call me in, but as soon as you catch them, the undercut is going to be pretty strong, especially if you pop out into clear track.

Sting Ray Robb, the last car on the lead lap, held up Palou. Which allowed Newgarden to reel him in and cut the gap to half a second. With five laps to go, Palou overtook Robb into Turn 1, stretched the lead back out to a second and drove onto victory.

Nuts and bolts

The race lasted one hour, 51 minutes and nine seconds, at an average speed of 97.173 mph. There were nine lead changes among seven different drivers and one caution for six laps.

The NTT INDYCAR SERIES next heads out west to Thermal, California, to race at The Thermal Club on March 23.

Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg Race Results

1. (8) Alex Palou, Honda, 100, Running
2. (6) Scott Dixon, Honda, 100, Running
3. (10) Josef Newgarden, Chevrolet, 100, Running
4. (1) Scott McLaughlin, Chevrolet, 100, Running
5. (9) Kyle Kirkwood, Honda, 100, Running
6. (7) Marcus Ericsson, Honda, 100, Running
7. (3) Felix Rosenqvist, Honda, 100, Running
8. (5) Christian Lundgaard, Chevrolet, 100, Running
9. (12) Rinus VeeKay, Honda, 100, Running
10. (20) Alexander Rossi, Chevrolet, 100, Running
11. (23) Pato O’Ward, Chevrolet, 100, Running
12. (21) Graham Rahal, Honda, 100, Running
13. (17) David Malukas, Chevrolet, 100, Running
14. (19) Santino Ferrucci, Chevrolet, 100, Running
15. (24) Christian Rasmussen, Chevrolet, 100, Running
16. (2) Colton Herta, Honda, 100, Running
17. (22) Conor Daly, Chevrolet, 100, Running
18. (15) Kyffin Simpson, Honda, 100, Running
19. (27) Callum Ilott, Chevrolet, 100, Running
20. (18) Robert Shwartzman, Chevrolet, 100, Running
21. (26) Sting Ray Robb, Chevrolet, 99, Running
22. (14) Devlin DeFrancesco, Honda, 99, Running
23. (25) Jacob Abel, Honda, 99, Running
24. (4) Marcus Armstrong, Honda, 46, Contact
25. (11) Nolan Siegel, Chevrolet, 0, Contact
26. (13) Will Power, Chevrolet, 0, Contact
27. (16) Louis Foster, Honda, 0, Contact