One-point-one seconds.
Alex Palou’s pit crew got him in and out of pit lane 1.1 seconds faster than Felix Rosenqvist under the only caution of the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach. Then with 29 laps to go, Palou pulled away from the field to score the victory on the streets of Long Beach, California.
“Incredible,” Palou said. “Feel so, so lucky with the opportunity I had to win the 500 last year, the Long Beach GP this year, it just feels like I’m living on this amazing cloud of happiness.
“Yeah, incredible work by the team today. I think we were fighting there with the 60, trying to match him on the soft tires. I think we could have fighted a little bit, but he was a bit stronger than us today. We were just trying to figure it out, if we were going able to go one lap longer on fuel.
“This full-course yellow put everything on that pit stop. The guys did an incredible job once again.”
It’s his 22nd career victory in his 103rd NTT INDYCAR SERIES start, third of the 2026 season and first on the streets of Long Beach.
Pole sitter Rosenqvist led a race high of 51 laps on his way to a runner-up finish. Scott Dixon made up three spots on the final pit stop to round out the podium.
“It’s definitely a mix,” Rosenqvist said. “I think all in all we got to be happy as a weekend for us at Meyer Shank Racing. We had a win yesterday with Nick in IMSA. We had a pole there as well, then a pole here and a P2. We just fell short of a grand slam.
“If you kind of take the perspective, it’s been a very, very good weekend. Obviously you want to win when you have the opportunity.
“Yeah, I’m proud of today. I think everything we were working on kind of paid off today. I’ve been in this position many times before, being on pole or at the front, then something kind of fell short.”
“Yeah, huge weekend for the Ganassi cars,” Dixon said. “I think probably one of the best for qualifying between all us, which was really good. It was nice just to have a clean weekend, no major issues, no damage, no mess-ups or anything like that. That was a lot of fun.
“The race itself for us was just a bit blah, to be honest. We kind of sat in the same position, tried to go long. Fuel mileage was really good, which Honda does a great job at. I think everybody is caught up a lot on figuring out what they need.
“Unfortunately for me the balance had a lot of understeer, so it was very difficult to roll the corner and roll off throttle to get that mileage. Yeah, interesting day.
“The last stop luckily for us we had an easy out. Looked like a lot of the people we were fighting had cars in front of them or behind them, which kind of paid off for us.
“Great weekend. Hopefully something we can build on and keep rolling.”
Kyle Kirkwood and Pato O’Ward rounded out the top-five.
Scott McLaughlin, David Malukas, Graham Rahal, Alexander Rossi and Kyffin Simpson rounded out the top-10.
Faster final stop propels Alex Palou to victory at Long Beach
Race summary
Rosenqvist led the field to green at 5:58 p.m. ET. The field settled into a green flag rhythm. Rinus VeeKay kicked off a cycle of green flag stops on Lap 8, for those drivers committed to a three-stop strategy. The drivers who stopped during this window were those outside of the top-10. Among them was Josef Newgarden, who pitted for new alternate tires and posted laps half a second to a full second faster than Rosenqvist. O’Ward was the first driver on a two-stop plan to pit on Lap 30. Rosenqvist pit from the lead on Lap 31, taking another set of alternates. Palou followed him down pit lane and also took alternates. Will Power pit from the lead on Lap 32 and the lead cycled to Newgarden.
Even on 20-lap older tires, Newgarden ran a second faster than Rosenqvist in second. Meanwhile, the other drivers on the three-stop plan hit pit lane on Lap 36. Newgarden pit from the lead on Lap 37, taking alternates, and Rosenqvist cycled back to the lead.
Newgarden locked up going into Turn 2 on Lap 42. While he overtook Marcus Armstrong, he developed a flat spot on his left-front tire. His race strategist told him on Lap 47, “If we can make it nine more (laps), we might be OK.”
Caution flew for the first time on Lap 57 for debris off Turn 3. Everybody came down pit lane and Palou exited with the race lead.
Back to green with 29 laps to go, Palou pulled out to a two-second lead over Rosenqvist, after five laps, and drove on to victory.
Faster final stop propels Alex Palou to victory at Long Beach
What else happened
Marcus Ericsson retired from the race on Lap 44 with a full hybrid failure.
Power served a drive-through penalty for hitting a crew member on pit lane.
Faster final stop propels Alex Palou to victory at Long Beach
Nuts and bolts
The race lasted one hour, 49 minutes and nine seconds, at an average speed of 97.356 mph. There were four lead changes among four different drivers and one caution for four laps.
Palou leaves Long Beach with a 17-point lead over Kirkwood.
The NTT INDYCAR Series returns to action May 9 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for the Sonsio Grand Prix.
