1. Is it wrong to think this was the worst victory of Álex Palou's career? Seventy-nine laps led with a 13.2775-second margin of victory at Barber Motorsports Park? It wasn't very good. It isn't so much Palou's performance but more that in now 21 career victories, there aren't many where it feels like Palou took one that didn't feel like it was going his way.
In the final round of pit stops, Palou was on the cusp of the wrong side of the pit time delta to Christian Lundgaard, who was going four laps longer on the penultimate stint. It was at least going to be close between the two after Lundgaard emerged from the pit lane. However, a bobble on the right rear tire cost Lundgaard everything. What could have been a side-by-side battle on an out lap and a 20-lap battle for the victory turned into a clear victory for Palou.
Palou didn't put a wheel wrong in this race. There is a good chance he was going to be ahead of Lundgaard after the final pit stop anyway, and he might have had a fight on his hands, but Palou would have still been in prime position to win the race. Instead, this turned into a cakewalk.
That is no surprise. Everyone expected Palou to win from pole position with 79 laps led before today started. It was up to the competition to defeat him, and they had a real good shot in Lundgaard, but one mistake ended any hope of Palou being defeated, and not just defeated, but beaten in a race he controlled. Palou was the clear #1 driver until the final round of pit stops approached, and with Lundgaard going long, it looked like the Dane was going to swing the race into his favor.
Palou was good and lucky. He likely was always going to win, but in the one race where it appeared someone was going to get the best of him, an unforced error allowed Palou to take a comfortable victory.
2. This is going to sting for Christian Lundgaard and Arrow McLaren. Did this group 100% deserve victory? I don't think anything was stolen with a second place finish, but Lundgaard drove a flawless race and looked set to at least challenge for victory after starting tenth. He was one of the quickest cars on the day, and he was able to make passes and move forward. Even if he did not emerge from the pit lane in the lead after the final pit stop, Lundgaard was going to have Palou in view and slightly fresher tires to make a push toward the checkered flag.
One bad pit stop erased that. There was no overcoming that deficit, and Lundgaard had to work just to get back to second. He definitely deserved second today, but he wasn't over 13 seconds behind Palou. The speed is there, but every aspect of the team must be on point, and when the pit crew was needed most, it had its worst stop of the season.
3. Graham Rahal was the third-best driver today, and Rahal held his ground well in this race. It was a real challenge to stay on the podium. The tires were gone in the final stint and he lost second late to Lundgaard, but Rahal was able to fend off David Malukas. It is another case of Rahal having a standout race somewhat out of nowhere, and we cannot believe if it is a change or a one-off.
Barber has never been a good track for Rahal, and this isn't the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course where he and Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing has a magic touch and automatically run at the front. At times, RLLR has good speed on road courses and at other times it doesn't. Rahal drove well all weekend and it would have been a shame if he did not finish on the podium. It was a strong drive.
4. "If only there was another lap" Well, there wasn't, and in a 90-lap affair at Barber, David Malukas was fourth. Malukas struggled on the alternate tire in the first stint and stopped early, but other teams did better on the alternate tire, especially those who put those on after the opening stint. It cost Malukas some time, but it was not devastating. He practically ran third or fourth the entire race. The pace wasn't there to keep up with Palou. It was there to push for the podium though. That is progress, and this is Malukas' first top five finish on a road or street course.
Though he is driving for Team Penske, there are many milestones Malukas still has to reach. After not finishing in a top five on a road or street course in his first three-and-a-half seasons in IndyCar, no one should have expected Malukas to be winning immediately on this discipline just because he joined Team Penske. He needed to make this step first and just spend an entire race in the top five. Check off that box.
5. Kyle Kirkwood basically spent this entire race staring at David Malukas' gearbox, and despite stopping a lap earlier for his first stop and then going two laps longer before his final stop, Kirkwood could not leapfrog ahead. Hey, it is still a top five finish, and it is enough for Kirkwood to hold onto the championship lead with a two-point edge over Palou, but Kirkwood had fourth within his grasp this entire race and he just couldn't quite grab it.
6. Talk about another nondescript top ten finish for Marcus Armstrong. Armstrong started fourth, dropped a few spots early, and then basically ran sixth the entire race. At no point was he a threat for something better. At no point was he in danger of finishing worse. For all his consistency, we have yet to see him be a challenger, and one of these days it must happen.
I don't know if it is the driver or if it is the team. Is this the best Armstrong can do or is the Meyer Shank Racing car good enough to be on the edge of the top five but not manufacture a podium finish or push for victory? It feels a little more like the team is against the ceiling, and it is better than it was a few years ago, but it just isn't enough for victory.
7. And in a new trend of the season, Scott Dixon started outside the top ten, made up a few spots early, and then ran well enough to make up a few more and finish seventh. Is this the best Dixon can do at age 45 and staring down 46? We have covered his qualifying woes. The pace is not there. He has not been a threat for a while now. Maybe this is the cliff. This is the point where Dixon is still a top ten driver, but victories are becoming too hard to obtain.
Dating back to last season, it has been seven races since Dixon has finished in the top five. The last time it was this bad he was driving a Panoz-Toyota, and both of those parts were the problem, not the driver back then. The trend has developed. How long will it go?
8. Santino Ferrucci had a good day and finished eighth. Nothing flashy occurred. Starting the race on the primary tire might have helped him because it felt like everyone who started on the alternate tire lost ground, but those who used the alternate tire during the middle of the race held ground. That kept Ferrucci in the top ten discussion and then he finished eighth.
9. I guess ninth is good for Marcus Ericsson. Ericsson didn't do anything notable. Most drivers did nothing today. Ericsson stopped early to get off the primary tire, but having saved alternate tires for the race didn't really pave dividends. He lost a position from where he started the race. It wasn't the best strategy but it wasn't the worst. It is still a good result and three top ten finishes from four races is more top ten finishes than he had over the entirety of last season.
10. There was an expectation this would be an alternate tire race and having an extra set would be beneficial. Josef Newgarden had three fresh sets of alternate tires and they made no positive difference as Newgarden ended up losing a spot from where he started and he was tenth at the finish. It was a strategy, but for how bold it was it neither produced a seismically good result or was an utter disaster. Not often do you find a middle ground on such a roll of the dice.
There was one competitive Team Penske driver today, and outside of Phoenix, Team Penske does not look much better than it was last year. At least its drivers have not been caught in accidents that were not of its making nor seeming to have every mechanical issue imaginable.
11. Alexander Rossi started 11th and finished 11th. Did anyone notice anything worth mentioning from Rossi?
12. Will Power did drive from 23rd to 12th after his qualifying accident forced Power to start at the rear of the field. It was a good drive, and Power did end the race using three sets of alternate tires. It probably helped, but the tire advantage was not great enough that three stints on new alternate tires was going to be turn the car into a rocket ship through the field. It was the best strategy to choose, and Power made the most of it.
13. There are a number of drivers we can brush through.
Felix Rosenqvist did move forward from 18th on the grid, but 13th is a bad ceiling to hit. When you see Armstrong's speed, you would have thought Rosenqvist could have been competing for a top ten finish, and he should have been better across the board this weekend.
Rinus VeeKay did have a spin and still recovered to finish 14th in a caution-free race! It never looked like VeeKay was going to crack the top ten, but to recovered after a lazy turn five spin while battling Alexander Rossi and finish 14th is a good rebound.
Romain Grosjean dropped from sixth to 15th in this race. Grosjean went the wrong way on every stint, and hopes were high because Dale Coyne Racing started in the top five last year and pushed for the podium at Barber. It felt like Grosjean was in the right spot at the start, but every stint got worse. This one got away.
14. Who had Scott McLaughlin finishing 16th and Patricio O'Ward finishing 17th? McLaughlin never had the pace today. He was worse than Newgarden and Newgarden wasn't that good. I don't recall anything going wrong. I just don't recall anything going right for McLaughlin. He did 17 laps on his first stint on alternate tires and then decided to run 25 laps on his next stint on alternate tire. That feels like a team grasping for straws and it didn't work.
O'Ward had a bad day. He lost spots at the very start and was fighting from behind. Right when he made some of those up, he lost ground again. This must be the first time O'Ward was this irrelevant in a race since Barber two years ago when all three Arrow McLaren cars finished outside the top twenty. At least that was a team effort. We know McLaren had some pace today as Christian Lundgaard was in the discussion for victory.
15. Is anyone behind 17th worth mentioning?
Nolan Siegel was 18th. Fine. At least he didn't hit anything.
Christian Rasmussen was 19th. Rasmussen is such an odd driver. Qualifying is basically always horrible. Sometimes, he has a much better race car and can gain ground and every few ovals he is somehow the driver to beat, but then he will struggle to crack the top fifteen in the next handful of races. There are a few interesting basket cases on the grid at the moment.
Kyffin Simpson did nothing and finished 20th. That is how it works every now and then for Simpson.
16. No rookie finished in the top twenty today. Caio Collet was 21st. Dennis Hauger was 23rd and Mick Schumacher was 24th. Outside of Hauger at St. Petersburg, and I guess Collet at Arlington, the rookies have genuinely been uncompetitive, and it is not much different from last year. This could just be a minor thing and a coincidence it has happened two consecutive years, but it is odd that rookie have struggled this much. We are not expecting top five finishes, but just being more competitive for the top ten and running 12th or 13th. How many laps this season have seen multiple rookies running in the top 15? We can dive into that during this extended Easter break. It cannot be many.
There is a lot of time left in 2026, but this rookie class is shadowing 2025 very closely. That might be a larger IndyCar problem than a talent issue.
17. Sting Ray Robb was 22nd. Eh.
18. We are likely due a Louis Foster conversation because this was his 21st start, and Foster looked lost today. He was the slowest car on track. He was in the way. He had to make a fourth pit stop. There could have been a problem bigger than Foster, but it is odd his results have been this poor for this long.
RLLR had a car on the podium and then the worst two finishers. What is the problem at this team? Is it the engineering? Is it the drivers? I don't know if you can just hire Linus Lundqvist and if he is going to be better than Schumacher and Foster. He cannot be any worse but I don't think he is the difference between running 18th and cracking the top ten.
For Foster, we saw him last year constantly qualify best of the RLLR trio and make the second round of qualifying and even make the final round of qualifying. He even won a pole position. The race pace wasn't there, but some of that was also strategy not going in his favor. A few tweaks and he was going to start scoring respectable results. Things have gone the wrong direction through the first four races in 2026. I don't know what to make of it. Foster isn't a bad driver, but it is pretty inexplicable how poor things have turned.
This is our fifth season with three RLLR cars, and in none of those seasons has it gotten it to click for all three cars. It might be time to consider downsizing this group and focusing on two cars. From 2018 through 2021, when Graham Rahal and Takuma Sato were RLLR's two drivers, neither finished worse than 12th in the championship and in two of those seasons did both drivers finish in the championship top ten.
I think it is time to consider that discussion, and that means we get to see what an IndyCar charter can do on the open market! All buyers welcome!
19. This is another race where we can have a discussion about the alternate and primary tire compounds because it was again a race where the tires did not matter. It feels like Firestone made a big market correction from last year where we had plenty of races where everyone wanted to get off the alternate tire in two or three laps because it wore out rapidly, but now the difference is minuscule and there is no point in having two tire compounds if the difference is negligible.
IndyCar and Firestone should not be afraid to have an alternate tire that it knows is not going to last a fuel stint. That is kind of the point of having an alternate tire compound. We know IndyCar and Firestone can hit that happy medium, but it constantly feels like it loses that happy medium. It will have it for a year or two at a track and then we return and there is no difference in the tires. That is frustrating. You had it. How did you lose it?
Obviously, these conversations have been held because we see the experimentation on street courses with teams mandated to use two alternate tires in those races, but I think it must go further. There must be a goal of having an alternate tire that is not going to last a full fuel stint and also changing the regulation so the minimum lap total on a compound should be higher. There is no reason for the minimum to be two laps. Raise it to ten laps. Make it carry some weight and actually have to be strategized around.
Firestone has been involved for too long for it to be such a guessing game and having it end up with both compounds end up identical.
20. This was a typical Barber race. It gets a little spread out. There are periods of action but it is not overwhelming. It was fine. Even with the pit issue for Lundgaard, we still had great battles for the podium positions. This is still a great track to race at. It was tough returning after the passing of track founder George Barber. When you consider this relationship between the track and IndyCar dates back to 2010, this has been a major success. IndyCar found a home in Alabama, a sentence no one could have imagined being possible at the turn of the 21st century. It is a great spring event, and one that is anticipated each year. Let's hope and pray it continues for many more years after the passing of George Barber.
21. Now the first extended break in the IndyCar season. We get Easter off and then an extra week off for fun. Then we are off to Long Beach. At least we are entering April with four races in the bag instead of only one or two. Folks, it is getting late early.
