Come on, folks!
Really?
Really?
One race and you thought O'Ward was starting to claw back power? O'Ward entered this weekend needing to outscore Palou by 24.75 points per race over the final four races. That is an extraordinary task. That is also assuming Palou wouldn't finish ahead of O'Ward in any of the final four races. Palou did finish ahead of O'Ward today, and it was another victory, and after losing 30 points last week, Palou gained 22 points back this afternoon. O'Ward went from needing to score 24.75 points over four races to overtake Palou to needing to outscore the Catalan driver by 40.333 points in each of the next three races.
It's over. In two weeks, we will have a coronation ceremony. Palou's magic number is 42 points. He just needs to score 42 points combined over the next three races and the championship is his regardless of what O'Ward does.
Even when there was a shakeup due to the cautions today, and a few drivers who stopped early to get off the primary tire were at the front of field, Palou had this race under control. He ran the fastest lap of the race. It was 0.6166 seconds faster than the next best fastest lap! Only eight drivers had their fastest lap within a second of Palou's.
It is staggering what it takes to beat Palou. He has found a comfortable level on all the circuits that no one can match. He doesn't have a bad track. He isn't struggling with track surfaces and tire compounds. The man has damn near perfected every element of the IndyCar series. The rest of the competition is in big trouble. We have already known that.
2. Christian Lundgaard had a damn good day. Running two new sets of alternate tires in the middle of the race launched him into a podium position, and Lundgaard took more with a bold move up the inside of Colton Herta into the final corner. Lundgaard has gone through a bit of a rough patch since the middle of May after having three consecutive podium finishes early in the season. We haven't seen this Lundgaard in a while. It has been a fantastic year for him even with the dip over June and most of July. This could be the start to a strong finish.
3. Colton Herta rounded out the podium on a day where he was good, but he wasn't close to Palou. This was a race for second. Herta had a good start to get up to second place, but he was stuck the moment he got mixed into traffic when the first pit cycle had a caution. He was behind those on the alternate strategy. Herta had the car to make up ground, but Palou cut his way to the front quicker. Once Herta was clear, Palou was out of sight. Third is a good day, but boy does it feel deflating when the competition was never within touching distance.
4. Patricio O'Ward salvaged this day with a fourth-place finish. O'Ward did not have a good start to the race, and running on two sets of used alternate tires before putting on the primary tire didn't help matters, but halfway through it looked like this was going to be a bad day. It turned into a top five finish. With how far O'Ward is behind Palou, anything less than gaining points cannot be considered a good day. It is hard to find moral victories in this one.
5. Starting 19th meant Scott Dixon had to roll the dice. Starting on the primary tire was step one. Step two was stopping on lap 12. The way the cautions fell allowed Dixon to leap to the front of the field, and he ran at a good pace to keep himself up there, especially after he had to run a 27-lap stint, then a 28-lap stint and then another 28-lap stint to make it to the finish. It is the typical Scott Dixon day. He finds a way forward.
6. Callum Ilott probably had the second-best race of all the drivers in the field, as Ilott ran the same strategy as Dixon and finished sixth from 24th on the grid. It is more impressive because we have seen Ilott's shortcomings this season, especially with Prema. It hurt him a little bit in this one as before his final pit stop, Ilott was ahead of O'Ward. After pit stops, Ilott was miles behind because of a slow stop. It was lost spots but this was still a sixth-place day and Ilott hung in the top ten running competitively. The team has work to do, but it has been much more competitive in the second half of the season.
7. Will Power was seventh and never much of a factor. Power started fifth and he lost a few spots, mostly due to strategy. Dixon and Ilott were ahead of him and that was because of another strategy. Either way, Power did nothing notable. He did nothing wrong, which is notable for Team Penske this season. That is progress.
8. It was another quiet top ten finish for Marcus Armstrong. Armstrong had a good car, he didn't make a mistake and it ended in an eighth-place finish. For a driver that moved from Chip Ganassi Racing to Meyer Shank Racing, he hasn't taken a step back. Armstrong has actually made a step forward. It is hard to imagine MSR moving away from Armstrong as the team is having its best season in IndyCar in large part because of his results.
9. Christian Rasmussen had a good day to finish ninth, and for a period it looked like it was going to be better than ninth. Rasmussen's third stint was on the primary tire and that did not do him wonders. All of his success has been on ovals this season. He needed a good day on a road course, and he got it. Rasmussen showed good pace in the entire race.
10. Scott McLaughlin rounded out the top ten, and he took tenth late from his teammate Josef Newgarden, who finished 11th. This is a bit of a disappointing result for Newgarden because he started fourth, but he got shuffled back on each stint. He didn't have a new set of tires until the final stint, and even then he lost ground. McLaughlin had better tires at the end, and got the position.
Tenth was the best McLaughlin was going to be today. We never saw him look flashy. This was a better day for Team Penske, but it still wasn't a good day. None of them were close to being a contender today, and two of them started in the top five.
11. Graham Rahal ended up 12th, which is a bit of a bummer considering he started eighth, but for a portion of this race it appeared Rahal was in for a bad day. I thought he was going to struggle to finish in the top twenty. His race turned around during the mid-way point and he ended up finishing 12th. Not great, but could be worse.
12. Let's get through the field. David Malukas was 13th. He did not look good on the primary tire at the start. He made an extra pit stop mid-race. That didn't help him. It is hard to imagine Team Penske is this interested in Malukas when it feels too regular to see him start in the top ten and end up outside the top ten for most of the race. Malukas started sixth today, and at no point was he moving forward.
Conor Daly went off on the opening lap after running into Robert Shwartzman. Daly rebounded to finish 14th. Daly ran himself and Shwartzman off the road. They were lucky that wasn't a bigger accident. It is a good drive for Daly, but he set himself up to be fighting from behind when he was already in a poor starting position.
Alexander Rossi ended up making an extra pit stop, which sucked because he stopped on lap 27 under the caution for the Rinus VeeKay and Kyle Kirkwood accident after he made his first stop on lap 20. On lap 20, Rossi removed the primary tire. He was good, but stopping at lap 27 didn't put him in a better spot to making it to the finish on fuel. It is curious why he had to make that stop. Rossi could have had a top ten finish today if the team didn't get off-strategy that much.
13. So we get to Kyle Kirkwood, who plain got it wrong and ran into Rinus VeeKay. This led to a penalty for Kirkwood. It has been a rough summer for Kirkwood. He hasn't had a top five finish since he won at Gateway, which came after he won Detroit the race before that. It didn't help that the team got everything wrong in qualifying and set Kirkwood to only have one flying lap. Kirkwood bobbled on the final corner of that lap and it kept him from advancing from the first round of qualifying. It hasn't been a disastrous period, but it didn't look like it would be this rough a month ago.
14. Louis Foster ended up 17th. Foster's qualifying form is fabulous. The team's race form must improve. The driver isn't the sole reason why this team cannot take top ten starts and turn them into top ten finishes. You would think after all these top ten starting positions, Foster will eventually have a day where everything goes right and he just finishes ninth. He doesn't make a mistake. The team executes the most basic strategy flawlessly, and Foster spends the entire race in ninth and best to feel good when it is over. It is frustrating because Foster has been pretty encouraging every weekend in qualifying. We just haven't seen a race to cap off the weekend.
15. Nolan Siegel was the only other driver to lead today as he led 11 laps because he stopped on lap 12 under the Jacob Abel caution. The problem is Siegel didn't take his primary tire until lap 38, and it was a 12-lap stint. It was a bad strategy. It knocked Siegel down to 18th.
16. If you have a clue how Sting Ray Robb and Devlin DeFrancesco finished 19th and 20th respectively, you are the only ones.
Robert Shwartzman ended up a lap down in 21st. Other than going off course and being a back-marker in front of Palou late, I don't know if Shwartzman did much.
Santino Ferrucci spun off course and was beached at the top of the corkscrew. Ferrucci was probably going to finish around 15th today. He didn't have a great race. He was hardly noticed until his spin.
17. Race control held the whistle twice in this races, and both were problematic.
First, Kirkwood got into VeeKay and VeeKay was stopped off course. IndyCar held the caution for nearly two laps until we were through the pit cycle on lap 26.
Second, Marcus Ericsson spun going uphill to the corkscrew. Ericsson remained stationary for what felt like nearly a lap as cars were approaching at full speed, and the uphill section is blind.
We have seen IndyCar wait to throw the caution during a pit cycle. The VeeKay incident was probably one of the longest periods they have held out for in a long time. The Ericsson one was unacceptable. IndyCar will wait if a car spins but doesn't hit anything because drivers can restart the cars with the hybrid system. They don't want to bring out the caution for a single-car incident. In this case, it took Ericsson a while and it didn't help that Ericsson could not find an opening to safely spin around and continue.
There is an easy solution: Virtual Safety Car.
Ericsson's incident didn't need a full course caution and the pace car returning to the circuit, but it required the field slowing down so he could spin around without worrying about being t-boned by a car going 165 mph.
It is embarrassing IndyCar has not adopted some sort of VSC system in 2025. It has been around for a decade in Formula One. For the Ericsson incident, all IndyCar needs is the cars not driving at full speed for 20-30 seconds. I understand not wanting to have a full course caution, but IndyCar should have something to slow the race without it fully resetting and bunching the field. There is a solution, and it is frustrating that for a decade now IndyCar has not even attempted to adopt it.
As for the VeeKay incident, I get not wanting a caution to completely mix up the race and the top five drivers dropping to 16th because they waited to make their pit stop. A VSC would allow pit stops to occur without having cars fly pass VeeKay's stranded race car at full speed. If you do have VSC, it can still mix up the running order because you will have drivers who catch it and do not lose as much time on an out lap. We have seen plenty of VSC periods shoot drivers up four or five spots. It isn't necessarily the driver who was in 16th jumping up to first because no one else has made a pit stop yet, but it can be a six or seven-spot jump.
It is 2025. The Virtual Safety Car conversation better be happening after this weekend. There are no more excuses.
18. Let's round out the rest of the field, and it can be done in two incidents.
At the start, Kyffin Simpson plowed into the back of Felix Rosenqvist. Simpson's race was over after six corners. Rosenqvist continued, but he lost a lap and had no chance to contend in this race. It is a shame because Rosenqvist should have been in the Fast Six if it wasn't for causing a local yellow when he had a qualifying lap that was already safe to making the last round. Rosenqvist was poised to be going forward in this race, and that opportunity never arose.
Jacob Abel ran off in the hairpin and Abel's race was over after ten laps. I don't know if it is the car. Rinus VeeKay has been making Dale Coyne Racing look good, but this is the same team that couldn't get a car to finish better than 13th last year. There are still deficiencies with this team, but Abel's struggles suggest it is more than the car.
19. It was a good race, and this feels like it was the best Laguna Seca crowd since it returned to the schedule in 2019. It wasn't spectacular, but it was better. I think Laguna Seca should move to March if IndyCar needs to fill the gap early in the season. Prior to this weekend, the crowds at Laguna Seca have been so dismal that I don't think it mattered if the race was held in September, June, July or March, it would be what it was. If you aren't packing the place in June, then why not run it in March? The date wasn't making a difference.
I still feel Laguna Seca should move to March because it looks like IndyCar's early season gap will be a problem in 2026, and IndyCar doesn't need to race four consecutive weekends in July with it culminating in a trip to California. I know the issues with Laguna Seca in March. It is the rainy season, 90% of the parking is dirt, it will be muddy and a mess and a negative experience for most in attendance.
I say it is worth it. I am sure we can figure out a way to park as many people as possible on paved surfaces. There is a chance the weather isn't terrible and it isn't a mud bowl and 2,000 people aren't requiring a tow truck to get home. You weigh the risks. For IndyCar, it loses too much at the start of the season because mostly absent over the first two months to think a month of consecutive races makes up for it. It doesn't.
IndyCar needs to be present early in the season, and run races on a regular basis. It cannot take three weeks off or four weeks off between the first two races. That is fucking stupid. Fill the gap with Laguna Seca. Spread the summer races out so teams aren't working four consecutive weekends and going all across North America. Let's not act like IndyCar making this adjustments will hurt the series. The adjustments to the current schedule are how we got to our current situation.
20. There was not a single person between Laguna Seca management and IndyCar who remembered the marine layer in Monterey doesn't burn off until about 10:00 a.m. each morning? I have only been to Laguna Seca once in my life, and it is probably the thing that stuck out the most. Twice in three days on-track activity was held because the medical helicopter could not get clearance. That was avoidable.
We should note that part of this schedule is down to television, and it isn't about a practice being held at 8:30 a.m. Saturday morning. It is a practice being held at 11:30 a.m. Eastern time. Eastern time dictates the schedule. IndyCar could have waited, but it wouldn't get the broadcast window it desired. The series wanted the FS1 window. It got it, but no practice took place. How beneficial was that schedule after all? The same thing occurred with the second Indy Lights race, which was postponed from Sunday morning to 6:30 p.m. ET.
This is a learning situation that shouldn't be a learning situation because there are enough adults making these decisions that should know better.
21. We get a week off, and then we are onto Portland for what will be Álex Palou's crowning weekend.
