By David Morgan, Associate Editor
INDIANAPOLIS – The dream season continues.
Alex Palou, who has dominated all aspects of the 2025 NTT IndyCar Series season added another win to his resume, winning Sunday’s 109th running of the Indianapolis 500.
Taking the fight to the competition, the driver of the No. 10 Chip Ganassi Racing Honda, powered to the lead late over Marcus Ericsson and would not be denied, holding point to the finish, which ended under caution when Nolan Siegel crashed.
Palou now has five wins on the year, only increasing his commanding lead in the standings as he aims to bring home yet another championship.
“I cannot believe it. What an amazing day,” said Palou.
“What an amazing race by everybody in the 10 car, everybody at CGR, HRC. I cannot believe it. It’s amazing to be here. It’s amazing to win. There were some moments I felt really good in the race, but at the end, I didn’t know if I was going to be able to pass Marcus or not.
“Made it happen. First oval win, what a better place.”
Team owner Chip Ganassi was beaming with pride in Victory Lane as he celebrated yet another in in the Greatest Spectacle in Racing – the sixth of his illustrious career as a car owner.
“The guy is just incredible. I don’t know what else to say,” Ganassi said. “We saved fuel all day, doing this, doing that. We were in the draft and then at the end, we had those guys in front of us helping us, and he just beat everybody today. This is great.
“It’s an incredible thing. It’s going to make Alex Palou’s career, going to make his life, and it certainly has made mine.”
Meanwhile, it was a game of what if for Ericsson, who badly wanted to add another Indy 500 win to his resume, but came up just short.
“That was painful to miss out so close again,” Ericsson said. “Second time, second place here and this is a winner take all kind of place, so yeah, just really painful.”
Behind Palou and Ericsson was David Malukas in his A.J. Foyt Racing Chevrolet, followed by Pato O’Ward and Felix Rosenqvist to round out the top-five.
“I’m not going to lie, I was crying coming into the pits,” Malukas said after being in contention late.
“Man, we were so close to getting it. Out of all the cars, we were No. 1 until the end…From our side, we did everything absolutely perfect. We were the No. 1 car. Pit stops coming out, I mean, you saw, everybody saw when we came out of the pits there, I mean we were ahead of everybody. An incredible job from the crew and the strategy. Bittersweet because we didn’t get it.”
The remainder of the top-10 finishers were Kyle Kirkwood, Santino Ferrucci, Christian Rasmussen, Christian Lundgaard, and Conor Daly.
After a chaotic start to the race, which saw a number of drivers that had the spotlight on them coming into the day fall by the wayside, the race evolved into a fuel mileage game with everything riding on the last stop for the leaders.
The drivers that found an early exit included Scott McLaughlin crashing on the pace laps, Kyle Larson finding an early exit when he crashed just prior to halfway, rookie polesitter Robert Shwartzman crashing on pit road, and Josef Newgarden retiring from the race with mechanical issues after charging into the top-10 from the last row at the start of the race.
Palou was the first to make his final stop with 32 laps to go, followed by Malukas two laps later and Ericsson with 25 laps left on the board. Ericsson would cycle out ahead of Palou, with the points leader seemingly content to ride in his tracks as the laps would down.
That is until they charged into Turn 1 with 14 laps to go and Palou stormed past Ericsson to take over the lead. As they say, from there, it was history.
Next up for the NTT IndyCar Series will be a trip north to Detroit to take on the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix next Sunday at 12:30 pm ET on FOX.
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