By David Morgan, Associate Editor
NEWTON, Iowa – When it’s your year, it’s your year.
A day after Chevrolet captured its first win of the year as a manufacturer, it was an all-Honda podium when all was said and done in Sunday’s Farm to Finish 275 at Iowa Speedway, with defending series champion and current points leader Alex Palou capturing the victory.
Palou came into the 2025 season having never won on an oval and now has two oval victories on his resume – winning the 107th Indianapolis 500 in addition to Sunday at Iowa.
“I’m an INDYCAR driver now finally,” Palou joked after the race about now having a short oval win to his name.
“Honestly, it’s tough. It’s tough. That’s why it’s so fun to race in INDYCAR with these teams, with these different tracks. It’s different challenges that you have. You go to a street course and you need different techniques than on a road course, and then you go to an oval and you have superspeedways, and then you come here and it’s completely different to IMS.
“It’s super fun, keeps you awake, keeps you having to push every single weekend, and honestly, I was already super happy yesterday with our first pole here. But to be able to get our first win here and fighting on track, it’s been a good day. It’s been super fun.”
After starting on pole and leading the first 64 laps of the race, Palou ceded the race lead to Josef Newgarden, who pulled out to a demanding lead, but luck was not on Newgarden’s side when the caution flew shortly after he made a green flag stop.
As a result, Palou re-assumed the lead on Lap 129, with Newgarden buried mid-pack, but by Lap 241, Newgarden was once again filling the rear-view mirror of Palou and took the lead back with authority.
However, it would be déjà vu for Newgarden when the caution flew after his final green flag stop on Lap 249, with Palou being the benefactor once again.
Palou would get the jump on the final restart with 11 laps to go and pulled away to a manageable gap over Marcus Armstrong and his Chip Ganassi Racing teammate Scott Dixon as he skated away with the lead and would not be touched for the remainder of the race, crossing the line approximately a half a second ahead of Dixon, with Armstrong rounding out the podium.
All in all, Palou would accumulate 194 laps led on the day.
The remainder of the top-10 would go to David Malukas, Pato O’Ward, Christian Lundgaard, Felix Rosenqvist, Christian Rasmussen, Robert Shwartzman, and Newgarden coming home in 10th place.
With the win, Palou has increased his already commanding points lead to 129 points over O’Ward with five races remaining on the 2025 schedule.
His win Sunday brings him into a tie with AJ Foyt, Zanardi, Montoya, da Matta, Paul Tracy, and Sebastien Bourdais as drivers that have at least seven wins in a season. The record of 10 wins stands with Foyt and Al Unser, who accomplished the feat in 1964 and 1970, respectively.
“Honestly, it’s crazy. It’s been an amazing season,” said Palou. “When I say I don’t really have words, it’s tough to describe. It’s magical. I think everybody in CGR and the 10 car especially is feeling that, and we don’t really know how to describe how happy and how hard they’re working to be here.
“It’s not that it comes easy, as we saw last weekend at Ohio. I never looked at the end result, honestly. Although it would be amazing to look back and be like, wow, we won 10. If it stops here and we look back and it’s like, we won seven, it’s going to be quite impressive.
“Yeah, I’m going to work towards getting 10, obviously, but I’m not waking up and thinking about getting 10. I think it’s a pretty realistic goal, and it’s far, like it’s three wins. It seems like it’s only three, but it’s very far. That’s the amount of wins I got in 2023, and that’s one more win than I got in 2024.”
Next up for the NTT IndyCar Series will be a trip north of the border to Toronto for the Ontario Honda Dealers Indy Toronto next Sunday at Noon ET on FOX.
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