By David Morgan, Associate Editor
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – Fresh off his third NTT IndyCar Series title a year ago, Alex Palou kicked off the 2025 campaign still in championship form as he scored the win in Sunday’s Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg.
It came down to a street fight among three former champions as Palou would hold off his Chip Ganassi Racing teammate Scott Dixon and Josef Newgarden down the stretch to capture the victory by nearly three seconds.
The key moment of the race came for Palou when his No. 10 team brought him to pit road on Lap 72, a lap sooner than his competitors, allowing him to cycle out in front of them and place himself in the catbird seat.
https://twitter.com/IndyCar/status/1896273085084672396
Newgarden gave chase, aided by the backmarker car of Sting Ray Robb, which allowed both himself and Dixon to shrink the gap to Palou from more than five seconds down to within a second, but with five laps to go, the defending series champion was able to dispatch him and pulled away to the checkered flag.
“What an amazing job by everybody at Chip Ganassi Racing, HRC, DHL, and everybody at the 10 car,” said Palou. “They gave me everything I needed this weekend to win. I told you yesterday that we had a really, really fast car, so I was looking forward to the race.
“Our strategy changed a lot during that first yellow, but so glad we got that No. 10 in Victory Lane this weekend. It’s been 138 days since Nashville and I’ve been dreaming about this every single night.”
For Palou, it serves as early notice to the rest of the paddock that the hunt for the three-peat is on and if they want to win the title, they’ll have to go through him to do so.
“It’s massive,” Palou said of the advantage of putting a win on the board early. “It helps, like, showing everybody in the building that, hey, guys, like all the work that you’ve done means a lot and that we start leading the scoreboard. It doesn’t mean much for the championship yet, but it means a lot for the momentum that we can carry towards the next couple of races.”
Second place was still up for grabs between Newgarden and Dixon, with Dixon able to capitalize on Newgarden’s fading car on the final lap to score a runner-up result. And he did so without having radio communications to his team for the entire race.
Dixon explained that the detriment of not having proper communications with his team was one of the big factors in why it was his teammate in Victory Lane and not him.
Once again, the six-time champion comes up as a bridesmaid in St. Pete, with this track being one of very few glaring omissions on his resume.
“I’m pretty pissed off,” Dixon said. “We had a good race going and we didn’t get it done. So, it doesn’t feel good, that’s for sure.
“Yeah, no radio for the entire race. It was kind of tough just to see what we were doing, kind of mileage-wise. I knew it was going to be a lot tighter, obviously; once the first caution happened, it was going to be a strict kind of two-stopper.
“Kind of worked on the warm-up laps and kind of for the first 10 and that was about it, but ultimately cost us the race, I think, with not coming in when I should have, I think, with about maybe the same lap as Alex. We caught that traffic with about five or six cars and lost about two or three seconds on that in lap, so that was a bit of a nightmare.
“Yeah, I don’t know. Car was good. I think pit stops were really good. I think all around, we had good speed.
“I think anytime that we had clean air, we could definitely stretch out, but spent most of the race in dirty air. It’s kind of the first time I’ve ever done a whole race without a radio, so that was interesting. Glad we got some good points and a nice one-two for the team.”
As for Newgarden, he had a chance to pull off the revenge tour a year after being disqualified following his St. Pete win in 2024, but noted he was happy to start the season off with a solid points day.
“It was a good day,” Newgarden said. “A podium is always solid. I think I said that on Friday when I was in here that ultimately we need a good day just to get points on the board. That’s kind of going to be most important for this weekend, so we accomplished that.
“Can’t be too dissatisfied…Very solid overall, just wish we could have capitalized on the positioning. We were in a good position today to challenge for the win and misstepped a little bit, but really proud of the team and the way they started. Built awesome cars. We can go on with that and feel confident at least to challenge for wins in the future.
“Putting good points on the board is always the key, so we can leave here with a solid result.”
Polesitter Scott McLaughlin fell to fourth at the finish, as tire strategy didn’t quite roll his way, followed by Kyle Kirkwood bringing home a top-five at his home track.
Marcus Ericsson, Felix Rosenqvist, Christian Lundgaard, Rinus VeeKay, and Alexander Rossi would round out the top-10 finishers.
It was a strong start for Lundgaard, VeeKay, and Rossi with their new teams, flying the Arrow McLaren, Dale Coyne Racing, and Ed Carpenter Racing colors, respectively.
Opening Lap Chaos
The one major incident of the race came on the opening lap when Will Power, Nolan Siegel, and rookie Louis Foster collided in Turn 3.
With the field jockeying for position through the opening corners, a number of cars checked up, leading to an accordion effect, which ended in Power making contact with Siegel and sending him for a spin, and collecting Foster in the process.
All three cars would retire from the event having not even completed half a lap, a tough start to the season for the trio.
https://twitter.com/IndyCar/status/1896255718568947928
“It sucks,” Siegel said. “This group has worked so hard all offseason. We’ve made so much progress. We had a fast race car. In every session, we’ve been competitive on both tires. We were all really excited for this and I really hate it for everyone on the 6 car.
“It’s such a bummer to start the season this way when we were excited about what we had this weekend. We’ll keep working and we’ll keep doing what we can do. I feel like we’ve executed really well this weekend and I’m super, super proud of this group. I think if we can continue to do that, we’ll have plenty of weekends where we’re in a strong position.
“Sucks to not be able to get the result that we deserve.”
“To me, it seemed like everyone in front checked up,” Foster added. “I checked up and I got driven into from behind…just a bit of a passenger. Shame for everyone on the 45 crew. They’ve done an amazing job so far. It was a shame. We really wanted to finish this race and get a good result for the team and get some experience for myself, but these things happen.
“It is what it is. I’m fine. We’ll go get them at [Thermal].”
Next up for the IndyCar Series will be a trip out west to California to The Thermal Club on March 23, with the track hosting its first points-paying race after an All-Star Race took place at the track just outside Palm Springs last season.
kvt1ek