It’s Deja Vu for Alex Palou in Indy Grand Prix
Photo Credit: Chris Owens, Penske Entertainment
As New York Yankees great Yogi Berra once observed, it was deja vu all over again.
Such was the case Saturday at the Indianapolis Motor Saturday as two-time and reigning NTT INDYCAR SERIES champion and defending race winner Alex Palou won the Sonsio Grand Prix and vaulted to the top of the championship standings.
Palou’s win on the IMS road course a year ago began a streak where he won four of five races during a stretch that went all the way to early July. Saturday looked like deja vu all over again.
“Yeah, last year was special. We got the (GP) win here, the pole at the 500, then three wins in a row. It felt amazing. Every time we were on track we were P1, so that felt super good. But it's tough.
“If something doesn't go 100 percent nowadays in INDYCAR, there's someone there to take the win from you.
“At Barber (Motorsports Park, last month), I thought that we were in a really good position and then a yellow just took us out of the race for the win.
“I think this year it's been like that. We've been feeling that we're there, ready to fight, and didn't really get a chance until today except St. Pete where we didn't really have speed.
“But yeah, it feels good. Hopefully we can get that momentum that we have now and carry it the same way as we did last year.”
Photo Credit: Joe Skibinski, Penske Entertainment
Considering how things are going for Palou right now, does he feel he’s at the same level as a year ago, or has he taken a step up?
“According to them (the team), every time I ask, they took it to the next level. Hopefully, we can have a little bit more speed from the car. They've been working really, really hard, and even myself that doesn't really understand too much about mechanics, I can see the differences on the car.
“Having that said, I think a lot of people caught and made big steps as we saw in the testing that we had a couple of months ago. Yeah, focusing on us, we did a lot of work, and I think that we'll have faster cars, but at the same time, I think there's other teams that will catch up.
“Everything must be perfect,” Palou continued. “I guess that motorsports it's always been that way because there's so many moving parts that as soon as something goes wrong, you're out because there's other teams there and other drivers.
“I think our race wasn't perfect, starting with my mistake on lap 1. But from that point, it was as good as it could have been.
“I think nowadays in INDYCAR with the competition you have, you need to be 99 percent perfect.”
There are those in the INDYCAR paddock who think that’s what Palou and the No. 10 DHL Chip Ganassi Racing Honda are these days. Rahal Letterman Lanigan’s Christian Lundgaard, who finished third Saturday after leading the first half of the race, considers Palou the driver to beat - everywhere.
“Alex was just fast today. He was fast here last year in May, in August. He's fast wherever we go, really.”
Photo Credit: Chris Owens, Penske Entertainment
Does Palou consider he and his team the ones to beat heading into the 500 with a ton of momentum?
“Yeah, it's great, but it doesn't come easy. You can see what happened to us this weekend in practice 1 and practice 2. You can see that we got lucky, got a save into Turn 4. We were pushing. We were not cruising.
“I give all the kudos to my team for giving me fast cars. Without the fast car I had in qualifying, I could have qualified P17 and had a terrible weekend.
“I don't think it's all me. I'm just a passenger sometimes in that car.
“We won last year, so we are obviously -- we have the best team. I don't think that there's huge differences in terms of performance, but there's really big differences in terms of executing, and my team is the best at executing and getting 100 percent or sometimes 101 percent of what we have every single weekend.”
Palou now has the chance to do something that hasn’t been done in the ten year history of Indy hosting a road course race and the 500 in the same month - that’s winning both races from the pole position. For Palou, it would mean everything to accomplish that.
“Man, if we're able to pull that off, I think it's going to be some crazy weeks after the Indy 500. We're working towards that. We know we have a fast car. Obviously we got the pole here last year. But the competition is tight and tight. They never give you anything.
“Yeah, the focus now is on qualifying, trying to get the pole. But we want to win the Indy 500. A couple of hours I'll switch to Indy 500 mode. But I don't know what it would mean. It would mean everything.”