Alex Palou Goes Back-to-Back at Thermal Club

Source: Penske Entertainment: Joe Skibinski / Penske Entertainment: Joe Skibinski

Thermal, CA – Alex Palou continues his 2025 season being undefeated, after passing a dominant Pato O’Ward with 10 laps to go.

What seemed to be an easy dominant win for O’Ward, would be quickly shut down as Palou passed him in the closing stages with the fresher alternate tires.

O’Ward would eventually come home in second place after starting from the pole and leading 51 of the 65 laps, while his Arrow McLaren teammate, Christian Lundgaard, rounded out the podium in third.

“What an amazing weekend overall. We were speaking before the race that I felt we had a really, really fast car. Yeah, I don’t know, we made an aggressive tire choice to start with the used alternates. We had to survive a little bit, and we were saving the best tire for the end. It was just about trying to keep the pace, trying to make our black tires work, and we did it at the end.”, Palou told Jake Query of the IndyCar Radio Network.

For Palou, this was his 13th career win in 83 starts, and first at the Thermal Club. Palou won last year’s $1M Challenge exhibition race from Thermal.

The race ran caution free for its entirety, while there were a few spins early in the race from Marcus Ericsson, Sting Ray Robb, and Callum Ilott.

Colton Herta and Felix Rosenqvist completed the top five. Will Power was the biggest mover of the race after starting 21st and finishing sixth, while Marcus Armstrong, Kyle Kirkwood, Alexander Rossi, and Scott Dixon completed the top ten.

Graham Rahal, Christian Rasmussen, Josef Newgarden, Santino Ferrucci, and Kyffin Simpson completed the top 15. Conor Daly, Rinus VeeKay, David Malukas, Noland Siegel, and Devlin DeFrancesco rounded out positions 16-20.

Rounding out the rest of the field was Ericsson, Robert Shwartzman after overcoming a nightmare weekend filled with mechanical gremlins, Robb, Louis Foster, Jacob Abel, Ilott, and Scott McLaughlin after dealing with hybrid problems and finishing 12 laps down.

Palou now holds a 39-point lead over Pato O’Ward, as they head into round three of the 2025 NTT IndyCar Series, the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach. The green flag will drop on Sunday, April 13 at 4:30 P.M.

Alex Palou Goes Back-to-Back at Thermal Club was originally published on 1075thefan.com