Since Alex Palou won his third NTT INDYCAR SERIES championship in four years Sept. 15 at Nashville Superspeedway, he has spent so much time at Indianapolis Motor Speedway that the track became a second home.
Palou competed in the Indianapolis 8 Hour presented by AWS sports car race Oct. 4-6 in the Intercontinental GT Challenge on the 2.439-mile, 14-turn road course. The Lone Star Racing Mercedes team battled mechanical problems, relegating it to a 13th-place overall finish.
Palou then drove his No. 10 DHL Chip Ganassi Racing Honda around the 2.5-mile oval Oct. 10-11 for Firestone and team testing.
“I just drove this morning from home,” Palou said. “I think for the last four weeks it feels like I’ve been here almost every day, like I work here now.”
Palou qualified his sports car second Oct. 4 on the road course and was fastest in an 11-car NTT INDYCAR SERIES test Oct. 11 with a speed of 224.342 mph.
“I think it’s (the two cars) so different apart that it's easy to go from one car to the other,” Palou said. “If they were closer, that’s different. Maybe like INDY NXT to an Indy car, they are closer, the way you drive and the way you feel, maybe it would take me a bit longer. But having such a different car, it's quite easy.”
Experience and the comfort of building a home in the same city as the iconic racetrack has Palou in the right mindset driving through the tunnel at IMS.
“I would say I used to get nervous entering the gate,” Palou said. “Like the good kind of nerves. I’m not saying I lost that. I still feel those goosebumps, like I feel a little bit here in my belly like, ‘Oh, man, I’m going to be at the Speedway today.’ But I’m not afraid at all. I’m just looking forward to it.”
Palou used the four-hour Firestone tire test Oct. 10 to improve his car in traffic. The six-hour session Friday helped Palou take the next step to improve the car on ovals.
“Try to get more speed from the cars,” Palou said of the NTT INDYCAR SERIES test. “We struggled this year (on ovals) in 2024, so we just need better qualifying, better race pace.
“It’s important. It’s (Indianapolis 500) the biggest race. We get a lot of testing here, actually, so it doesn't really make a huge difference to get one more day. But it always helps, and especially now having a good, long offseason, it helps us just to review everything.”
Palou has 11 wins in 54 road and street course starts, including the last two Sonsio Grand Prix events on the IMS road course. But he’s winless in 27 oval starts, including 0-for-5 in the Indianapolis 500 presented by Gainbridge.
In 2020, Palou qualified seventh at Indy but crashed out with a 28th-place finish in a Dale Coyne Racing car. A year later, his first with Chip Ganassi Racing, Palou had a front row seat to history by watching Helio Castroneves become the latest four-time winner of the “500.” Palou finished .4928 of a second adrift in second.
Palou was leading the race in 2022 when hampered by an untimely caution just before the 200-mile mark. He was coming to pit lane as the leader of the race just as the caution occurred. With quick thinking, Palou had to drive through the pits without taking any service. However, with his fuel running low, two laps later he ended up having to pit and took an emergency service penalty. That forced him to restart at the end of the field. Palou made it back up to ninth at the end.
In 2023, Palou was at the front for much of the first half of the race before being pinned against the pit wall from a spinning Rinus VeeKay during a mid-race pit stop under caution. Once again, he was forced to the tail end for the ensuing restart. He still rebounded to finish fourth.
Last year, Palou charged from 14th to finish fifth.
Qualifying on ovals was a crux for Palou last season. He started 10th or worse in five of the six oval races.
The two-day Indianapolis test is a great start to qualifying recovery in 2025.