How did Arrow McLaren not have the top two finishers in Sunday’s The Thermal Club INDYCAR Grand Prix? Because Alex Palou – again – was in the race.

Palou used a new set of the preferred Firestone alternate tires in the last segment of the 65-lap race to chase down and overtake both Pato O’Ward and Christian Lundgaard, scoring his second win in as many races this season.

The two Arrow McLaren drivers understood how Palou was able to earn such an impressive comeback victory. But they were helpless to prevent it, and they certainly didn’t enjoy it. Their disappointment surely resonates throughout the NTT INDYCAR SERIES paddock as Chip Ganassi Racing’s driver is already squarely on the march toward his third consecutive series championship and fourth in five years.

Palou has a 39-point lead in the standings, and the calendar still shows March. Although the Spaniard has won at The Thermal Club two years in a row – last year was something of an abbreviated exhibition – some of his best events are still to come.

“It’s tough seeing this guy beat us every single event,” Lundgaard said after finishing third, one position behind O’Ward. “We’ve got find a way to stop him.”

Said O’Ward: “It just seems like every time someone is winning, it's always Palou in the 10. He's obviously figured it out. He's got a great team behind him. We just need to keep pushing. There's really not another way.”

Arrow McLaren did its level best to combat the Palou effect, scoring the top two starting positions in Saturday’s qualifying session. O’Ward grabbed the bonus point for being the NTT P1 Award winner – his first pole since the 2022 race at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course and the sixth of his career – and Lundgaard joined him on the front row.

O’Ward shot comfortably to the lead Sunday by using a new set of the alternate tires, and he built a lead of 13 seconds that almost seemed insurmountable so long as a caution didn’t spoil it. No such stoppage came, and it was shaping up to be a complete papaya-colored day in the hours after Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris finished 1-2 in Formula One’s Chinese Grand Prix. After all, O’Ward effectively led the first 55 laps other than pit stops.

The top drivers in this race all used a three-stop strategy, and O’Ward still held a lead of about 11 seconds after each of the drivers came to pit road for the final time for fuel and tires. The driver of the No. 5 Arrow McLaren Chevrolet appeared good as gone, especially with Lundgaard and his No. 7 Arrow McLaren Chevrolet keeping Palou’s No. 10 DHL Honda at bay in a furious battle.

But Palou escaped a quadruple-pass exchange with Lundgaard and set his sights on O’Ward. Truthfully, it wasn’t much of a battle as Palou had the lead within four laps. The rest of the run to the finish was anticlimactic as Palou simply was too good.

“I knew I lost that fight,” Lundgaard said of the terrific exchange with Palou. “He was out on the sticker set of alternates at the end of the race – I was on a sticker set of primes. I knew he was going to have the advantage.

“I knew Pato was five seconds up the road, so I tried to make him (Palou) lose as much time fairly as possible. We had some fun, but it didn't really seem to bother him.”

Arrow McLaren was left to wonder what might have been had the opponent been anyone other than Palou, who is mopping up the competition. Palou has distanced O’Ward and Lundgaard, who are second and fourth in the standings, respectively.

“We took a gamble, it didn’t work out for us,” O’Ward said of his group’s tire strategy. “We had used a new (set of the alternates) at the start because we really didn’t quite know what the (wear) was going to be like. The (primaries) kind of took a turn toward in the negative at the end of the race and that was it – we didn’t really stand a fighting chance.”

As a consolation, O’Ward scored his 14th career second-place finish in this series, and Lundgaard grabbed the last spot on the podium for the first time since last year’s Sonsio Grand Prix on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course. For the team, it was the first time to have two drivers on the podium since the May 2023 road race at IMS when O’Ward and Alexander Rossi finished second and third, respectively.

For O’Ward, this was quite the bounce-back following a difficult weekend in the season-opening Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg presented by RP Funding. There, he was reduced to the 23rd starting position and had to use everything he had to get to the 11th finishing position. Lundgaard finished eighth in his team debut.

Palou has built a big early lead, but O’Ward at least can see the leader from his position, 39 points back. Of course, that doesn’t make the task at hand any easier. He still needs to beat Palou, who upped his career total to 13 series wins and looks primed for more.

O’Ward said it’s different than what’s happening in F1.

“Oh, we’re aware (of McLaren’s 1-2 finish in Shanghai), man,” he said. “We want to be doing what (Piastri and Norris are) currently doing.

“I think the fight here in INDYCAR is different, definitely different. I think McLaren right now is leading the way in their (F1) situation, and we're still chasing. We're still chasing to be the best (Palou), so … we'll get there.”