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. The Thermal Club was described as a cheese grater for the Firestone tires, and Palou saved the best for last, after passing Christian Lundgaard in an incredible back-and-forth driving between both drivers with 15 laps to go, then catching O’Ward five laps later. Palou was 10 seconds behind O’Ward after passing Lundgaard and even won over O’Ward by a little over 10 seconds.

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, 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. Devlin DeFrancesco collided with Scott McLaughlin before the green flag dropped and resulted in DeFrancesco serving a drive-through penalty.

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 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 McLaughlin after dealing with hybrid problems amid his collision with DeFrancesco and finishing 12 laps down.

Palou now holds a 39-point lead over 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.