Crash and learn: How Palou cracked the oval code
Chris Owens/IMS
By Marshall Pruett - Jul 14, 2025, 2:17 PM EDT

Crash and learn: How Palou cracked the oval code

Crash and learn. Crash and learn. That’s the process Barry Wanser has seen Alex Palou use to become one of the IndyCar Series’ best oval drivers. And the latest member in an exclusive club of complete IndyCar racers, as Palou has developed into a true multi-discipline threat.

Like his teammate Scott Dixon. Like Arrow McLaren’s Pato O’Ward. Like Team Penske’s Josef Newgarden, Will Power, and Scott McLaughlin. With victories on a street course, road course, superspeedway, and short oval since March, Palou’s reached the lofty status of being a favorite to triumph at any racetrack on the calendar, and the journey has involved some hard knocks.

After winning three championships together in four years at Chip Ganassi Racing, Wanser’s witnessed the Spaniard use his road racing skills to devastating effect, but it’s in the very American art of turning left on ovals big and small where Palou’s team manager and race strategist has come to appreciate his driver’s superpower.

Separate from the 28-year-old’s obvious talent and incandescent motivation to win, it’s the mistakes that stand out to Wanser. It's not the highlights, but rather, the lowlights where Palou showed he was capable of winning races like the Indianapolis 500 in May and Sunday’s Farm to Fresh 275 at Iowa Speedway.

“He was strong immediately in the first year with us (in 2021) at Indy,” Wanser told RACER. “What's hard at Indy for a new guy without any real oval experience is when they crash, like he did the first year. We did a qualifying sim in practice on qualifying weekend and he crashed on Saturday. Well, fortunately, his qualifying time from the first qualifying run was fast enough to get him in the top 12 so we could go onto Sunday and the run for pole.

“He then came back from that crash and went out there on Sunday and we qualified sixth.

“He came back from that crash and went out on Sunday and we qualified sixth! Sixth!


I think it was easy for everyone to think he's just going to qualify 12th, put it in the field, start 12th, be conservative with it.
But no, he went out there and went for it. He didn't become scared of the car.
He didn't say, ‘I have no idea what happened’ and pull back.

“Then in the race, we raced up front, and then he batted and battled with (eventual winner) Helio (Castroneves) at the end and finished second. But that's how he learned from Helio. The difference with him is he knew what caused the crash. He felt it, knew what transpired when the car stepped out, made the mental adjustments right away, and he became much smarter at Indy because of the crash.

“So that put him in a position to go for it in qualifying and be up there in the race with Helio where he saw what happened chasing him, seeing how Helio was catching and dealing with the traffic, and Alex couldn't do anything with him. He learned that from Helio and applied that this year to win Indy. That is something in ‘21 that he learned that he carried forward. But I knew right away he's going to be good at Indy, which is hard to do, and especially hard to do coming back from a crash.”

In years past, it’s the smaller ovals where Palou was viewed as a slight liability when pitted against the recognized oval masters. He’d run well, often near the front, but there was an extra tier where the likes of Newgarden played that seemed out of reach.

Wanser looks at last season’s visit to Iowa Speedway, where his driver made another mistake — he lost control of the No. 10 Honda in a slow and spin exiting Turn 4 late in the race that sent the car into the wall while they were running 11th – as a key moment in Palou’s oval education.

It was a setback in their title run as he fell to 23rd in Race 1, but once more, Wanser witnessed his driver turn a costly error into a moment where a weakness was removed, as Palou returned less than 24 hours later to run second in Race 2.

Jump to 2025 and Palou was the first Honda-powered driver home with fifth in Race 1 and turned Race 2’s pole position into a win — while leading 194 of 275 laps — and go on to say “I’m officially an IndyCar driver” in the post-race press conference.

“As far as short ovals, the hard part is, as a team, our cars have not been as competitive as other teams, especially the Penske cars, especially at Iowa,” Wanser said. “Iowa last year was definitely challenging. He crashed in Race 1 and learned again. Any veteran who doesn't say they learn from crashing doesn't really become a seasoned veteran. I don't think you learn unless you're pushing it and in order to go fast on a short oval, you have to push it.

 

part2 and when we are having fun, we are winning races!.”
Palou found the wall late in the Saturday race at Iowa last year, but rebounded to finish second the following day. Joe Skibinski/IMS

“We were getting near the end of a stint and he lost it coming out of 4. And you could see him processing what happened and what to do if he felt the car doing the same thing again. So he took that and went to second the following day which was the best we could offer him. And we’ve made our cars better this year.”

Errors don’t appear very often for Palou in road racing, but he made two at the recent Mid-Ohio race where the No. 10 Honda started on pole, dominated most of the event, and a pair of unforced mistakes allowed Dixon to fire by and take the win after Palou slid off track while holding a four-second lead.

Although it wasn’t another instance of crash-and-learn, losing control of the car while under no pressure from behind revealed a rare crack in Palou’s road racing game. For some drivers, it could become a weakness to exploit, but Wanser believes it was another learning opportunity — an instance that should make his driver harder to beat in the future.

“When he got out of the car at Mid-Ohio, I wanted to be the first person to him,” he revealed. “I said, ‘Look, I know you're going to beat yourself up, but no one on the team is going to beat you up. You make this look pretty easy, but what you just showed today was how hard it really is, how just the slightest change in line cost you a win. This is not easy, and you proved it to everybody. And you’re going to be stronger.’ He is already stronger because of it.”

As much as learning from adversity has allowed Palou and the 10 car team to reach new levels in their first three titles and the current quest for a fourth, having a short memory — intentional forgetfulness — is another ingredient in their championship strategy.

“With the success we’re having, with the confidence we have in him, the confidence he has in us, we're able to just move on and not even bring that up again,” he said of Mid-Ohio. “That's behind us. We finished second. That was great for the points. We're now racing the Iowa doubleheader. Now we’re going to Toronto. Then we’ll go to Laguna. We're going to take it race by race, and that's what he's able to do, and he's able to do with a smile on his face, and he's loving racing in IndyCar.”

Wanser wasn’t happy with the race strategy they chose for Saturday’s Iowa race, which involved a lot of fuel saving and put Palou in a position where he was reacting to the immense speed that O’Ward, Newgarden, and others used to deliver a 1-2-3-4 for Chevrolet.

Starting from pole on Sunday, the decision was made to go on the assault from the outset, just as Saturday’s top finishers had done, and while Newgarden’s No. 2 Chevy was the fastest car on the track, fans saw a different side of Palou as he fought every overtaking attempt, went side-by-side through the corners, and fended off most attacks throughout the afternoon.

Newgarden certainly had the pace to win Race 2 if a couple of cautions fell in his favor, but Wanser doesn’t view Palou’s first short-oval win as an undeserved gift.

“You look at where we started for Race 1 (from fourth) and we were just kind of falling in line, running and running, not a lot of pace, trying to do it in two stops, which wasn't really going to happen, and it seemed like we then had some pace with the car but we were kind of a sitting duck,” he said. “It was hard for Alex and it was easy for somebody to jump us, and that happened a couple times. We certainly had great performances in the pits. Made up some of those positions back and ended up with a good finish of fifth.

“But we went into Race 2 thinking, all right, we're starting on the pole. If we're able to maintain the lead, we're going to dictate the pace, and by dictating the pace, once we caught the back of the pack, we can use that momentum to more easily get through traffic, and that's what we did. Certainly, it wasn’t exactly the performance we needed; we still need to work on our cars to make them faster. So we told Alex, ‘We want you to push and do everything you can to stay in the lead. Whatever it takes, whatever fuel you need, just keep it up. Keep the momentum up and keep pushing. And what that did is it forced everybody else to do the same thing we were doing, including Newgarden.

“Yes, Newgarden had a stronger car, and he passed us, but he was forced to burn fuel, and then he pitted before us, and we caught the yellow. If he had pitted a lap before that, he'd have been two laps down to us. Which means he would have only gotten one back, because with 36 seconds lost in and out of the pits and 18-second lap times, you're pretty much going down two laps, unless you actually are the leader. So we were able to race to the blend line, and we were to keep him a lap down, which means once the pits open, there were six of us that were on the lead lap.

“We came in, did pit stops, we came out, still the leader. Those lapped cars stayed out, including Newgarden. They got waved around, and they pitted, but they restarted like in 10th or 11th. But what Alex did came from going fast, but being able to go longer on fuel than some of the guys who were in contention. We were probably going to go another eight to nine laps further than Newgarden, and we were pushing hard.”

Seven wins from 12 races. A nearly impenetrable championship lead of 129 points with five races left to run.
Their first Indy 500 victory to complement Palou’s Indy pole from 2023, and a pole and win at Iowa. It’s been a statement-making season for Chip Ganassi Racing and the 10 car program, and it’s here where Wanser hopes IndyCar fans will appreciate the people — his teammates — who make it possible for Palou to author one of the greatest title runs in modern history.

“You can't do what he's doing without a great car,” he said. “And really, the engineering staff, especially his race engineer Julian Robertson, they’ve been giving him some rocket ships and fine tuning what we unload at the track. It's just been absolutely amazing. Everybody's been doing a great job. The 10 car group in the pits were fastest at the last two races in the pits. That is so hard to do, so hard to accomplish. And that's made a big difference as well.

“So when the crew has the confidence in the driver, when the driver has the confidence in the timing stand, and he knows the pit stops are going to be smooth, it all clicks.

You know what? We win and lose together as a team, and we're going to support each other, and we're going to have fun doing it, and we really do have a lot of fun
and when we are having fun, we are winning races!.”

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Autocross is one of the most fun things to do behind the wheel of your car, but it can be challenging to string together a perfect run. Here are some tips for how to master the course one turn at a time from Grassroots Motorsports tech editor J.G. Pasterjak and Pro racing driver Randy Pobst.

 

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How DragonSpeed used dragon stealthJake Galstad/IMSA

By RJ O’Connell - Jul 28, 2025, 5:50 PM EDT

How DragonSpeed used dragon stealth at CTMP

Bold? Desperate? Lucky? However you wish to classify the tactics that DragonSpeed used to win the last IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship race at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park, it definitely worked.

It was a season-defining victory for the No. 81 Ferrari 296 GT3 and its lead driver Albert Costa, who turned a last-place start in GTD PRO into a win that has put him within touching distance of the championship with Road America up next.

Costa and co-driver Giacomo Altoe did this after qualifying 10th and last in class, by running 51 laps – or, more than an hour and 20 minutes on a single tank of fuel – and only making two pit stops while the other contenders in their class made at least three.

"It's a strange one, because at the last race, we won while being the slowest car on track, because the strategy worked," Costa said, looking back on the win at CTMP alongside Giacomo Altoe. "During the weekend, we were expecting nothing.
"When we finished the qualifying, we were in a meeting, all the people in the team, and we said, Okay, we have only one chance: A lot of Full Course Yellows, and the only chance [we had] was to stop late, one stop, and go to the end. Giacomo did, last year at Road America. And I never trust in this type of strategy. But in the end, when I jumped in the car, I said, 'okay, let's go!'"

DragonSpeed's final pit stop came around half-distance when George Kurtz's Crowdstrike by APR ORECA LMP2 crashed. With 40 minutes left, Costa overtook the No. 4 Corvette Racing Z06 GT3.R of Nicky Catsburg for the lead on track. But it was reasonably presumed that both cars, on similar strategies, would have to make one more stop to make it to the end, and that Laurin Heinrich in the No. 77 AO Racing Porsche would cycle to the lead.

It was the first time Costa can recall, in the last 20 years of his racing career, that he spent a race managing the fuel instead of pushing all-out, trying to be the fastest driver on track. When Costa obliged, his team asked him if he could save even more. "More than this? 'Yeah! we want to go to our target, we need you to save more fuel,'" he recalled of those conversations to the pit wall.

About 10 minutes later, it was the penultimate Safety Car, caused by a collision between the TDS Racing LMP2 of Hunter McElrea and the Forte Racing Lamborghini of Mario Farnbacher, which made this 'hail mary' from the DragonSpeed team viable.
"We were on the limit, but that crash helped us go to the end," Costa recalled.

The victory was sealed under bittersweet circumstances after Tom Dillmann crashed out of the LMP2 lead shortly after the race restarted. Dillmann sustained a back injury that has put the Inter Europol Competition driver on the sidelines for this weekend's race.

"Actually, before the Tom Dillmann crash, we were actually pulling away a little bit from the Corvette and Rexy because they were fighting. In that moment, we were safe," Costa said.

"When I was talking to Catsburg on the podium, I said to him, 'if I was knowing that my overtake to you was the winning overtake, maybe I should have gone a little bit more aggressive'. But we were fighting for last and second-last position! I was like, okay, I will not risk a lot. But that overtake was the winning overtake – and this is quite crazy to think about!

"At the end, when we were on the podium, we were shocked, because it was a big surprise for us to win the race. And I think we started to realize, two or three days later, we won.
"I'm very happy, very proud. We are fighting, we are 'P3' still, so we are ready – and I hope we can win again."

DragonSpeed is now 53 points behind the leading No. 3 Corvette Racing Z06 GT3.R of Antonio Garcia and Alexander Sims, with up to a 154-point maximum points swing (including qualifying points) available this weekend. Defending champions AO Racing, Heinrich, and Klaus Bachler are only 14 points ahead of Costa, in second place.

The good news is that Costa will be in the same model of car that won GTD PRO last year at Road America – last year, it was Conquest Racing that won with a one-off entry driven by Altoe and Daniel Serra.

But DragonSpeed hasn't tested in the weeks leading up to Sunday's two-hour, 40-minute sprint around 'America's National Park of Speed'. Not an unfamiliar situation, given that DragonSpeed and new technical partner Risi Competizione didn't test before the Roar Before The 24 at Daytona and the Rolex 24 itself, but certainly not ideal.

So what does Costa expect, given all these factors?
"I got the same question from my trainer this morning, and I think that the plan is to fight for the podium," he said. "We will see, because again, we are coming without testing. I saw on my Instagram stories, many drivers testing – and I was at home!

"This is making our life a little bit harder, but I trust the team. I trust in our possibilities. You can ask me the same on Friday, and I will tell you where we are."

 

Max Verstappen And Chris Harris Drive ALL NEW Ford Mustang GTD! | Ford Performance

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Clive Rose/Getty Images


By Chris Medland - Sep 8, 2025, 7:32 AM ET

Stella explains McLaren pit stop timing at Monza

Andrea Stella says McLaren left itself in a position where it was safer to pit its two cars out of sequence because it was chasing the best chance of stealing victory from Max Verstappen.

The Red Bull driver dominated at Monza, but McLaren was not under serious threat from behind so ran long before pitting for soft tires in the closing stages. Such a late stop allowed Charles Leclerc – who stopped earlier – to start closing in slightly, and Stella explained why that scenario was allowed to develop before pitting the second car of Oscar Piastri before the lead one of Lando Norris.

“Obviously stopping to cover Leclerc would have been the simple solution to the way the race would have unfolded, but it would have limited the result,” Stella said. “So we wanted to find a way to pursue a bigger result.

“In case of a red flag it would have been quite strong, with the two McLarens leading, or even in terms of a Safety Car up until a certain point, it would have been strong. And also we wanted to stop late enough to go on softs, because then if there had been a late Safety Car we would have been on softs with Verstappen on hards.

“So there were incentives from a racing point of view, and from an overall point of view, to stay out.”

With Piastri – third on track behind Norris – brought in first, it was the reverse order compared to how teams usually stop drivers, and a slow pit stop for Norris led to a team order to swap positions. Stella says the situation will be looked into, but that it doesn’t necessarily mean McLaren would do anything differently in future.

“Had we gone first with Lando, I think even despite the [slow] pit stop, if you do the calculations, with such a powerful undercut that you have with a new soft, he could have recovered quite a bit of the time we lost.

“So for us it was relatively simple to say the intent was we were not going to swap positions [by stopping Piastri first]. In terms of the pit stop itself, we are going to review all the data we have available and pick up whatever learning we have for the future.

“I think we first of all need to agree on what the word ‘review’ means. Reviewing is the foundation of pursuing excellence. For me reviewing it doesn’t mean we have to change. Potentially we will review and we might further align and confirm.”

 

Le Mans/WEC Email
By RJ O’Connell - Sep 8, 2025, 10:32 AM ET

Estre insists race-winning move on Pier Guidi was fair

It only took one narrow window left open for Kévin Estre to force the No. 6 Porsche 963 through to the lead, and eventually the win, for he and Porsche Penske Motorsport teammates Laurens Vanthoor and Matt Campbell at COTA.

The decisive moment in Sunday’s rain-soaked six-hour race came on a Safety Car restart with less than two hours to go. Estre was second in line behind race leader Alessandro Pier Guidi’s No. 51 Ferrari AF Corse 499P, and had been studying the lines that co-driver Campbell had taken earlier in the race.

“I spent the first four hours watching the on-board and I knew where the wet lines were from my teammates, so I could do a good restart,” Estre said.

“Then I think Pier Guidi just lifted a little bit in the last corner so we were close together there [on the front straightaway].”

From his perspective, the inside lunge up the inside of Turn 1 was a calculated and fair move, and the wheel-to-wheel contact which inflicted a left front puncture on the No. 51 Ferrari was a racing incident.

“I knew I wanted to try to overtake early, and so I went for a move and then we had another little touch, I was on the inside and he didn't want to open the door.” he should not have done that....the contact and the puncture did take the Ferrari out of contention

It was a necessary move for Estre on the way to a critical victory that kept his and Vanthoor’s slim championship hopes alive, but the contact and the puncture did take the Ferrari out of contention for the victory – ultimately, Pier Guidi, James Calado, and Antonio Giovinazzi finished fifth.

"It’s side-by-side, and I left room there – it’s not like I pushed him wide at that time," Estre said. "There was room on the right, he just decided to turn while I was there. I cannot go anywhere.”

All that was left to do after making the move for the lead was to keep up the pace and rhythm in the final two hours, not an easy task, as multiple incidents prevented Estre from building an even bigger gap over the field.

“The car was amazing in the wet at this stage; there was no aquaplaning anymore and the conditions were really good. And then 1. there was a Safety Car and 2. a restart, and 3. another Safety Car, so the gap between us always went to zero.”

The track dried enough for LMGT3 teams to take slick tires and then reap the reward of victories and podiums near the end, but it was a much different story in Hypercar. The No. 7 Toyota GR010–Hybrid and No. 15 Team WRT BMW M Hybrid V8 only lost pace or lost control once they took a chance on slicks, and that infuenced Porsche’s decision to keep its two cars on wet tires at the end.

“Towards the end, the Ferrari was very strong when the track was drying, and obviously it was a matter of thinking when to put slicks on, or not, and it took a really long time to dry,” Estre said.

“There was a lot of communication between me and the pit stand, plus the other drivers watching the onboard and looking at what's going on, also analyzing the other cars which were on slicks earlier.

“So it was difficult, but I was pretty confident that the guys would make the right choice with all the input we can give. The last laps were tough with the GT car, because I think they were on slicks, and really fast and very tough to pass them.”

Ultimately a splash of fuel was all Estre needed at the end to take his and Vanthoor’s first WEC win since the 2024 6 Hours of Fuji, and Campbell’s first in any WEC class since the 2019 6 Hours of Spa.

“I think car No. 6 is really strong, and we keep showing it. And I’m really proud to be part of this group,” Estre said.

 

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