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.