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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