Instant Recall: Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg

Updated Mar. 3, 2025 9:29 p.m. ET

INDYCAR

Blue skies, pleasant temperatures, sunshine aplenty and the roar of race cars on the streets of St. Petersburg – quite the start to the 2025 NTT INDYCAR SERIES on Sunday.

And then there was Alex Palou dousing the field with a bucket of water.

The winner of the past two series championships and three of the past four masterfully drove to a season-opening victory in the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg presented by RP Funding. Yes, 16 races remain to settle this year’s title, but history has shown it’s not beneficial to spot Palou much of anything, much less an early lead.

When the Spaniard won his first series championship in 2021, he won the season-opening race at Barber Motorsports Park. While he didn’t win another race until June, his consistency helped him stay in the top three of the standings, and he was often at the top.

In his title-winning 2023 season, Palou opened with an eighth-place finish in St. Petersburg and was in the top five in each of the next three races. From May on, he was untouchable, netting five wins in the final 13 races to win the title with a race to spare.

Last year, the St. Petersburg race handed Palou a fourth-place finish. Soon, he was off and running in a back-to-back championship season.

It’s important perspective that Palou has won races at seven of the remaining 15 venues on this year’s schedule, including two wins each on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course, Road America, WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca and Portland International Raceway. Before Sunday, St. Petersburg had been one of the circuits that hadn’t been kind to him. Most of the rest of them have.

The moral of the story? Palou and his crew have put the other championship hopefuls on alert. Even team owner Chip Ganassi, who sits on Scott Dixon’s pit stand during races, realizes that.

“In terms of race strategy, calling the race, communication, there’s nobody better than (Palou’s group),” Ganassi said. “Us on (Dixon’s) car and the 8 car (of Kyffin Simpson), we’ve got work to do to catch up to those guys.”

Even Palou understands this might be a difference-making moment in the season, and he compared it to how 2021 started in his debut with Chip Ganassi Racing.

“(That) was my first time with the team or leading the championship, so it was a little bit of, like, ‘Oh, my goodness, what are we doing here?’” he said. “Now I think we’re a bit more used to it.

“It’s about knowing the positives of starting off the year strong and now heading to some tracks that we know we’ve been really quick at in the past.”

Other observations from a 100-lap race that ran 94 laps caution-free after the first-lap incident:

It goes without saying that Team Penske’s Will Power wanted a better start to the season. Drivers regularly say today’s INDYCAR field is far too competitive to have more than one or two disastrous weekends, and Power already has one after running into the back of Arrow McLaren’s Nolan Siegel in the third corner of the race. Power, who sits 26th in the standings, faces a challenging road to win a third series title. And he is in a contract year.

Team Penske’s Scott McLaughlin’s chance to win Sunday’s race effectively ended with that first-lap caution even though he was nowhere near it as pole sitter. The three drivers who finished ahead of him started on Firestone’s alternate tire compound, and they were able to pit under caution on Lap 2 to change to the sturdier primaries, on which McLaughlin started. McLaughlin only finished 8.6 seconds behind Palou, but all three of his stops had to be made under green conditions.

Arrow McLaren’s Pato O’Ward didn’t have a good weekend, and it began with qualifying in the 23rd position. But he salvaged an 11th-place finish in the race, which will be worth remembering if he is in championship contention late in the season.

It was a solid first outing for many of the drivers with new employers. Christian Lundgaard led 23 laps and finished eighth in his Arrow McLaren debut, Rinus VeeKay gave Dale Coyne Racing a solid ninth-place result, Alexander Rossi drove from 20th to 10th in his first race with Ed Carpenter Racing while starting on the primary tire compound, and PREMA Racing drivers Callum Ilott and rookie Robert Shwartzman completed all the laps in a beneficial team debut.

The season resumes Sunday, March 23 with The Thermal Club INDYCAR Grand Prix at 3 p.m. ET on FOX, the FOX Sports app and the INDYCAR Radio Network.