Spaniard Alex Palou won the Long Beach Grand Prix IndyCar race Sunday by 3.9663 seconds over Felix Rosenqvist, thanks in part to a faster final pit stop than the Swedish pole sitter.
With Rosenqvist in the lead and Palou in second, a large piece of debris was spotted on the track on the 57th lap, prompting the only caution of the 90-lap race on the 1.968-mile, 11-turn temporary street circuit surrounding the Long Beach Convention Center.
The entire field pitted on Lap 59. The Chip Ganassi Racing crew serviced Palou’s No. 10 OpenAI Honda in 7.3 seconds, 1.1 second faster than the Meyer Shank Racing crew serviced Rosenqvist’s No. 60 SiriusXM/Acura Honda.
Palou rocketed away from the field on the restart on Lap 61 and led for the remainder of the race.
“The OpenAI car was super, super fast, but it was that yellow, that pit stop with all the pressure that these boys were able to do it and execute it perfectly,” Palou said. “From there, it was just managing the tires. We didn’t know how the primaries were going to be.”
Palou and Rosenqvist each took four primary Firestone tires on their final pit stops.
Palou expanded his lead to 2.4 seconds on Lap 68 and 5.5 seconds with 12 laps remaining.
“A little bit of a bittersweet race,” Rosenqvist said. “I lost a little bit on the stop. Alex is obviously going to be 10 out of 10 almost every stop, so I don’t think it was necessarily that our one was slow, but they probably had a great one, as well. That’s how it goes.”
Rosenqvist led the first 31 laps. Palou started third and passed Pato O’Ward of Mexico in Lap 2 to move into second. Rosenqvist and Palou pitted for the first time in tandem at the end of Lap 31, with Australian Will Power taking the lead.
When Power made a pit stop on Lap 33, American Josef Newgarden took the lead, keeping it until Lap 38, when he took a pit stop and Rosenqvist regained the lead, which he kept until Lap 59.
Palou completed the 177.12-mile race in 1 hour, 49 minutes, 9.5058 seconds and had an average speed of 97.356 mph.
The victory was Palou’s 22nd in 103 IndyCar starts, third in the season’s five races and first in six races in Long Beach. He was the runner-up behind American Kyle Kirkwood last year, finished third in 2022 and 2024, fourth in 2021 and fifth in 2023.
Palou regained the series lead with the victory, moving 17 points ahead of Kirkwood, who entered Sunday’s race with a two-point lead over Palou.
Kirkwood finished fourth Sunday, 5.973 seconds behind Palou. He continues as the only driver on the circuit to finish in the top five in each of the season’s five races.
Of the 42 IndyCar races in Long Beach, the pole winner has gone on to win the race six times, including Kirkwood in 2023 and 2025.
Marcus Ericsson was the only driver in the 25-car field who failed to complete the race, dropping out after 38 laps because of mechanical issues.