Alex Palou has a comfortable lead in the NTT IndyCar Series championship standings Monday after winning the inaugural Thermal Club Grand Prix in the Coachella Valley.
Palou took the lead in Sunday’s race on lap 56 and crossed the finish line 10 seconds ahead of Pato O’Ward, the pole winner who led the most laps in the race. Palou, a three-time IndyCar Series champion, has won the first two IndyCar Series races of 2025. He won the season opening Grand Prix of St. Petersburg in Florida two weeks ago and the race at Thermal Club.
Palou, driver of the No. 10 Chip Ganassi Racing Honda, won the IndyCar Series championship in 2023 and 2024. He led 13 laps in the race at Thermal Club, overtaking O’Ward with 10 laps to go in the 65-lap race on the 3.067-mile course in the gated community in Thermal.
“It’s been incredible, an incredible weekend with lots of speed, and perfect execution on pit stops and strategy. We gambled a little bit at the beginning with starting on used reds (tires). we didn’t know if they were going to make it five laps, 10 or 15, and we made it,” Palou said after the race.
The Thermal Club is an exclusive community with a private race track for residents to use to drive sports cars and exotic vehicles. It was the site of the $1 Million Challenge, an exhibition race last year in March. Palou won the 20-lap exhibition in a field of 12 IndyCar Series drivers. The course was modified for the race on Sunday, with an expanded pit area and changes to some of the turns and corners.
It was also a test for the new hybrid engines being used by IndyCar Series teams. Some of the drivers experienced overheating on the demanding course. One driver, Scott McLaughlin for Team Penske, withdrew from the race with about 12 laps to go because of complications from overheating.
As for Palou, the new engine and new course didn’t present many problems. He waited patiently for an opportunity to challenge O’Ward, who led a race-high 51 laps, and erased his 11-second advantage in the closing laps.
Palou selected the more grippy, faster Firestone Firehawk alternate compound tires during his last pit stop at the end of the 49th lap. O’Ward, driver of the No. 5 Arrow McClaren Chevrolet, made his final stop at the end of the 50th lap, taking Firestone Firehawk primary compound tires.
Palou passed Christian Lundgaard, O’Ward’s Arrow McClaren teammate, on the 50th lap to move into second, pulled to within 4.9 seconds of O’Ward by the 52nd lap and 1.3 seconds by the 53rd lap as O’Ward coped with slower traffic and less grip from his tires.
“We took a gamble; it didn’t work out for us,” O’Ward said after his second-place finish. “We had used our new reds (alternate tires) at the start because we didn’t really quite know what the deg (tire degradation) was going to be like. The blacks (primary tires) really kind of took a turn for the negative at the end of the race, and that was it. We didn’t stand a fighting chance.”
Palou completed the 199.36-mile race in 1 hour, 56 minutes, 23.2677 seconds and had an average speed of 102.771 mph. The victory was the Spaniard’s 13th in his 83-race IndyCar career that began in 2020.
“There’s so many stuff that needs to go right in order to win an IndyCar race,” said Palou. “All the pit stops, your tire mileage, also fuel mileage. There’s so much stuff that needs to go right that it’s tough to get it. It’s amazing to start with a double win this season.”
Palou became the first driver to win the first two races of the IndyCar season since 2020 when Scott Dixon won the first three races en route to his sixth championship.
O’Ward led 51 of the first 55 laps, surrendering the top spot only during pit stops.
“We need to keep pushing,” O’Ward said. “We obviously weren’t perfect. There is obviously something that we could have done better in order to give it more of a proper fight to the 10 car.”
Lundgaard, who started second alongside his Arrow McLaren teammate, finished third.
Palou has a 39-point lead over O’Ward in the IndyCar Series championship standings after two races. Scott Dixon is third, 41 points behind Palou. Dixon and Palou are Chip Ganassi Racing teammates.
The next IndyCar Series race is the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach, the 50th running of the race, April 11-13.