The IndyCar Afterburn: St. Petersburg 2025

Today’s Theme Music: “Don’t Stop” by DJ Fixx

Much may be wrong with America at the moment, but if there’s anything we consistently get right, it’s championship open-wheel racing. The dawn of spring means the start of a new IndyCar season, and with a new broadcast home on Fox, the series arrived with fitting fanfare.

As is tradition, the National Championship trail began in sunny central Florida at the Grand Prix of St. Petersburg. Where last year’s edition was a relatively dull and uncompetitive affair propped up in hindsight by the revelations of P2Pgate, this year provided a clean, strategy-heavy affair with nine lead changes, seven different lap leaders, and a tense climax that came down to the final laps. So without further ado, let’s go over the ups, downs, and all-arounds of the day’s action and see how it all sets the table for the season to come.

Palou plays a winning hand

Álex Palou entered 2025 as the reigning emperor of IndyCar, with three championships in the last four years to his name, and his performance this year was a great reminder of how he achieved it. In classic Palou fashion, he blended silently into the upper-midfield for the first half of the race, but his crucial choice to start the race on the green alternate tires, then ditch them immediately under the day’s only yellow put him on the right strategic path. As he and his crew continued to walk that road expertly, the Spaniard gradually emerged as a major threat for the effective lead. On lap 75, that became the actual lead, and once Palou had it, he looked poised to run away, although a protracted struggle to lap “Mr. Excitement” Sting Ray Robb allowed Josef Newgarden to close the gap and make it a close fight. At that point, Palou put his defensive chops to good use and hung on to the end, giving El Gorila his 13th career IndyCar win.

With this opening shot, Palou has made his intentions for the year extremely clear. He wants to match Dario Franchitti, his predecessor as the emperor in the #10, by completing a threepeat to make it four National Championships in five years. If Palou keeps putting in performances like this, we could be looking at 2023 levels of inevitability.

Dixon flies blind for 2nd

For 21 straight seasons, Scott Dixon has left St. Petersburg without a win, but the way he lost this time was, in a way, more impressive than many people’s wins. The Iceman got through the entire race with a busted radio, calling his own strategy from the isolation of his car. In a masterful display, he quarterbacked himself into five laps led, a threat for victory to the end, and a beautiful pass on the last lap to steal second place and secure a 1-2 for Chip Ganassi Racing. Had Palou not passed Dixon as the Kiwi exited pit row for the final time, this could’ve been an outright victory.

A full quarter-century into his Indy racing career, Dixon is as impossible to count out as ever, and with him looking this good without full access to his strategists, we can only imagine how terrifying he’ll be to face going forward.

Bus Bros not quite quick enough

After the disgrace of getting caught with cheat codes and retroactively disqualified from last year’s St. Pete race, Josef Newgarden and Scott McLaughlin both returned to the scene with something to prove. Of the two Bus Bros, McLaughlin struck first in ways that picked right back up on the ways he excelled last year, taking the year’s first pole position and championship point on Saturday, then leading the most laps on Sunday. However, starting on primaries meant Scotty Mac didn’t quite pick the right tire order for the day, even if he smartly used his green tires relatively early, and his hopes of winning faded.

Newgarden, on the other hand, did have the right tire strategy, and that allowed him to emerge alongside Palou and Dixon as things tipped their way in the second half. With Palou stuck in traffic as the laps ticked down, a four-second lead became just a half-second lead in the blink of an eye, and Newgarden pushed aggressively, hoping for the ultimate redemption run. However, it wasn’t to be, as on the final lap, Joey Plants ran out of fuel, enabling Palou to pull away and Dixon to steal the silver. Even McLaughlin nearly snatched back a podium spot, though Newgarden would ultimately keep the bronze.

While neither of these Penskes quite achieved what they’d hoped, doing well in (presumably) clean machinery at the scene of last year’s crime was an important milestone for both men. From here, Newgarden should be far less erratic than last year now that he’s driving with a clear conscience, while McLaughlin can go for another strong start and hopefully vault directly into the front of the pack.

Andretti solid, but Herta gets tripped up

On the whole, Andretti Global were the best of the rest today. Kyle Kirkwood snagged a well-earned 5th place finish, while Marcus Ericsson slotted in right behind. It looked early on like Colton Herta would be an even bigger threat, as he started P2 on greens, switched to black tires under the yellow, and snuck in a lap led for good measure. However, not long after cycling to the front, his pit crew mishandled the right rear tire, wasting precious seconds that would later be compounded by a fueling issue. From there, the Andretti ace had to go into salvage mode and settle for 15th place—not the worst, but nowhere near what the reigning vice-champion should have come away with.

Rosenqvist could’ve had more

No team came away more disappointed than Meyer Shank Racing, who started so promisingly by locking out the second row in qualifying. Of their dynamic duo, only Felix Rosenqvist made it to the finish line, and though he certainly looked competitive and threatened for the podium in the early going, the way the dominoes fell on tire strategy ultimately locked him out as time progressed, forcing him to settle for 7th. Still, spring was the Swede’s season last year, with his biggest moments coming on the SoCal swing, so there’s plenty of time on the clock for him to make something happen.

Lundgaard, O’Ward make moves for McLaren

In his first race for a top team, circumstances and a strong qualifying put Christian Lundgaard in the unexpected position of immediately spearheading Arrow McLaren. The Dane went from leading seven laps via pit cycling a year ago to leading 23 on sheer pace and merit. However, his call to start on hard tires and then stay on hards after his first tire change would ultimately be his downfall, as the delayed use of alternates cost him precious time and led him to finish 8th. Still, he’s clearly stepping up well to match his improved machinery, and he’ll only get better as he becomes more attuned.

Meanwhile, after qualifying a lowly 23rd, Pato O’Ward looked extremely unlikely to defend his local crown, and when he found a puncture in his primaries on the opening lap, hopes only grew dimmer. The mega-popular Mexican found himself racing on his own planet, bouncing wildly up and down the ticker as he made moves entirely out of sync with everyone else’s strategy. In the end, though, Pato was able to make something of it, as his 11th-place finish made him the day’s biggest climber. With O’Ward’s championship ambitions as high as they are, recovery drives like these when he’s dealt bad hands will be crucial in hanging tough for the long run.

VeeKay, Rossi lead underdogs’ charge

If this race was any indication, the midfielders and backmarkers may be in for a major shakeup in the pecking order. Although new team Prema Racing’s end results weren’t too spectacular, Callum Ilott spearheaded a promising effort, taking the red and green as high as 8th in the first half of the race before settling into 19th, eight spots above his dead-last start. Graham Rahal also stepped up for Rahal Letterman Lannigan, cycling as high as 2nd in the early going and ultimately finishing 12th.

However, the real glow-ups go to the biggest driver upgrades on the grid. In his debut for Ed Carpenter Racing, Alexander Rossi looked like a genuine threat to win, constantly running in podium position through the early and midgame before the hard-to-hard strategy caught up with him much as it had Lundgaard. Still, an immediate top-ten finish is a major achievement for what was one of the most anonymous teams on the grid last year, and it could be the start of a major step forward for the team.

Even that doesn’t fully compare to Rinus VeeKay, who shocked everyone by first qualifying a Dale Coyne car in 12th, then staying in the upper-midfield and finishing 9th, a better result than any of DCR’s nine drivers achieved last season. It’s a huge step forward for a team that spent 2024 as the clear worst in the field, and they’ll surely hope this is just the beginning of a massive turnaround.

The Sicko’s Guide to DNFs: Power outage ruins Foster’s debut

Last year, Will Power was the only Penske driver to escape St. Pete relatively unscathed, as his teammates’ disqualifications gave him a retroactive 2nd place. While a P13 start wasn’t ideal, it theoretically made him a climber to watch, but on just the third turn of the season, he became the Penske to suffer. In an accordion effect that seemingly had all involved insistent someone else ran into the back of them, Power, Nolan Siegel, and the debuting Louis Foster all wrecked out of action, sparking the day’s only caution and inadvertently defining how the tire strategies would play out the rest of the way.

However, this would be a much cleaner affair all-around than the last couple years, with no further crashes after that. The day’s only remaining victim would be Marcus Armstrong, who started impressively in his Meyer Shank debut and even reaped the first lead change of the season, only for the car to start falling apart after his first pit stop. As a result, the young Kiwi starts his year with a DNF for the second time in a row, but knowing his patterns, he should bounce back big next time out.

Championship Collage: Palou et al. set up shop on top

With this being the first race of the season, the National Championship order isn’t much to write about yet. The most interesting wrinkle is that, by taking the pole and most-laps-led bonuses, Scott McLaughlin matched Josef Newgarden’s points despite finishing a place behind. The Rookie of the Year race also didn’t get off to a strong start, as Robert Shwartzman won the battle of the young guns from a mere P20.

On the Manufacturers’ Cup front, Chevrolet may have walked away with the first pole, but since the engine makers don’t share their drivers’ bonus points, a Honda 1-2 and a Chevy 3-4 means the wings lead the bowties 90 to 67. With the action shifting to Honda’s home turf of SoCal for the next couple races, this could be a golden opportunity to avoid last year’s tug of war and build up a solid buffer before the ovals start coming into play.

Finally, in our official unofficial Nations’ Cup chase, twelve nations from four different continents put their first points on the board. Spain takes the initial lead with 51 points, with New Zealand and our defending champions the United States not far behind. Australia sits at the bottom of the pile for now with just five points to its name, but once Will Power starts getting the results he’s capable of, the Lucky Country should quickly climb the ranks.

Future Flames: oh no, not Thermal again

The good news is that, unlike last year, we only have to wait three weeks for another points-paying IndyCar race. The bad news is that we’re heading to the least-anticipated stop on the calendar, Riverside County’s own Thermal Club IndyCar Grand Prix. That’s right, the site of last year’s ill-fated $1 Million Challenge, constructed as an oddball all-star exhibition to get around the track’s limitations, will now attempt to host a championship race. Suffice to say, expectations will not be high, but it could provide a crucial opportunity for Felix Rosenqvist, who performed the odd feat of scoring his only podium for 2024 on this circuit. If the Inland Empire is kind to him again, it could set him on course for a very special season.

However, that doesn’t mean this newsletter will fall completely silent until then. After all, we’ve got another IMSA excursion to cover when several IndyCar contenders hang back in central Florida to run the 12 Hours of Sebring, the shortest and bumpiest leg of endurance racing’s Triple Crown. As of this writing, the entry list isn’t quite finalized, but we know for sure that Scott Dixon will be in the Endurance Cup hunt all season long, and with Colton Herta not around to defend the title, the Iceman will be very eager to step up and help Acura go for back-to-back wins in his stead.