Palou dominates IndyCar’s Thermal Club $1 Million Challenge

Alex Palou won IndyCar’s Thermal Club $1 Million Challenge in emphatic fashion, leading Scott McLaughlin home by six seconds in the 20-lap final.

Palou kept his lead at the start but Scott McLaughlin made a strong start from fourth, picking off Marcus Armstrong and sweeping around the outside of Felix Rosenqvist to take second place.

While Rosenqvist and Armstrong gave chase, Graham Rahal fell back two places to seventh, allowing Josef Newgarden into fifth ahead of Linus Lundqvist.

The structure of the final prompted some unusual strategies. Drivers started the race knowing there would be a half-time break for refuelling and a restart but, crucially, tyre changes would be forbidden.

Andretti therefore told Colton Herta, who started on the back row, to manage his pace from the start. He let the field pull away by up to eight seconds per lap. Soon others followed suit – RLL gave Pietro Fittipaldi an extremely tight target for fuel consumption and before the race was over he slowed down so much he even fell behind Herta.

Eventually the front-runners began to follow suit and Palou slowed his pace by around five seconds by the time the chequered flag fell. This, of course, allowed those at the back to go even slower.

By the time Palou took the chequered flag at the end of the first half, Herta was 82 seconds in arrears and Fittipaldi another 17 behind. However RLL’s refuelling strategy for Fittipaldi, whether accidentally or otherwise, landed them in trouble with the stewards, who disqualified him for not being fully fuelled at the start.

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With Rahal pulling off to retire at the end of the first part, having complained of a stuck throttle, just 10 cars assembled for the final sprint to the finish. Once they had been been refuelled the race resumed for its second half with Palou still leading McLaughlin, Rosenqvist, Armstrong, Newgarden and Lundqvist at the single-file rolling restart.

Further back, Alexander Rossi was immediately on the attack, picking ogf Linus Lundqvist to run behind Josef Newgarden. But Rossi got too tough with his Penske rival as he attacked on the outside of turn five, triggering contact which sent the two wide.

That opened the door for Lundqvist to reclaim his place along with Herta, who had already begun to move up from his 10th place restart position. taking full advantage of his fresher tyres he dived to the inside of Lundqvist for fifth place on lap 12.

From there he found it harder to make gains, and five laps passed before he tackled Lundqvist, claiming fourth at turn five. By then he was over 10 seconds behind Palou, who had again unleashed his unanswerable pace to pull five seconds clear of McLaughlin. Rosenqvist took third place ahead of Herta, whose tyre-nursing approach to the first half left him a second off the podium at the finish.

Thermal Club $1 Million Challenge result

P.	No.	Driver	Team	Engine
1	10	Alex Palou	Ganassi	Honda
2	3	Scott McLaughlin	Penske	Chevrolet
3	60	Felix Rosenqvist	Meyer Shank	Honda
4	26	Colton Herta	Andretti/Curb-Agajanian	Honda
5	11	Marcus Armstrong	Ganassi	Honda
6	8	Linus Lundqvist	Ganassi	Honda
7	7	Alexander Rossi	McLaren	Chevrolet
8	2	Josef Newgarden	Penske	Chevrolet
9	45	Christian Lundgaard	RLL	Honda
10	78	Agustin Canapino	Juncos Hollinger	Chevrolet

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