Alex Palou Among Many Victims of Iowa’s Damaged Racing Product (2024)

NEWTON, Iowa —When will the pit stop ghosts stop haunting Alex Palou?

With the warmer conditions in Sunday’s (July 14) second NTT IndyCar Series race of the weekend made passing almost impossible compared to Saturday’s race.

One caution for Augustin Canapino‘s lazy spin during the first round of pit stops was the only opportunity to make any moves on a restart for the field.

As the Spaniard inherited the lead over a hungry Will Power, desperate to gain ground in the championship, and a misfortunate Scott McLaughlin behind multiple lapped cars the stage was set for the No. 10 Chip Ganassi Racing Honda team to break the slump and come in clutch and check off Palou’s first career win on an oval in IndyCar over his main championship rival

Unfortunately, such fortune did not show today for the championship leader.

Palou led 114 laps ahead of Power before he dived into pit road to receive fresh Firestone tires and enough fuel to make it to the end. However, Power stayed out one extra lap to perform the overcut on Palou and did so successfully.

The No. 12 Team Penske Chevrolet came out ahead of his championship rival and was able to stay ahead once his tires climbed to temperature.

Despite pressure from Palou behind and fuel saving efforts by Power, the conditions of the new partial pavement in the turns meant Palou could stand no match in passing Power for the win on track, relegating Palou to now stand 35 points ahead of the two-time IndyCar champion Power.

“Even when leading, being in the middle of the pack yesterday, I don’t know, the IndyCars we had, the package of IndyCar tire, aero, engine, whatever we had on track this weekend, it was impossible to make it run,” a dejected Palou said when asked about the abysmal drop in competitiveness on track.

“So I don’t know. It was never an issue before. It was a repave for our cars. But having that said, we’ve seen other series here run well. I mean, we cannot compare. It’s like putting a MotoGP [motorcycle] on dirt. It’s a cool track, but you cannot put it on the same and expect a very nice race. It was a shame because it used to be a really cool race I think for the fans with tons of overtaking and tons of tire deg and things to do. I don’t know. I don’t have the answers.”

Race winner Power pointed out that it was even tough to pass lapped traffic during the race, and with both leaders saving fuel to the end lapped traffic even passed the leaders. He also went on to propose either adding another coating on the track surface to help assist the product or just resurfacing entirely.

“Yeah, it is a pity,” Power said in the post-race press conference. “[We were] clearly faster than the group in front of us. You just can’t do anything. You can take a bit of a risk. Two cars got by Palou and myself, lappers. You can do it. But if we ran hard, you couldn’t. We were sitting back, saving fuel. You simply need a second lane.

“If there’s a coating we can use or something, but a second lane would like this race amazing, as it has been in years past. I don’t know if you can speed up the degradation process of a track. I heard they’re going to resurface the whole thing in a couple years. Does that make it better for us? Maybe. Maybe you can start high. I don’t know.”

Others across the grid echoed the leaders’ sentiments.

“I mean, maybe we need to repave the whole track,” top 10 finisher Rinus Veekay said. “But maybe if we can get a second groove in that, that’d be nice.”

“There was no [degredation],” Romain Grosjean said after finishing 10th. “I made my fastest lap on 95-lap tires.”

So, no tire degradation and a fastest lap on nearly 100-lap-old tires, with these statements, the alarms must be sounding for IndyCar to find a change.