Palou working up to being a modern day Laguna Seca master

It's back-to-back pole positions for Alex Palou at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca. He’s also the defending race winner. The triumph in 2024 was a comparatively normal affair where the driver of the No. 10 Honda beat Andretti Global’s Colton Herta to the checkered flag by 1.978s.

Recent success followed a modest run to third at the 2023 edition of the race, and he placed second on his Laguna debut in 2021. But 2022 was Palou’s crowning achievement in IndyCar – outside of winning the Indy 500 in May – where the Spaniard mollywhopped the field to the tune of 30.381s over second-place Josef Newgarden. A second, a win, a third, another win, along with two poles.

“Honestly, I was super comfortable and super happy with my lap, especially the start of the lap,” Palou said when asked how he was able to create such a large lap time separation. “I guess everybody saw, I went out in the Fast 12 when I was going a little bit faster, so I was like, 'Man, there's not much room for error.' But this time in the Fast Six, I was able to stick it, and it stayed on the [track]. It was great. Our lap was really good. There was not much margin [left], at least from my side.”

The last driver to have such a commanding presence at the 11-turn road course was Alex Zanardi – driving for the same Chip Ganassi Racing team – who had a perfect podium record in his three visits where he won in 1996, took third in 1997 and closed with a second in 1998. Before the Italian, it was Ohio’s Bobby Rahal, who won for the first time in 1984 and kept on winning in 1985, 1986 and captured his fourth consecutive in 1987.

Rahal’s amazing run earned a permanent honor from the track, which named the stretch from Turn 6 to the Turn 7 Corkscrew "Rahal Straight," and while Palou has more success to achieve before he’s considered for such things at the Californian road course, earning a third win from five races would only bolster the notion that he’s mastered the track in a Rahalian manner.

Sticking to a traditional race strategy plan on Sunday – a marked difference from last weekend when he started second but was the only driver in the top six to roll off on Firestone’s softer alternate tires and finished 12th – could be the key to taking another trip to victory lane.

“Look, we thought last week – obviously looking back it's super easy to say that we made a mistake,” Palou said. “I didn't want to get trapped in traffic. I thought we had a lot of pace. We thought that one caution was going to be okay for our strategy and maybe two, but we got like four during the first stint.

“It was the wrong decision, but ultimately we were trying to win. I don't know what we're going to do tomorrow, but we're going to try and go for the win. We don't want to give that up and just try and get points.”