Calamity in the nation's capital for Palou

Alex Palou stunned his rivals on Saturday with a pole lap that was in a different league to the rest of the field, but the advantage didn’t last long on Sunday as second-place Kyle Kirkwood got around the Chip Ganassi Racing driver and put on a clinic while Palou and the No. 10 Honda team found new and inventive ways to make their lives difficult at the Freedom 250.

The first error was rather unremarkable as Palou drove away from his pit stall and hit Mick Schumacher’s unattended right-rear tire, which was meant to be installed moments later once he reached his pit box. Schumacher’s wheel and tire ricocheted off of Palou’s left-rear tire, and soon after, Palou was informed by his team that he’d been penalized for striking pit equipment and would need to perform a drive-through penalty.

Running second before reaching pit lane, he fell deep within the pack and had a big recovery job to perform. It was a small mistake, but the size of the mistake didn’t matter because the consequences were significant.

Palou’s next pit stop went worse than the first. His left-front tire changer was attempting to seat the wheel on the hub when the airjack operator pulled the jack and dropped the car before the wheel nut was secured. Palou was given the command to leave and made it a few feet before he stopped and waited for the crew to reinsert the airjack and allow the wheel to be fastened.

Thanks to the first error that left Palou trailing most of the field as Kirkwood was charging in the lead, the extra time lost on pit lane allowed Kirkwood to fly by Palou as he was exiting pit lane and put the Ganassi driver a lap down. Palou worked his way forward as the 2h40m race wore on, but there was one more incident waiting to unfold.

During his throttle-down efforts to recover, Palou kissed the wall with his right-rear wheel and dealt with a bent suspension component which eventually failed. Once the toe-link buckled, it pitched the No. 10 car into a spin and met with the wall, breaking the front wings from its nose.

Forced back to pit lane to seek repairs, Palou reappeared three laps down and finished the race having fallen to 20th at the checkered flag. IndyCar’s most error-free driver had a race to forget, and those don’t happen very often for the four-time champion who’s chasing his fifth.

“It hurts, man,” Palou said. “It was one of those races that I really want to do very good. I wanted to get that win, so it hurts a lot that we just had this bad of a day, but it's okay. Things happen. I'm at least kind of happy that everything happened [on] the same day instead of spreading out throughout different races. We had some issues in pit lane. One my fault. One out of my control. Something on the track that then I kind of bumped a little bit the wall, and 20 laps after the rear toe-link broke, that's why we spun. So yeah, not a good day, but it's all right. Things happen.”

With the point added for pole, Palou started the race with the comfort of a 134-point lead over Kirkwood. The Andretti driver’s crushing performance, coupled with Palou’s poor result, cut the lead to 91 points with three races and a maximum of 162 on offer to any driver.

The odds remain in Palou’s favor to clinch his fifth title either next weekend at the Milwaukee Mile doubleheader or the season finale the following weekend in Monterey, but the comfort is no longer present.

“So yeah, one of those bad days that as soon as you're in a bad situation, you kind of put yourself off the board; 91 points,” Palou added. “Never ever super comfortable until it's done, right? But obviously today sucks more for this race than the championship. I think the good amount of points that we had is great for a day like today, just so we can now focus on Milwaukee and try and win.”