Reigning IndyCar champion Alex Palou of Chip Ganassi Racing powered to victory within the opening race of the brand new season on the Grand Prix of St Petersburg on Sunday.
Spaniard Palou, who’s on the lookout for a 3rd straight IndyCar title, beat team-mate Scott Dixon by 2.86 seconds.
Group Penske’s Josef Newgarden, who had chased Palou over the ultimate laps pale on the penultimate lap and was overtaken by New Zealander Dixon.
For Palou the victory, his twelfth in his IndyCar profession, was the proper begin to his title defence.
“Wonderful job by everybody on the ten automobile, they gave me every thing I wanted this weekend to win,” mentioned Palou, who mentioned he might hardly wait to get going once more after final 12 months’s success.
“It has been 138 days and we have been dreaming about this each single evening,” he mentioned.
“It is enormous, I am tremendous joyful. Actually, we have been working actually, actually arduous. This has been a spot the place we’ve got struggled up to now, particularly me personally, so to start out the 2025 season with a win, it is wonderful,” he added.
Palou took the lead on lap 74 and whereas he had some bother behind the lapped Sting Ray Robb, he was in a position to maintain off Newgarden after which Dixon.
Dixon’s second place was significantly spectacular provided that he needed to compete with out radio communication.
“It was irritating, we had no radio, so I used to be simply flying blind on the market, I believe they have been making an attempt to name me in as a result of within the final lap earlier than we pitted, there was simply a lot site visitors and we misplaced 2 or 3 seconds and that’s the place the ten automobile (Palou) obtained us,” he mentioned.
Newgarden, the two-times collection champion, had certified in tenth however put himself in competition with a decided run.
“We now have had an excellent automobile all weekend, I believe we might have certified larger than tenth. I felt like our automobile was actually able to profitable,” he mentioned.
“Simply did not fairly get there for a few causes, pit cycles, clearly we wanted to go longer,…however it’s a lengthy season, you have to go all the best way,” he added.
The brand new season started with a stack-up which concerned a number of vehicles colliding with Louis Foster, Nolan Siegel and Will Energy crashing out.
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