A Historic Victory at the NTT IndyCar Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach
A small, U-shaped piece of carbon fiber, no larger than a man’s fist, fell from a race car during Lap 57 of Sunday’s iconic 90-lap NTT IndyCar Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach. This incident brought out the pivotal caution period and set off a flurry of activity on pit road. It was during this time that Alex Palou seized the opportunity to overtake polesitter and race dominator Felix Rosenqvist, ultimately claiming his first victory on the 11-turn, 1.968-mile temporary Southern California street course.
Palou’s win marked his third out of five series events this season. His Chip Ganassi Racing (CGR) teammate, Scott Dixon, who has won the Long Beach event twice (in 2015 and 2024), finished in third place for the third time here, marking his first podium finish of the season.
“It’s huge,” Palou said of his 22nd overall victory in 103 starts, which ties him with Emerson Fittipaldi and Tony Bettenhausen on the all-time list. “It was that yellow. It was that pit stop.”
Earlier in the weekend, Alexander Rossi, a back-to-back winner from the pole in 2018-19, expressed surprise that Palou had only two victories this year. Palou questioned if Rossi was serious, and upon confirmation, he downplayed the achievement, saying Rossi “has still got 14 more chances. The guy goes into every week being able to win.”
Palou also mentioned Andretti Global’s Kyle Kirkwood, who he overtook to grab the points lead, stating, “He was already at this space last year. He’s not suddenly closer. He was already saying hello last year. So I feel everybody’s close.” However, Rosenqvist, who led 51 laps and 177.12 miles, found himself disappointed by Palou once again.
Rosenqvist reflected after the race, “Little bit of a bittersweet race. I’m not sure why we lost a little bit in the stop. But Alex is obviously going to be 10 out of 10 every stop. So I don’t necessarily feel ours was slow. Anyway, that’s how it goes. At the end of the day, we’re going to celebrate this P2—lots of points, podium. That’s where I want to be. I had a really good race, particularly on the reds. The first two stints we seemed to make them last while keeping good pace. I don’t think we necessarily had a bad stop, maybe Alex just had a faster stop with an easy out. Tough start to the year. I wanted to come here and bounce back. But of course, I’m happy with a podium. Great job by the whole crew and hope we can take that momentum into May.”
Despite the loss, Palou remains focused on his goals. “I think it’s tough to win. It’s so tough to win. I’ve been winning two races out of four—50 percent. I think it’s pretty cool. I’m happy with that. There’s been years where I’ve won no races or won a race or two and you win the championships. So winning two already, it’s great.”
Since the start of last season, Palou has won 11 of 22 races—again a 50 percent success rate. Since 2021, he has finished on the podium 52.2 percent of the time. His secret? Never believing he is running roughshod over the competition.
“I mean, it’s everybody. It’s not one person,” he said before Friday’s practice. “We’re working hard to try and just to be to the level of being able to win every race, but that is not a reality. And it’s still a work in progress. We’re behind. We’re behind on everything, because it’s taken us a while to kind of get into the development where it had to have been. But I know we’re all working hard. Days have been long. The analysis has been very in-depth of where we’ve gone wrong, when we have. And for us, really it’s just trying to minimize damage when it’s bad. And I think the next step after we do that, then it’s like, ‘Okay, how can we win every single race?’”
This obsession has earned him four series championships, an Indianapolis 500 victory he’s about to try to repeat next month, and finally an Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach triumph.
Palou described the feeling of Sunday’s win as “incredible. Feel so, so lucky with the opportunity I had to win the 500 last year, the Long Beach GP this year. It just feels like I’m living on this amazing cloud of happiness.”
Rosenqvist, the fifth polesitter in as many races, was seeking to become the third to win here from the pole position (after Rossi in 2018-19 and Kirkwood in 2023 and 2025). He came 4.198 seconds short Sunday.
Five of Kirkwood’s career six victories have come on street courses—including this one at Long Beach—but he heads to the road course at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for the May 9 Sonsio Grand Prix with a chance to extend that and erase Palou’s 17-point advantage in the standings with the marquee Indianapolis 500 looming May 24. He finished fourth, with Pato O’Ward in fifth.
Arrow McLaren’s Nolan Siegel started 25th (last) on the grid and moved up to 14th by Lap 70 and 12th by the checkered flag to become the so-called “biggest mover” of the race.
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