Barber Motorsports Park (Leeds, Ala.) — If stats don’t lie, Alex Palou won the INDYCAR race Sunday by 13.2775 seconds over Christian Lundgaard.
In this case, Palou says stats lie. He didn’t deliver the butt-whipping that leading 79 of 90 laps and that margin of victory would indicate. Lundgaard had a slow final pit stop and with no cautions, couldn’t make up the time.
Alex Palou (center), Christian Lundgaard (L) in second place and Graham Rahal (R) were the podium finishers at Barber.
[BARBER HIGHLIGHTS: Alex Palou Coasts to Repeat in Alabama]
“If you look at the result and you don’t follow the race, the timing, maybe then you look like you were so much faster than everybody else,” the driver of the Chip Ganassi No. 10 car said in his postrace news conference. “That was not the truth.
“We had an amazing car. We had an amazing race. But it was not easy. It was tough.”
Here are my takeaways:
1. Palou Still Has It
Even though he’s not the season-long points leader — Kyle Kirkwood, driver of the No. 27 car for Andretti Global, has a two-point lead on Palou — the three-time defending series champion Palou is showing similar strength to last year.
Maybe he’s not that dominant, but he still has shown that when other drivers or teams make mistakes, he will make them pay.
With his second win of the season, is Alex Palou the championship favorite once again?
Lundgaard might have caught him and made a race of it, but Palou, even though he had to use one more set of the primary tires (the harder of the two compounds, which means they are slower but last longer) than originally planned, never had a hiccup on the 2.3-mile course.
“Alex is the same Alex as last year,” Lundgaard said in his postrace news conference. “I just do think there are cars and drivers that are showing up more this year than last year.”
2. Lundgaard Frustration Justified
Christian Lundgaard, driver of No. 7 for Arrow McLaren, lost about 10 seconds on a pit stop when the team had trouble tightening the right rear wheel. He had pitted five laps later than Palou and felt with the fresher tires and the potential to actually come out of the pits ahead of Palou, he would have had a chance to win the race.
Instead, for the second consecutive year, Lundgaard finished second to Palou at Barber.
Christian Lundgaard had to settle for second place after a costly pit miscue.
[ALL ABOUT BARBER: Track the Vision of Dairy Farmer who Loved Motorsports]
“With the pace and how the race panned out today, we had the car to win the race, Lundgaard said. “We had the pace, we had the track position at the time.
“I’m not really sure what happened in the pit stop. … It’s unfortunate.”
3. Kirkwood Still Tops
Kyle Kirkwood finished fifth, good enough to retain the points lead. And considering he probably had at-best a fifth-place car, that’s what champions do.
And why did he finish fifth? His team executed flawlessly, and that meant a nice rebound from a subpar weekend on pit road in the previous race.
Kyle Kirkwood saw his championship lead cut to two points on Sunday.
“We had a really clean day on pit lane,” Kirkwood told me and other reporters after that race. “That’s what we had in [the first two races at] St. Pete and Phoenix. So back to normal.”
4. Malukas Making It Happen
David Malukas, driver of the No. 12 car, didn’t feel his team chose the right tire strategy as far as when to have the harder primary tires and the softer alternate tires, but he still finished fourth. And for the second consecutive race, he was the top-finishing Penske driver.
There’s something to be said for that as the replacement for Will Power is proving he is deserving of the ride as he has two top-five finishes in the first four races.
David Malukas has been a bright spot for Team Penske in his first season with the team.
“A good points day, we learned a lot, and we keep going from here.,” Malukas told me and other reporters after the race.
4 ½. What’s Next
There are two weekends off before INDYCAR returns to the track on the streets of Long Beach.
The Long Beach race is traditionally one of the marquee events of the year and is the last street course until Detroit, which comes the weekend after the Indy 500.
Kirkwood won that race a year ago and will be the favorite following his win on the most recent street course at Arlington.
“We’re going to a really good track next in Long Beach,” Kirkwood said. “A couple weeks off to get our head in the game there, go into it leading the points, and hopefully do what we did last year.”
