Long Beach Grand Prix<\/a>. In the No. 10 OpenAI Honda, the Grand Prix win put him in the IndyCar series lead by 17 points over American Kyle Kirkwood as Palou aims for his fifth series championship and series record-tying fourth in a row.<\/p>\nPalou got a key break from fast work by his Chip Ganassi Racing pit crew, which propelled him to victory in the 90-lap race through the streets of Long Beach. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s huge,\u201d Palou said. \u201cSuper proud of everybody\u2019s job but especially this crew. Incredible to finally win here at Long Beach.\u201d<\/p>\n
Six-time NTT IndyCar Series champion Scott Dixon finished third in the No. 9 PNC Chip Ganassi Racing Honda, with CGR also producing Palou\u2019s car.<\/p>\n
Kirkwood placed fourth in the No. 27 JM Bullion\/Gold.com Honda of Andretti Global, with Pato O\u2019Ward finishing fifth in the No. 5 Arrow McLaren Chevrolet.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/palou-and-other-two-indycar-x.jpg\")
From left, Alex Palou, Felix Rosenqvist and Scott Dixon celebrate their respective first-, second- and third-place finishes in the 2026 Long Beach Grand Prix. | Photo courtesy of @IndyCar\/X<\/p>\n
Pole sitter Rosenqvist controlled the race from the start, leading the first 31 laps with Palou climbing from his third starting position to second place by passing O\u2019Ward during Lap 2. <\/p>\n
Rosenqvist and Palou pitted for the first time in tandem at the end of Lap 31. The MSR crew helped Rosenqvist win the race out of the pits after both drivers began their second fuel stint with their mandatory second set of Firestone alternate tires.<\/p>\n
Rosenqvist had established a three-second lead over Palou, who admitted he struggled a bit on the softer Firestone alternate tire. <\/p>\n
Palou, however, got the break he needed on the 57the lap. A large piece of debris was spotted on track, triggering the race\u2019s only caution period.<\/p>\n
The entire field of drivers made pit stops on Lap 59, led by Rosenqvist and Palou as a showdown loomed between the MSR and CGR crews. Rosenqvist and Palou each took four primary Firestone tires and fuel on their final stop, but Palou exited his pit box ahead of Rosenqvist to take the lead for the first time. <\/p>\n
CGR serviced Palou\u2019s car in 7.3 seconds on the final stop, while MSR took 8.4 seconds to complete Rosenqvist\u2019s stop.<\/p>\n
Palou rocketed away from the field on the restart on Lap 61 and never trailed from that point forward.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe OpenAI car was super, super fast, but it was that yellow, that pit stop with all the pressure that these boys were able to do it and execute it perfectly,\u201d Palou said following his win. \u201cFrom there, it was just managing the tires. We didn\u2019t know how the primaries were going to be.\u201d<\/p>\n
The primary tire apparently worked out well for Palou. He expanded his lead to 2.4 seconds on Lap 68, with the gap widening to 5.5 seconds with 12 laps to go. Palou was cautious during the final two trips around the 11-turn, 1.968-mile temporary street circuit throughout downtown Long Beach, but Rosenqvist never closed the gap despite achieving a race-high 51 laps in the lead. <\/p>\n
Though victory escaped him, Rosenqvist earned his first podium appearance since a second-place finish in June 2025 at Road America.<\/p>\n
\u201cA little bit of a bittersweet race,\u201d Rosenqvist said. \u201cI lost a little bit on the stop. Alex is obviously going to be 10 out of 10 almost every stop, so I don\u2019t think it was necessarily that our one was slow, but they probably had a great one, as well. That\u2019s how it goes.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the end of the day, we\u2019ve got to celebrate this one,\u201d he added. \u201cP2, plus the points and podium \u2014 that\u2019s where I want to be.\u201d<\/p>\n
Palou crossed the finish line after 1 hour, 49 minutes, 9.5058 seconds and had an average speed of 97.356 mph.<\/p>\n
Of the 42 IndyCar competitions in Long Beach<\/a>, the pole winner has won the race six times, including Kirkwood in 2023 and 2025.<\/p>\nMarcus Ericsson was the only driver in the 25-car field who did not complete the race, dropping out after Lap 38 because of mechanical problems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alex Palou in the In the No. 10 OpenAI Honda approaches the finish line Sunday, April 19 at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":277123,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132],"class_list":["post-277122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277122\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/277123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}