Race Results<\/a><\/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 rounded out the podium with his best result of the season in the No. 9 PNC Chip Ganassi Racing Honda, as CGR produced two of the top three finishers.<\/p>\n
Kirkwood finished fourth in the No. 27 JM Bullion \/ Gold.com Honda of Andretti Global, with Pato O\u2019Ward placing fifth in the No. 5 Arrow McLaren Chevrolet.<\/p>\n
Pole sitter Rosenqvist controlled the race from the green flag. He led the first 31 laps, with Palou climbing from his third starting spot to second by passing O\u2019Ward on Lap 2. Rosenqvist and Palou pitted for the first time in tandem at the end of Lap 31, with the MSR crew helping Rosenqvist win the race out of the pits after both drivers started their second fuel stint with their mandatory second set of Firestone alternate tires.<\/p>\n
Rosenqvist had built a three-second lead over Palou, who admitted he struggled a bit on the softer Firestone alternate tire. But Palou got the break he needed on Lap 57 when a large piece of debris was spotted on track, triggering the only caution period of the 90-lap race.<\/p>\n
The entire field pitted 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 last stop, but Palou escaped his pit box ahead of Rosenqvist to take the lead for the first time. CGR serviced Palou\u2019s car in 7.3 seconds on the final stop, while MSR needed 8.4 seconds for Rosenqvist\u2019s stop.<\/p>\n
Palou rocketed away from the field on the restart on Lap 61. It was checkout time, as he never trailed from that point.<\/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. \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 suited Palou just fine. The Spaniard expanded his lead to 2.4 seconds on Lap 68, with the gap mushrooming to 5.5 seconds with 12 laps remaining. Palou played it safe during the final two trips around the 11-turn, 1.968-mile temporary street circuit, but Rosenqvist never got close. Still, the Swede, who led a race-high 51 laps, earned his first podium finish since placing second 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. P2, plus the points and podium \u2013 that\u2019s where I want to be.\u201d<\/p>\n
The next race is the Sonsio Grand Prix on Saturday, May 9, kicking off the Month of May at Indianapolis Motor Speedway on the facility\u2019s 14-turn, 2.439-mile road course.<\/p>\n
IndyCar PR<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alex Palou got the break he needed and fast work from his Chip Ganassi Racing pit crew, and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":277194,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[117736,117454,119767,65321,87390,131,133,132,114579,9027,119768,425,14613],"class_list":{"0":"post-277193","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-long-beach","8":"tag-chevrolet","9":"tag-chip-ganassi-racing","10":"tag-indianapolis-motor-speedway","11":"tag-indycar","12":"tag-indycar-series","13":"tag-long-beach","14":"tag-long-beach-headlines","15":"tag-long-beach-news","16":"tag-motor","17":"tag-racing","18":"tag-road-america","19":"tag-series","20":"tag-speedway"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277193","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=277193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277193\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/277194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}