{"id":174440,"date":"2026-03-02T00:44:19","date_gmt":"2026-03-02T00:44:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/174440\/"},"modified":"2026-03-02T00:44:19","modified_gmt":"2026-03-02T00:44:19","slug":"indycar-is-still-the-alex-palou-show-defending-champion-opens-season-with-win-at-st-pete","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/174440\/","title":{"rendered":"IndyCar is Still the Alex Palou Show, Defending Champion Opens Season with Win at St. Pete"},"content":{"rendered":"

IndyCar’s defending champion starts 2026 the same way he started 2025, with a dominant win in the St. Petersburg Grand Prix, Sunday evening. This marks the Spanish driver’s only third street course win in his career-defining 20 wins in 99 starts. <\/p>\n

Palou had his best qualifying effort at the circuit, starting fourth behind Team Penske’s Scott McLaughlin, Andretti’s Marcus Ericsson, and Dale Coyne Racing rookie Dennis Hauger. <\/p>\n

Before the final pit of the afternoon race, Palou led the field by over 14 seconds. In the final 20-lap sprint, he rebuilt that lead over the field to nearly 13 seconds. Kyle Kirkwood, on an alternate strategy, was in second and started to fade as the only driver in the top eight needing to fuel save. With seven laps to go, McLaughlin and McLaren’s Christian Lundgaard made it by to Kirkwood to complete the podium. <\/p>\n

Kirkwood was able to hold onto fourth ahead of McLaren’s Pato O’Ward in fifth. <\/p>\n

Following Palou’s win, Fox Sports caught up with team owner Chip Ganassi, who was proud that his team is keeping things upfront, as Palou and the No. 10 CGR Honda team look to improve on a record-breaking season, winning 8 of 17 races, their first Indianapolis 500, and a fourth championship.<\/p>\n

“It\u2019s interesting that all the other teams are not flat-footed over the offseason; they\u2019re working to try and beat us,” Ganassi said. “You never know how hard they work, and how hard you work. I\u2019m pleased to maintain some gap with the competition.”<\/p>\n

The race was not without attrition, with a lap one caution being brought out for Sting Ray Robb over-driving into a corner and collecting Santino Ferrucci and Mick Schumacher in his IndyCar debut. <\/p>\n

Will Power finished the race 45 laps down following his second crash of the weekend. In his first race with Andretti, Power had issues all weekend with lockups, crashing in the second practice as well as the race. <\/p>\n

Related Stories\"Headshot<\/p>\n

Victoria Beaver is a nomadic sports writer who spends her time hopping between race tracks and hippie farms. She\u2019s covered every corner of motorsports that will let her in from 410 Sprints to NASCAR to Supercross. Her daily driver is a 2010 Subaru that she refused to do the smallest amount of preventative maintenance on. Instead, she spends her free time and money building a 42-foot Skoolie to one day travel the country full time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"IndyCar’s defending champion starts 2026 the same way he started 2025, with a dominant win in the St.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":174441,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[82693,82695,26304,82694,26306,26305,82692,202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-174440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-cgr-driver-wins-st-pete","tag-collection-motorsport","tag-content-type-news","tag-contentid-2e64d42a-3c05-4501-9e61-ae4cb8fb6628","tag-displaytype-standard-article","tag-locale-us","tag-shorttitle-indycar-stays-the-palou-show","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174440\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/174441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}