At Phoenix, a rare reset for IndyCar’s field as Alex Palou stays the target

AVONDALE, Ariz. (AP) — The IndyCar season started exactly how it ended, with Alex Palou on top of the standings, and the rest of the field scratching their heads on how to catch the four-time series champion.

“Every time I’m on the podium, second or third, he’s first. It’s pretty annoying,” McLaren driver Christian Lundgaard said after finishing third in last week's opener in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Their next shot at catching Palou comes Saturday at Phoenix Raceway, where IndyCar is the undercard of a doubleheader weekend with NASCAR. The back-to-back races to start the season is an anomaly for IndyCar, which typically has a large gap between St. Pete and its second event of each year.

And even though IndyCar has raced at Phoenix before, it's last trip to the short oval in the desert was in 2018 and only five of 25 drivers entered have ever raced here before. Josef Newgarden won IndyCar's last race in Phoenix in 2018, and Scott Dixon won two years before that.

Besides them, only Will Power, Graham Rahal and Alexander Rossi have competed at Phoenix previously. In theory that makes the track a neutral playing field for the drivers hoping this is where they can catch Palou.

IndyCar held an open test at Phoenix last month to give all the drivers at least a chance to turn laps on the 1-mile dogleg, and most hope its enough come Saturday.

“It doesn't hurt with a little bit of experience, but it's been a while for the others, so we'll see,” Marcus Ericsson said. “I think everyone got a lot of laps here in the test and everyone is kind of on an equal playing field because of that, so I don't think it's going to be a huge advantage.”

The three rookies in the field could have it the hardest: Dennis Hauger and Caio Collet have raced on ovals in IndyCar's feeder system, but Mick Schumacher will be making his oval debut. Collet crashed during the Phoenix test.

“It’s not new for everyone. I think Dixon was driving around here before I was born probably, or at least when I was born,” said 22-year-old Hauger, who is 23 years younger than six-time IndyCar champion Dixon.

“For the majority of the grid, it’s new. I think maybe that levels it out.”

The biggest question mark will be Schumacher, who failed to complete even a single lap in his IndyCar debut last week because he was a casualty of two drivers colliding ahead of him. He had hoped the race at St. Pete would give him some seat time and opportunity to work with his Rahal Letterman Lanigan crew, but the son of seven-time Formula 1 champion Michael Schumacher was reduced to a spectator after the lap 1 crash.

He watched the rest of the IndyCar opener from the pit stand, then spent some time ahead of Phoenix on the simulator trying to understand oval racing.

“It's important to learn, it was my first event, so I needed to analyze everything,” Schumacher said. “So it was important to go back to the pit stand and see what the engineers were talking about, what we would have done differently in certain scenarios, to pretend we did the race and take away key elements of it.”

Everyone will likely be chasing Palou no matter what as his opening race of the year showed he has not slowed a bit. The Spaniard has won four of the five last championships, and last year had eight victories that included the Indianapolis 500 and a third consecutive IndyCar title.

At St. Pete, he led 59 of 100 laps, won by a race-record 12.4-seconds and on Saturday will be seeking his 21st career victory.

Phoenix will mark his 100th career start in IndyCar since he showed up in 2020 as an unknown coming from a Japanese series. He's been unstoppable since moving to Chip Ganassi Racing in 2021 and doesn't plan to let up anytime soon.

“It's just how racing goes, and we have to do a better job,” rival Romain Grosjean said. “It's possible we all have the same cars and he's just using it a better way than we are. Combination of the team, the name, the driver, they're doing amazing. I wish I was a small mouse to see what they have going on.”

Palou insists it hasn't been as easy as he has made it look and Phoenix will be a fair test to see if the competition has caught him at all.

“I tend not to have much expectations,” he said. “I’m pushing. I’m giving everything I have. I like to be in the car. I like to be strapped in, and I like to drive the race. We take it one step at a time. We need to focus on Phoenix.”

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