Alex Palou makes his feelings clear on Indy 500 struggles; eyes oval breakthrough in 2025

Alex Palou strides confidently into the 2025 IndyCar season, having won three of the last four championships, including two consecutively in 2023 and 2024. However, the Spaniard has yet to conquer IndyCar's trademark circuit, i.e. the ovals.

Palou has won 12 races in the open-wheel series, all on road and street circuits, and none on ovals. Though he has been respectably successful at the biggest event of the year, the Indy 500, also the most iconic oval race in the world, a P2 in 2021 has been his best result there.

Ahead of the 2025 season, the Chip Ganassi Racing driver spoke with Bob Pockrass of FOX Sports about this dilemma.

"It's been crazy that we haven't won on an oval yet. It's hard to win races, as I said, but we've been close. We've been second, second, second, third, fourth — we've been around knocking on that door various times, especially at this place at IMS, it's so hard to get a win with 200 laps, 500 miles, five-to-six pit stops. A lot can happen, and everything needs to fall your way during that month, but especially during that day, to try and win it," Alex Palou said.

He promised to burn the midnight oil with his championship-winning Chip Ganassi Racing team to make this undesirable statistic a thing of the past.

"We'll try and work harder this year with the team, with myself, try and get our first oval win, and hopefully, it can be here (at the Indy 500)," the defending champ added.

Palou is eyeing a unique championship three-peat in 2025, having successfully retained his title in 2024.

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Alex Palou declares the 2024 IndyCar season his "favorite one so far"

AUTO: MAY 11 NTT IndyCar Series Sonsio Grand Prix - Source: Getty

Alex Palou's past two seasons in IndyCar somewhat paralleled Max Verstappen's 2023 and 2024 in F1. Both drivers won their respective titles in both years, but 2024 was relatively less dominant than the season before.

In 2023, Palou stood on the podium a whopping ten times in 17 races, including a series-high five victories. Comparatively, 2024 witnessed only six podiums, including two victories in point-paying races. Nonetheless, the championship trophy was his to take home. He reflected on this increased competition in a FOX interview, saying:

"In IndyCar nowadays, it's super hard to get a win, so still getting to [win] felt great. But it was a bit more about consistency. I would say we got a bunch of top-5s, a little bit of drama here and there with Iowa, where we crashed, and Detroit, where we couldn't score many points either. It's been a complete year [in 2024]. I would say this is my favorite one so far."

Alex Palou relished the challenge posed by his rivals, and it was only sweetened by it being his first IndyCar season since his daughter Lucia's arrival in December 2023.

Alex Palou had a decent outing at IndyCar's two-day preseason test in Sebring on February 17 and 18. He completed 139 laps around the Sebring International Raceway and finished seventh-fastest overall out of 27 drivers. The No. 10 CGR driver will next be seen in action at the season opener at St. Petersburg on March 2.