"He's mopping the floor with 26 other drivers": Alexander Rossi reveals conversation with Colton Herta about Alex Palou

Ed Carpenter Racing’s Alexander Rossi recently came out and revealed his conversation with Colton Herta after the 2025 Thermal Club IndyCar race. The 33-year-old revealed the details of the conversation about the race winner, Alex Palou.

Chip Ganassi Racing's Palou has started his defense of the IndyCar championship with back-to-back wins. The Spaniard won the season opener at St. Pete followed by a spectacular race win in Thermal Club. Palou is currently leading the driver's championship.

Rossi was featured in the recent episode of the Off Track with Hinch and Rossi podcast, where he discussed Alex Palou’s dominance with the host James Hinchcliffe. As the duo discussed the CGR driver’s race strategy and strong final stint, Rossi brought up the conversation he had with Herta about Palou.

“I talked to Colton afterwards, and I was like, man, it's a tough look for all of us. Like, I'm not, you can't sugarcoat this any way other than he is just mopping the floor with 26 other drivers and engineers and everyone,” said Alexander Rossi (24:23 onwards)

Hinchcliffe then pointed out how Alex Palou had already carved out a 50+ point margin (i.e., the maximum points awarded during a race weekend) to the driver who's eighth in the championship. Rossi then added,

“Do you know that there's only one driver that has finished in the top five in both races, and he happens to have won both of them.”

Alex Palou started the race in P3 with the Arrow McLaren duo of Pato O'Ward and Christian Lundgaard starting in front of him. The order remained the same for the first 40 laps, and then Palou started making the move on the new set of alternate tires.

The Spaniard passed Lundgaard with 15 laps remaining and made up the 11-second gap to Pato O'Ward in just five laps. Palou overtook the #5 Arrow McLaren with 10 laps to go and ended the race 10+ seconds ahead of the Papaya team duo.

Alexander Rossi predicted the big unknown going into the Thermal Club IndyCar race

All the drivers struggled with tire degradation at the Thermal Club while the race strategists were busy with the tire strategy. The 65-lap race was a 3-4 stopper for most drivers, which led to huge variations in the strategies, especially with the new soft alternate tires being out of the equation.

However, Alexander Rossi came out before the Thermal Club GP and mentioned that the tire degradation and strategy would play a key role in deciding the winner. He said,

“Firestone, this year, is bringing different tires to all these events to create a bigger separation between the primary and the alternate, so that's an unknown. So you can take the fundamental concept of the track and apply it to this year, but in terms of all the finer details, everyone's gonna be experiencing it for the first time.”

Alexander Rossi pushed the #20 ECR to qualify P6 and finished inside the Top 10 in P9 at Thermal Club.