"It was the best St. Pete race we had” - Alex Palou makes his feelings known on the inaugural 2025 season race

Alex Palou, the 2024 IndyCar world champion, was on song during this year's season-opener, the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg. He recently shared his thoughts after winning the 100-lap outing from the P8 position on the grid.

Alex Palou sat down for a chat with Speed Street and stated that the 2025 St. Pete race was the best he and his team had ever witnessed. In a video shared by Dirty Mo Media on their Instagram page, the Spanish driver specifically gave his take on the overall atmosphere during the three-day event in St. Petersburg.

"There were a lot of people that actually knew who we were like, you know, there's some races a that bunch of people, you can just walk past through the people and they don't even know you're a driver. A lot of people recognized me a lot more this weekend, and the amount of people that was there was in the stands and in the pits, in the paddock, it was huge, so for me, it was the best St. Pete race that we had," Palou said.

Alex Palou triumphed in the 100-lap St. Petersburg race ahead of his teammate, Scott Dixon, who faced radio issues with Chip Ganassi Racing, and Team Penske's Josef Newgarden.

Alex Palou deemed Scott Dixon's P2 finish 'unfortunate'

While Alex Palou shared his pleasure with the recognition and the vibe around the season-opener in St. Petersburg, he also, via The Race, talked about his teammate's second place.

Palou felt that had Dixon not faced communication issues during the 100-lap race, he would've been the winner of the 2025 Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg.

"I was a bit surprised that he was going to stay out with that traffic, so [he was] super unfortunate. We normally don't have issues like that. When you have a strategy race like it was today where you might have enough fuel to make it and you don't want to always go to the end, like as drivers, we get alarms of fuel, and then you know you need to pit. But maybe that was not the right thing for the strategy, and it was not. Unfortunate for Scott, but at least we finished 1-2," Palou said.

Next up on the IndyCar calendar is the Thermal Club Grand Prix in California. Last year, it was run in a non-championship format, but for the 2025 season, it will be a full-fledged Grand Prix.

It will be important for Palou to sort out his qualifying issues (P8 qualifying in season-opener) at the Thermal Club Grand Prix. He was way off the top three positions in St. Petersburg in comparison to pole sitter Scott McLaughlin and second-placed Andretti Global driver Colton Herta.