Alex Palou continues his dominant season at Mid-Ohio

The NTT IndyCar Series officially reached the half-point of the 2023 season on Sunday afternoon in Lexington, Ohio, for the Honda Indy 200 at Mid-Ohio.

Entering this race, Alex Palou has been on a tear winning three of the last four races. His worse finish this season has been eighth place at St. Petersburg. Palou entered this race with a 74-point lead over Marcus Ericsson in the championship standings. In other news, Conor Daly replaced Simon Pagenaud after Pagenaud suffered a violent crash in practice yesterday and was not medically cleared to race.

Andretti Autosport driver Colton Herta started on the pole for the second consecutive race with Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing’s Graham Rahal making up the front row.

The race got off to a chaotic start on the opening lap. Marcus Ericsson went wide at Turn 6 before colliding with Felix Rosenqvist which sent Ericsson airborne. Rosenqvist was able to continue the race. Meanwhile, Ericsson’s car suffered a mechanical issue. The team tried to fix a broken right-front steering issue but the damage was beyond repair and Ericsson was out of the race. Ericsson’s streak of top-ten finishes this year came to an end.

Later in the race, Alex Palou and Kyle Kirkwood were battling for the third position and both came into contact causing Kirkwood to spin out. He kept the car going and IndyCar did not throw out a caution. Upfront, Colton Herta and Graham Rahal were running two different lines. Rahal was running wide into the final corners but was unable to cut Herta’s lead.

Pit strategies would cost the leaders up front. Upon entering pit road on lap 27, Colton Herta got loose trying to get to minimal speed and lost time. Graham Rahal stayed out one more lap before pitting but had issues in the pits that cost him valuable time.

Alex Palou went to pit road a lap after Rahal and a quick pit stop put him out front. Palou easily passed Herta and Rahal to take the lead on lap 31. Palou put distance on his competitors. At one point, he had an over ten-second lead.

The only time Palou lost the lead was when he made his last pit stop on lap 54. Will Power and Graham Rahal led a combined three laps. After that, no one could catch Palou.

In the back of the field, lap traffic played a major factor for those battling for position. With four laps to go, Rinus VeeKay, Romain Grosjean, Kyle Kirkwood, Callum Ilott, and Devlin DeFrancisco were in a heated battle for 13^th place.

Ahead of them, Benjamin Pederson, who was a lap down, would not get out of the way when Pato O’Ward, Marcus Armstrong, and Alexander Rossi were in a battle for a top-ten spot.

I don’t understand why IndyCar did not wave the blue flag with diagonal yellow stripes to tell the drivers a lap down to get out of the way. It is one thing if a driver a lap down is behind the leader trying to get his lap back. However, this was not the case as there were less than five laps to go and none of the lapped-down cars were near Palou. IndyCar needs to do a better job.

Upfront, there was no one near Palou. He won the Honda Indy 200 by 5.0242 seconds over Scott Dixon. For Palou this was his fourth win in five races and third in a row. He has grown his championship lead to 110 points over Scott Dixon, who jump from fifth to second in the standings. In addition, this was Dixon’s 20^th race at Mid-Ohio. Speaking of Dixon, he was the last driver to win three races in a row in 2020 in Texas, Indianapolis, and Road America.

“I had a good car and good strategy, honestly. We had a really fast car (but) we needed to try something different to the guys starting up front – that’s why we started on primaries (Firestones Black tires) and everything went well. The strategies, pit stops, and our pace was really good,” said Palou. “I know we can have some good couple of races coming up now, and we’ll still try and maximize (points), do the best we can, and win when we can. So, yeah, try and get (the car) on top.”

“Anything’s possible. Like we’ve always seen, you’re never out of it until you’re out of it. So, we’ll keep trying as hard as possible,” said Dixon of overcoming the deficit. “I know we tied (in points) with (Juan Pablo) Montoya in 2015, and we thought we were possibly out of it (entering the final race). That’s what’s funny about the IndyCar Series and all of the competition, but you’ve got to give them credit, they’re doing a hell of a job.”

The NTT IndyCar Series heads to the streets of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, for the Honda Indy Toronto race on Sunday, July 16, at 1:30 pm on Peacock. Subscribe to Fubo to watch all of the 2023 NTT IndyCar Series season. Purchase tickets for all IndyCar races today on StubHub and Viagogo.

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