By Austin Lawton, Staff Writer
Saturday’s race at Iowa belonged to Chevrolet but Sunday belonged to Honda. Alex Palou claims his seventh win of the 2025 season, dominating the Farm to Finish 275. Palou was able to lead 194 laps, driving the No. 10 DHL Honda to a second oval win on the season, his first on a short-oval. Palou has now won on every track type IndyCar has to offer: road and street course, short-oval,
Palou continues his historic 2025 campaign, now amassing a 129 point gap to second place Pato O’Ward in the points standings, with over three full races of points ahead of Chip Ganassi Racing teammate Scott Dixon in third.
To put into perspective of Palou’s season, only A.J. Foyt’s 1964 season comes close. Foyt had 10 wins and a 4.7 average finish through the first 12 races of that season. Palou has seven wins and an average finish of 4.1, with five races to go. Palou also joins the likes of Foyt, Alex Zanardi, Juan Pablo Montoya, Paul Tracy and Sebastian Bourdais as winners of seven races won in a season. The record of 10 wins is held by Foyt in 1964 and Al Unser in 1970.
“That’s why it’s so fun to race in IndyCar with these teams, with these different tracks,” Palou said regarding the records and different track types in IndyCar. “It’s different challenges that you have. You go to a street course and you need different techniques than on a road course, and then you go to an oval and you have superspeedways, and then you come here and it’s completely different to IMS. It’s super fun, keeps you awake, keeps you having to push every single weekend, and honestly, I was already super happy yesterday with our first pole here. But to be able to get our first win here and fighting on track, it’s been a good day. It’s been super fun.”
Honda takes all three spots on the podium, with Chip Ganassi Racing taking another 1-2 as Dixon claims the runner-up spot and Meyer Shank Racing’s Marcus Armstrong in third, his second IndyCar podium.
Two Chevrolet’s close out the top five with David Malukas and Saturday’s winner, Pato O’Ward, in fourth and fifth, respectively. Malukas was a challenger to Palou and Josef Newgarden all day long, despite not leading laps.
SEE: Farm to Finish 275 Results
An all-Honda podium does not tell the tale of the day, however. Newgarden was once again in contention to get his No.2 Astemo Chevrolet into victory lane but two ill-timed cautions said otherwise. All of the five total cautions made the field opt into a four-stop strategy, same as Saturday, leveling the playing field
A Marcus Ericsson spin on Lap 130 caused Newgarden to be trapped a lap down, diving into the pits, just mere seconds before Ericsson spun. Newgarden would claw his way back up through the field after restarting in eighth and overtake Palou on Lap 241.
Newgarden made his last pit stop of the race on Lap 249, pitting from the lead. Newgarden stalled the car exiting the pits, allowing Malukas to overtake, with Palou yet to pit.
“That’s just the way IndyCar is. It’s a part of the game,” Malukas told Kevin Lee of FOX Sports post-race, regarding the caution flying after beating Newgarden out of pit road. “We decided to do the undercut, it tends to be a lot quicker. They [Palou] waited out for a yellow and fortunately, the yellow came out for them. We keep pushing. This is good for us. We’ve been on a consistent run ever since the 500, on an upper trajectory. The races are tough but that’s what makes IndyCar fun. We’re always trying to play the guessing game and try to be up there. Hardest P4 I’ve had to work for and we’ll take it to the next one.”
Just five laps later, the fifth and final caution of the race flew for Colton Herta making contact with the wall. The leaders of Palou, Dixon and Armstrong stopped to pit under yellow on Lap 256, leaving Newgarden mired back in 9th with just 11 laps to go in the race.
Despite the bad luck, Newgarden had his best weekend all season, faring better than his Team Penske teammates Scott McLaughlin and Will Power, on Sunday. McLaughlin was an innocent bystander of Devlin DeFrancesco spinning on Lap 1 and Will Power’s engine failed, just 21 laps in.
“We just got to keep doing what we are doing,” Newgarden told Jack Harvey of FOX Sports after the race. “Team Penske is working incredibly hard, the whole group. Yesterday was a good day for everybody, you could see the spirits lift. They don’t need to change what they’re doing. They’re doing a great job. They brought a fast car here again today. Our partners Astemo, Team Chevy, they’re doing the right stuff, just got to keep going.”
Late in Saturday’s race, a second groove started to develop, showing promising signs that passing can occur at Iowa Speedway. There were 229 on-track passes for position on Sunday, surpassing any number set in 2024 and inching closer to the 2023 numbers.
Dixon is optimistic that as the track surface gets older and older, the glory days of 2023 can return again.
“I think we were kind of pleasantly surprised to be honest,” Dixon said regarding the track conditions. “I think day one for a lot of our group we couldn’t really utilize the high line, so it made it tough. Today I had a lot more fun. I could see fellow teammates, and they were having a lot more fun too because we could actually use the high line. I think as the track degrades, as we’ve seen from last year and the repave in the corners, I think it will definitely get a lot better.
“Today was definitely good. You saw a ton of cars passing. I think for us the glory days were kind of two years ago where you could just kind of place the car anywhere. As long as you had a good car, you could kind of get it done. But I see that definitely coming back right now.”
Palou, who started on pole, made most of his passes through lapped traffic, which according to the Spaniard, is a good thing.
“I was passing so many cars I felt like I was Lightning McQueen or something,” Palou said. “It’s the first time that I’m not getting overtaken every single lap on a short oval. It was fun. It was very fun. There was a lot of traffic, which it was good. It was fun getting to see different people struggling in different areas, then you would get to another car and he would be running the line that you liked, and then you would struggle for five, ten laps. But it was fun.”
Palou will look to carry his record-setting streak into the streets of Toronto for the Ontario Honda Dealers Indy Toronto on July 20.