Alex Palou took his third win in six attempts at Road America with a vintage fuel-save performance that kept up Honda's 100% winning record at the start of the 2025 IndyCar season.
Nine races into the season, Chip Ganassi Racing driver Palou and Andretti's Kyle Kirkwood remain the only race winners. And in such an unusual title race, Road America gave us a barnstorming classic that featured loads of overtaking and speculative strategy gambles.
Higher temperatures than usual were experienced in and out of the cockpits as the race was more akin to a NASCAR door-banger than a 'typical' Road America race, but it demonstrated the very best - and worst, arguably - IndyCar's overtakers have to offer.
The ferocity of the combat and the difficulty keeping the car on the road in high temperatures was such that there were a handful of cautions, which worked to split the field into a host of seemingly random strategies.
The win was ultimately fought out between Scott Dixon - who started 25th and pitted off-sync on lap three, but was short of fuel towards the end - his team-mate Palou - who had two laps more fuel but still needed to save - and Felix Rosenqvist, charging on a more typical Road America pitstop strategy.
Rosenqvist emerged from his last stop seven seconds behind Dixon and Palou, needing to chase down the fuel-saving leaders.
At one point Rosenqvist had been third on his strategy but leapt ahead of two drivers having incident-filled days.
There goes the No. 7!
— NTT INDYCAR SERIES (@IndyCar) June 22, 2025
Christian Lundgaard goes off-course and loses it! pic.twitter.com/zsQ1dRA26V
Christian Lundgaard of Arrow McLaren looked to have the best chance of usurping Palou, but spun while trying to overtake Colton Herta just past the halfway point of the 55-lap race. He likely would have had a better chance in the closing stages than Rosenqvist.
Kirkwood was the other driver ahead of Rosenqvist on that strategy and aiming for three race wins in a row.
Having been rammed in practice by Will Power two race weekends ago, Kirkwood was forced off track by a ridiculously late Power move early on - later retaliating by making sure Power was left no room at the same corner.
WOW! 🫣 pic.twitter.com/CZxHFSAJa6
— NTT INDYCAR SERIES (@IndyCar) June 22, 2025
Back at the front and in the closing stages, Dixon peeled in with two laps to go. That confirmed that Palou had enough fuel, but he still had a charging Rosenqvist to contend with.
But Palou kept Rosenqvist from scoring Meyer Shank's first road course win, instead taking his sixth win of 2025 with two seconds in hand.
He extended his championship lead over Kirkwood to 93 points, as Kirkwood took fourth ahead of Rosenqvist's team-mate Marcus Armstrong.
Second place was Rosenqvist's best result since Portland in September 2023, when he was at McLaren, and he was followed onto the podium by a very popular entry.
Santino Ferrucci bagged his fourth top-five finish in a row, sporting a special livery dedicated to long-time sponsor Marlyne Sexton, who passed away recently. Ferrucci started 18th and was one of the six cars The Race counted out of fuel after the chequered flag.
The AJ Foyt Racing driver had stalled in a pitstop earlier in the race, but matched Palou's strategy - which didn't have many takers but paid off handsomely - almost exactly on his way to a second podium of the season.
Kyffin Simpson took sixth ahead of David Malukas, Nolan Siegel, the recovering Dixon and Rinus VeeKay.
From an incredible pole, rookie Louis Foster equalled his best series result in 11th.
