What you should actually take from Palou's first error of 2025

When a driver who’s won six times in eight races throws away a seemingly inevitable seventh victory, some people are going to bathe in the misfortune of it all, such is the nature of elite-level sport.

But despite Alex Palou’s own embarrassment over how he lost the Mid-Ohio IndyCar race, both how he handled the faux pas and the fact that he still has a 113-point championship lead with seven races remaining just makes any negative takeaways from the event futile.

Palou “just lost it a little bit on entry” to Turn 9 on lap 86 of 90, having seen off what could and perhaps should have been a winning strategy for his Ganassi team-mate Scott Dixon. Such was Palou’s pace, he did an extra pitstop worth about 25 seconds of race time, and still was set to win by five or so seconds before the error.

Before handing Dixon the win, Palou was - along with Kyle Kirkwood - one of two winners in nine IndyCar races, adding three poles. Since moving to Ganassi for 2021, Palou has outscored his closest competitor (Dixon) by 371 points.

His dominance has been absolute.

“We saw Mr Perfect here make a mistake, you don't see that very often,” said Christian Lundgaard while sat alongside Palou in the post-race press conference. 

The fact he was willing to acknowledge that right in Palou’s face might be just evidence of Lundgaard’s ‘no bullshit, say it how you see it’ style.

But the comfort in acknowledging the mistake so soon after it  - knowing how that would feel for a driver - perhaps also points to Lundgaard and everybody else’s knowledge that this is so much of a rarity that instead of being a massive storyline, it’s actually a non-entity!

Palou has been so good and made so few errors compared to his rivals that even though this one was as high-profile as we’ve seen for a while, as it cost him a win, it actually doesn’t matter because he’s been so good.

The other thing I want to praise is how Palou handled it all.

First, he immediately made himself available for a TV interview despite the embarrassment he felt.

"Nobody to blame but me."

A late-race mistake proves costly for Alex Palou at Mid-Ohio. pic.twitter.com/4aM7hcp8PP

— NTT INDYCAR SERIES (@IndyCar) July 6, 2025

Not only did he take the blame, he praised his own team for their excellent work in the weekend that he had cost them the result - they won’t mind given the overwhelming success he has brought them! - and praised his team-mate Dixon and the #9 crew for their hard-fought and worthy victory that they can be “proud” of.

He put his hands together pointing upwards at the end of the interview - perhaps in apology to his team, or his fans, whoever.

Then, in the post-race press conference he delivered a blow for the rest of the field, the acknowledgement that not only was this his error, but that he’s going to learn from it.

God forbid for his rivals that he could actually get better.

“I think we lost today, it’s not like we got beaten, but we lost it, myself,” said Palou.

“I’m hopefully going to learn from that. It's still good in a way that we got 1-2. We lost it but we kept it in the team. I think that's going to keep the team happier and Chip [Ganassi, team owner] happier.

“It hurts doing a big mistake like that when you could have just…it's easy now to just say, ‘save a little bit there, you don't need to be on the limit’. But when you're driving, you don't feel like you're that on the limit.

“It'll take a couple of hours, but then at the end of the day we still finished second, still had an amazing weekend, and we should be proud about that.”

When it was pointed out to him the irony that despite the incident he’d extended his points lead by 20 points to 113 - more proof of the error being basically meaningless - he added: “That's why probably it's not going to take two days to recover. It's going to take just a couple of hours.

“It’s still an amazing result, finishing second, running up front, and overall if you sum up all the weekend, leading 75 laps, getting the pole and just running really, really fast all weekend, it's been amazing and extending the points lead, as well. But yeah, still, we lost the race there.”

Would the reaction to this have been different if Palou was locked in a close title battle? Yes. But he’s not, because he’s been exceptional.

Any mistake this year is going to be a high-profile one because he is always at the front. It’s inescapable and inevitable that a driver will make a mistake each year - Iowa last year when he crashed for example - but Palou’s are more notable because of his magnetism to being at the front.

Palou can lose 16 points per race - bearing in mind you effectively earn five points for starting a race - across the final seven events and still take his fourth title.

This error is an inconsequential blip in a spectacular season - and career. He’s made a mistake, but others make more and he’s put himself in a position to play the odds, gamble more and continue to dominate.

It's the kind of error that might cost another driver a new contract at a team, but will be either totally forgotten about or laughed at in hindsight for Palou.

A bad, embarrassing result for Alex Palou in 2025 is second. That tells you everything you need to know.