Crash and learn: How Palou cracked the oval code

Crash and learn. Crash and learn. That’s the process Barry Wanser has seen Alex Palou use to become one of the IndyCar Series’ best oval drivers. And the latest member in an exclusive club of complete IndyCar racers, as Palou has developed into a true multi-discipline threat.

Like his teammate Scott Dixon. Like Arrow McLaren’s Pato O’Ward. Like Team Penske’s Josef Newgarden, Will Power, and Scott McLaughlin. With victories on a street course, road course, superspeedway, and short oval since March, Palou’s reached the lofty status of being a favorite to triumph at any racetrack on the calendar, and the journey has involved some hard knocks.  

After winning three championships together in four years at Chip Ganassi Racing, Wanser’s witnessed the Spaniard use his road racing skills to devastating effect, but it’s in the very American art of turning left on ovals big and small where Palou’s team manager and race strategist has come to appreciate his driver’s superpower.

Separate from the 28-year-old’s obvious talent and incandescent motivation to w in, it’s the mistakes that stand out to Wanser. It’s not the highlights, but rather, the lowlights where Palou showed he was capable of winning races like the Indianapolis 500 in May and Sunday’s Farm to Fresh 275 at Iowa Speedway.

“He was strong immediately in the first year with us (in 2021) at Indy,” Wanser told RACER. “What’s hard at Indy for a new guy without any real oval experience is when they crash, like he did the first year. We did a qualifying sim in practice on qualifying weekend and he crashed on Saturday. Well, fortunately, his qualifying time from the first qualifying run was fast enough to get him in the top 12 so we could go onto Sunday and the run for pole.

“He then came back from that crash and went out there on Sunday and we qualified sixth. I think it was easy for everyone to think he’s just going to qualify 12th, put it in the field, start 12th, be conservative with it. But no, he went out there and went for it. He didn’t become scared of the car. He didn’t say, ‘I have no idea what happened’ and pull back.

“Then in the race, we raced up front, and then he batted and battled with (eventual winner) Helio (Castroneves) at the end and finished second. But that’s how he learned from Helio. The difference with him is he knew what caused the crash. He felt it, knew what transpired when the car stepped out, made the mental adjustments right away, and he became much smarter at Indy because of the crash.

“So that put him in a position to go for it in qualifying and be up there in the race with Helio where he saw what happened chasing him, seeing how Helio was catching and dealing with the traffic, and Alex couldn’t do anything with him. He learned that from Helio and applied that this year to win Indy. That is something in ‘21 that he learned that he carried forward. But I knew right away he’s going to be good at Indy, which is hard to do, and especially hard to do to coming back from a crash.”

In years past, it’s the smaller ovals where Palou was viewed as a slight liability when pitted against the recognized oval masters. He’d run well, often near the front, but there was an extra tier where the likes of Newgarden played that seemed out of reach.

Wanser looks at last season’s visit to Iowa Speedway, where his driver made another mistake — he lost control of the No. 10 Honda in a slow and spin exiting Turn 4 late in the race that sent the car into the wall while they were running 11th – as a key moment in Palou’s oval education.

It was a setback in their title run as he fell to 23rd in Race 1, but once more, Wanser witnessed his driver turn a costly error into a moment where a weakness was removed, as Palou returned less than 24 hours later to run second in Race 2.

Jump to 2025 and Palou was the first Honda-powered driver home with fifth in Race 1 and turned Race 2’s pole position into a win — while leading 194 of 275 laps — and go on to say “I’m officially an IndyCar driver” in the post-race press conference.

“As far as short ovals, the hard part is, as a team, our cars have not been as competitive as other teams, especially the Penske cars, especially at Iowa,” Wanser said. “Iowa last year was definitely challenging. He crashed in Race 1 and learned again. Any veteran who doesn’t say they learn from crashing doesn’t really become a seasoned veteran. I don’t think you learn unless you’re pushing it and in order to go fast on a short oval, you have to push it.

Palou found the wall late in the Saturday race at Iowa last year, but rebounded to finish second the following day. Joe Skibinski/IMS

“We were getting near the end of a stint and he lost it coming out of 4. And you could see him processing what happened and what to do if he felt the car doing the same thing again. So he took that and went to second the following day which was the best we could offer him. And we’ve made our cars better this year.”

Errors don’t appear very often for Palou in road racing, but he made two at the recent Mid-Ohio race where the No. 10 Honda started on pole, dominated most of the event, and a pair of unforced mistakes allowed Dixon to fire by and take the win after Palou slid off track while holding a four-second lead.

Although it wasn’t another instance of crash-and-learn, losing control of the car while under no pressure from behind revealed a rare crack in Palou’s road racing game. For some drivers, it could become a weakness to exploit, but Wanser believes it was another learning opportunity — an instance that should make his driver harder to beat in the future.

“When he got out of the car at Mid-Ohio, I wanted to be the first person to him,” he revealed. “I said, ‘Look, I know you’re going to beat yourself up, but no one on the team is going to beat you up. You make this look pretty easy, but what you just showed today was how hard it really is, how just the slightest change in line cost you a win. This is not easy, and you proved it to everybody. And you’re going to be stronger.’ He is already stronger because of it.”

As much as learning from adversity has allowed Palou and the 10 car team to reach new levels in their first three titles and the current quest for a fourth, having a short memory — intentional forgetfulness — is another ingredient in their championship strategy.  

“With the success we’re having, with the confidence we have in him, the confidence he has in us, we’re able to just move on and not even bring that up again,” he said of Mid-Ohio. “That’s behind us. We finished second. That was great for the points. We’re now racing the Iowa doubleheader. Now we’re going to Toronto. Then we’ll go to Laguna. We’re going to take it race by race, and that’s what he’s able to do, and he’s able to do with a smile on his face, and he’s loving racing in IndyCar.”

Wanser wasn’t happy with the race strategy they chose for Saturday’s Iowa race, which involved a lot of fuel saving and put Palou in a position where he was reacting to the immense speed that O’Ward, Newgarden, and others used to deliver a 1-2-3-4 for Chevrolet.

Starting from pole on Sunday, the decision was made to go on the assault from the outset, just as Saturday’s top finishers had done, and while Newgarden’s No. 2 Chevy was the fastest car on the track, fans saw a different side of Palou as he fought every overtaking attempt, went side-by-side through the corners, and fended off most attacks throughout the afternoon.

Newgarden certainly had the pace to win Race 2 if a couple of cautions fell in his favor, but Wanser doesn’t view Palou’s first short-oval win as an undeserved gift.

“You look at where we started for Race 1 (from fourth) and we were just kind of falling in line, running and running, not a lot of pace, trying to do it in two stops, which wasn’t really going to happen, and it seemed like we then had some pace with the car but we were kind of a sitting duck,” he said. “It was hard for Alex and it was easy for somebody to jump us, and that happened a couple times. We certainly had great performances in the pits. Made up some of those positions back and ended up with a good finish of fifth.

“But we went into Race 2 thinking, all right, we’re starting on the pole. If we’re able to maintain the lead, we’re going to dictate the pace, and by dictating the pace, once we caught the back of the pack, we can use that momentum to more easily get through traffic, and that’s what we did. Certainly, it wasn’t exactly the performance we needed; we still need to work on our cars to make them faster. So we told Alex, ‘We want you to push and do everything you can to stay in the lead. Whatever it takes, whatever fuel you need, just keep it up. Keep the momentum up and keep pushing. And what that did is it forced everybody else to do the same thing we were doing, including Newgarden.