June 22, 2025
Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin
Press Conference
THE MODERATOR: Congratulations to Alex Palou who led six of the 55 laps, driver of the No. 10 Solo Cup Chip Ganassi Racing Honda. His third win here at Road America, sixth in 2025, 17th career victory, which now puts him into the top 30 all time in INDYCAR Series history. Barry Wanser, the longtime team manager at Chip Ganassi Racing, also joins us.
Alex, how much fuel was left in that tank?
ALEX PALOU: Not much but enough to make it to Victory Lane, which was good. Yeah, I don't think there's much left in it.
BARRY WANSER: No, just enough to make it home. If you were going to have to get him to stop it, pit out, but that was going to be impossible to take the checkered flag, and from that speed to stop and pit out. So we're like, let's just go as far as he can. If we have a problem we'd have him stop in Turn 5, push him through and then try to get him up to Victory Lane. But at that point, it was fine. Couldn't do donuts, though.
ALEX PALOU: No, couldn't do donuts. I would have liked that, but yeah.
Q. Tell us about the win. Back in Victory Lane for you.
ALEX PALOU: It was tough. It was a crazy race. I don't know about how it looked from the outside, but from inside, it just felt like there was a lot going on. Lots of yellows, obviously, that were shaking how we were looking.
We were looking really bad at the beginning, then really good, then terrible, then really good. It was tough to be up there. But yeah, we just had to stay focused on battling against the people that were on our strategy.
I didn't agree with Barry's strategy call. I got to be grumpy for a couple of laps, and then I saw it was working out, and I started saying thank you again. It was interesting, but for sure, we got the win because of the team that we had on both pit stops and strategy. They made it look really good, and HRC that gave us the mileage we needed to gamble and to make it with that stop that we did.
Q. Barry, when he's grumpy like that, just how grumpy is he?
BARRY WANSER: Well, he doesn't get grumpy, so when he is grumpy, I know he's really mad and questioning what we're doing. But I don't know if you were following that race, we didn't know we were on the right strategy until like 10 to go. We're reacting based on what we think is happening.
There was obviously a lot of cautions this race. But we made some strategy changes on the tires during the race that we went against what we all agreed on before the race, so he wasn't very happy about that, but we saw what our competitors were doing and who we were racing, so we had to make that change to be able to stay with them and then beat them. And it worked out.
Look, today was luck to be on the right strategy because it was hard. There were several different strategies going on.
Q. Take us through what did you guys ultimately feel like was the pivotal call to keep you on the right strategy? Alex, what was the call or what was the point in the race where you were getting a little frustrated?
ALEX PALOU: I would say just that yellow that we were leading. We were leading and we pitted, and some people stayed out. That was the moment that I would say gave us the win.
I mean, we pitted from first. We were leading.
BARRY WANSER: Just pit from front, from the lead.
ALEX PALOU: Yes. We had still I would say five laps of fuel to make it, but it was not enough; in case there's another yellow, you're done. So that was a great call.
I would say the only one that I was a bit like, oh, no, it was just when we went on the second stint on reds. That was only our set of alternates because yesterday I was pushing to try and get the pole, which we didn't get, and kind of put us on the back foot against Lundgaard, McLaughlin and everybody else that was not in the Fast Six.
I knew it was going to help us during that stint, but it was going to hurt us a lot on the last stint. But honestly, the pace we had today in the 10 car was amazing, and we were able to save fuel even on primaries to be quite fast.
BARRY WANSER: Yeah, I'd say one of the pivotal moments is we should have never started on the blacks. It worked against us. Quite a few cars around us picked us off. But it ended up being the right call in the end. But if we were to do the race again, not knowing what we know, we probably should have started on the reds.
ALEX PALOU: We tried to change it.
BARRY WANSER: Then he wouldn't have been able to complain about reds the rest of the race.
ALEX PALOU: Yeah, we tried to change it, but we were one or two minutes late.
BARRY WANSER: We actually declared primaries, and then other people got involved outside the 10 car stand. We thought about it. We were like, no, we're going to stay with primaries, and then last minute he decided again, maybe we're not making the right decision.
Alex is a big part of the tire strategy; he's the one driving the car. He was like, all right, I think we need to start on the alternates, and when we set it in, it was like 10:01 but the window had closed at 9:56 or whatever, the 30-minute window. So even it accepted it, we knew, no way, it's not going to happen.
Q. As you're battling Dixon down the stretch, at what point did you guys feel confident that he wasn't going to be able to make it on fuel and you were ultimately going to inherit the lead and just had to work your way home and fuel save, as well?
BARRY WANSER: For us -- he had pitted two laps before us and then the yellow came out.
We really needed a yellow because we gave him a big fuel number. We kind of needed a yellow to help us. We got that yellow, but it wasn't enough for Scott and Rossi because they pitted two laps before us. So we were already looking at a big number two laps after them, so you could imagine they needed a much bigger number than we did, so even the short yellow didn't help them.
Q. Alex, when they tell you we think Scott is two laps short, do you believe Barry, or are you like, yeah, but this is Scott Dixon?
ALEX PALOU: Yeah, that's the thing. Like yeah, he has more information than me, and when I was following Scott I could see that he was not saving as much as I was. I was like, this guy is crazy; how is he going to do it. But I didn't know. Like I don't have a lot of information.
If it was another driver, I would have probably just focused on myself, but I know that Scott can make crazy stuff happen.
Yeah, I trusted Barry but I was like, man, if he gets a yellow he's still P1 and we're not going to be able to pass him. We were still trying to get that first position on track just in case there was a four-lap yellow at the end and then he was still leading and ending up with a win.
BARRY WANSER: Yeah, we were equally concerned, and I even said to all of the engineers on the stand, his race engineer, Julian, Brian Welling, our performance engineer, Blair Bean, who keeps track of the fuel, I'm like, are we missing something here, because Dixon is running numbers, lap times, he's not going to be able to get it, based on the number we gave him. They double-checked everything, triple-checked, but we were pretty confident we were going to be fine.
Q. So if there was a late caution you don't think you would have been able to pass Scott on a restart?
ALEX PALOU: It depends. If it's only a one-lap yellow, yes, I think we would have been able. But if it was like a back-to-back yellow and then ends up being like four laps, he's going to make it on a good number and we're going to be like on the same number almost. So you never know.
I thought we were at a disadvantage on tires, obviously. He was on the faster tire, and he was able to get out of the corners so well. I was struggling a lot to try and catch him.
I think a very big yellow or two yellows in a row would have made it really tough for us. But you never know. It was a crazy race.
BARRY WANSER: Really the threat at the end of the race was Rosenqvist because he pitted five laps after us on the alternates and he was coming hard. He still had to get around Rossi. Rossi didn't make it, so he pitted, so he really never closed in on you.
But with the amount of fuel, he was able to save more than what we needed, and we were able to give him a much better number there for the last few laps. But Felix was the threat at the end.
Q. Was the plan all along to sing on the radio after you won, or was that a spur of the moment, and how would you rate your singing?
ALEX PALOU: Yeah, I would say that it was the plan. I did very good.
BARRY WANSER: Yeah, you did great.
ALEX PALOU: I think the radio maybe with the -- the interference on the radio maybe didn't sound very good, but in my head it sounded amazing.
BARRY WANSER: It's like anybody else singing in the car by yourself.
ALEX PALOU: Yes. It was good. It was fun.
Q. Alex, how did the heat affect you, not affect you? How did the ice vest that you and a lot of drivers wear, how long do you feel that into a race like today where temperatures are over 90 degrees?
ALEX PALOU: It was not as bad as I thought, honestly. That cool suit that we had, and having a great race car, it makes your life a lot easier. Also having so many yellows, it helps a lot because you can just breathe.
It actually felt really short, this race, for some reason. It was very fun for me. Like we overtook some cars on track, as well. Yeah, whenever you have some cautions that you can relax for like two laps, breathe and just focus on the next 20, 30 laps, it just makes it a lot easier.
It was tough, but it wasn't as bad as I thought after warmup. After warmup I talked to Kyffin and I was like, man, this is going to be a tough race for everybody, and it's going to be about saving energy on yourself and not so much on the car to get to the end as fresh as possible.
Q. Talk a little bit about first-time sponsors, one-off sponsors. HRC president David Salters told me after you won at Barber in the HRC livery, he wanted to commission some 1/18 and 1/43 scale models because he was so proud of it. I don't know if Solo is going to do the same, but you seem to have a pretty good track record with these one-off new sponsor appearances?
ALEX PALOU: Yeah, it's been crazy. We've been very lucky, honestly. The only bad thing is that they just come, they joke, that's it, and they get the win and they can leave. We should have made it a little bit harder.
BARRY WANSER: It's not easy. It's very hard to win and we've been very fortunate for sure.
ALEX PALOU: Yeah, we've been very fortunate, but it's super cool. Hopefully we can make the HRC, which was amazing, and also this livery. I think also our graphic department is going a great job. There's a lot of details on the car on the livery. If you look up closely, whenever the paint shades from white to red, it's small Solo cups. You cannot see it but it's very cool. Hopefully they can make it in a small one.
BARRY WANSER: Last thing. Canada Corner. Crazy. Two times in a row you go into the corner behind two cars, Kirkwood and Power, they decide to effectively out-brake each other, hand you two positions. That happens once. Then it happens again. Switch the order of who did what. You ever see anything like that where folks just love giving you positions? Same corner, same race multiple times.
ALEX PALOU: I think they both at the time were focused on myself and not the car in front. I was just trying to put pressure to maybe get something, and they both did the same. For me it was working.
I had a car that allowed me to brake super late there, so I was trying to brake as late as I could, and then he either had to give me the position or try and out-brake us, and I knew that that was going to be pretty tough.
Yeah, I was happy when I saw that twice.
Q. 10 wins in a row for Honda dating back to Nashville last year. There's some crazy streaks going on here. Can you speak to that, obviously, as one of their favorite sons?
ALEX PALOU: Yeah, it's crazy. I think if you look at the paces, if you look at the races, it doesn't make sense. I think it's kind of the same magical moment that we have in the 10 car, it's the same for Honda, where even though sometimes they've not been -- we've not been the fastest that we're able to maximize everything and get the win, like Kirkwood did at St. Louis not long ago.
I think it's amazing. It's not normal that it's happening. I don't think there's huge differences between drivers or engines. Yeah, they should be proud of that, as well.
Q. In previous hot weather races INDYCAR has mandated the scoop over the aeroscreen. Do you think that would have helped with the heat had it been available or it would not have made a difference at all?
ALEX PALOU: It depends. I don't fully love it just because it throws you so much dust that it's actually tough to --
Q. Yeah, that's the problem, it just catching everything and puts it down in his lap, in his visor and stuff, and with the lightweight aeroscreen we have now, it's vented, so he's getting more air than he did when they first came out with the scoop.
ALEX PALOU: Now we have a small gap here.
BARRY WANSER: And there's two at the top and on the front that we don't run on any speedways.
Q. How long did it take you to learn the lyrics to the song?
ALEX PALOU: A little bit longer than you would expect. I think also because there's back-to-back lyrics that they are very confusing. When it says like, I love you red Solo Cup. So then in my head -- it was tough. I actually looked at it this morning, the last YouTube video, I looked at it. It was the lyrics of the song just in case we were winning that I --
BARRY WANSER: I didn't learn about the song until at the end of the race. I've never heard it.
ALEX PALOU: Oh, my goodness.
Q. Barry, any possible plans on bringing Solo back later on this year?
BARRY WANSER: Yeah, I don't know. That's up to our biz ops department, our group. They handle all that. We're just getting used to seeing a different color car, and I can tell you, in pit lane it's challenging, but it's a lot of fun. It's certainly a lot of fun.
THE MODERATOR: To the point of the scoop, with the new lightweight aeroscreen, the scoop is not even available anymore. There's more efficient cooling coming through the lightweight aeroscreen.
Q. It was a really rough race. Seemed like there was guys bouncing off each other all the time. Some of them going off, some of them managing to get back on. Was this a rougher race than usual here?
ALEX PALOU: Yeah, it was very aggressive. I got bumped, I don't know now if it was the first restart or the second, by like multiple cars. I had contacts with a lot of cars. Not big contacts, but when you're touching wheels and it's like, man, this could end up very bad. I saw the 3 and the 2 as well in Turn 5 banging wheels.
There was a lot going on. I think everybody wanted to get up front, me included. I was lucky enough to get out of the drama, and I lost a couple of places because of contacts but I didn't lose like five seconds or anything like that.
Yeah, there was a lot going on.
BARRY WANSER: This race in the last 10 years, I think it's gone green flag the whole time, 2018 and 2019 I think it was, two years in a row, and everything else, the yellow history shows there's a very high percentage of a yellow following a yellow here, one of the highest for the season.
Q. Felix mentioned he thought there was a lot less junk from tires getting off line, so you were able to get off line, so if you did get squeezed out, you did get bumped, you had a little better chance of recovering than in the past. Agreed?
ALEX PALOU: Yeah, it wasn't that bad. I actually overtook twice in Turn 1 on the outside, which normally you can't, so that was great.
On the carousel, I wasn't able to overtake, but I was able to get some air to then try and put pressure into Turn 12. Yeah, it was great. Now that I say it, it was great, although now on the last lap when I was just celebrating and saying hello, I got on the marbles on the carousel and I almost went out because there were so many marbles that I just had no steering at all.
Yeah, I think that helps us. It helps a lot the series. It helps the racing when you're able to just go multiple lines. Whenever you're only able to do one line, it just gets tougher and tougher to pass.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports


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