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Alex Palou on his dream Indy 500 victory (ad-free)
🕑 Added 2025-05-26 14:33:59 +0000 UTCLive from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and overlooking the yard of bricks, Alex Palou joins The Race IndyCar Podcast just hours after he became the winner of the 109th Indy 500.
Palou - with a croaky voice after all of the screaming after the win - breaks down the race winning move and how it was shaped by his 2021 loss to Helio Castroneves.
But we also get into his career path from being discarded on the ladder to F1 and identifying IndyCar as a future option, and how his dad, Ramon, fit into that journey.
We also discuss what's next for Palou in the long-term (winning a third championship in a row) and in the more immediate future (breaking the funk for Indy winners in Detroit), plus there's chat about Chip Ganassi’s role in identifying Palou’s talent, giving him the tools to succeed, and backing him through a rollercoaster few years where Palou tried to leave but eventually recommitted to the team.
JR Hildebrand also joins right after the race to break down Palou’s success, Josef Newgarden’s incredible run in the race, David Malukas’s breakthough podium and more.
Comments
Alex Raghunath
Appreciated hearing more from Álex over the last few pods. Didn’t know much about him as a personality and sometimes I think the jazzy sponsor friendly American media style means you don’t often see the Indycar drivers in a natural setting. Thanks Jack for your work and helping us learn a bit more about these guys.
Glenn Freeman (The Race)
Yeah, it's a pretty simple explanation. One to one interviews are few and far between in F1, and when we do get them, they are almost always at the track, where we don't have the rights permissions to broadcast them either as video or audio. We are trying to get more teams to work with us to do things like we did at McLaren recently with Lando and Zak, though.
Tsundoku Sensei
I love how The Race's IndyCar podcast has had Alex Palou on not once but twice over the past couple of weeks. Great job by Jack Benyon. Simon Patterson often interviews the MotoGP riders as well. But you know who doesn't seem to get any interviews? The F1 writers. Is this because access to the F1 drivers is more tightly controlled? It's a noticeable gap in The Race's F1 podcasts.
