The reigning NTT INDYCAR Series champion laid down a strong marker to earn Chip Ganassi Racing the lucrative cash prize, winning the final by 5 seconds, ahead of Scott McLaughlin and Felix Rosenqvist. 

Colton Herta charged through the field from 11^th to finish 4^th after employing a strategy of running incredibly slowly through the first portion of the final, to save tyres for the final 10 lap sprint for the cash. 

Marcus Armstrong finished a strong 5^th for Chip Ganassi Racing, ahead of teammate Linus Lundqvist and Alexander Rossi. Josef Newgarden was shuffled back after contact with Rossi, as the Arrow McLaren driver sought to make his way to the front having also saved tyres in the first half of the final. 

 Christian Lundgaard finished 9^th ahead of Augustin Canapino, while Graham Rahal retired from the final with the throttle issue, and Pietro Fittipaldi was disqualified after RLL had failed to start the finale with a full tank of fuel, as per the race director’s instructions. 

Some of the series’ biggest stars missed out on the final, such as 6-time champion Scott Dixon, who was involved in a first lap incident in Heat 1 with Romain Grosjean. Will Power took avoiding action to the incident, putting him out of contention to qualify. In his very first taste of Indycar action, Nolan Siegel did very well to come home 7^th in heat 1, narrowly missing the all star finale.  

In heat 2, stars Pato O’Ward and Marcus Ericsson failed to make the final, after struggling to move forward in their heat. 

Dominant Palou reaffirms road course superiority with masterful drive

Indycar’s first non-points round for over a decade was only going to be won by one man, Alex Palou.

Over the course of the weekend, Palou was the dominant driver throughout the field, consistently topping the time sheets throughout the nine hours of testing, before qualifying for heat 2 fastest by nearly two tenths. 

In the heat race, he drove off into the Californian desert, finishing five seconds clear of teammate Armstrong in 2^nd, and eighteen seconds clear of Rahal in third after just ten laps.

In the final, Palou was even more in control.

For the first half of the race, He managed his pace perfectly. Aware of the drastic tyre saving measures being employed by Rossi and Herta, the Spaniard kept his own tyres in check. The aim was to get to the ‘half time’ break unscathed, before flexing his muscles in the second half of the final.

“Everybody was saving. I saw that everybody kept going slower. I was like, all right, I’ll do the same game. We’re actually maintaining tyres.”

This tyre saving worked well for Palou, giving him enough grip to maintain control in the final 10 lap shootout, as the chasing McLaughlin was unable to get close to him. Palou crossed the line a full five seconds clear of the Kiwi, earning himself $500,000 in the process. 

Palou won four of the seven road courses in 2023, and although there were no points on the line, he proved to his competitors once again that if he is to relinquish his grip on the Astor Cup, it will take a strong effort across the whole season in order to do so. 

Mclaughlin can take some heart in the fact that he was essentially ‘best of the rest’, as he heads home with an extra $350,000 for his troubles too.

McLaughlin was the only non-Chip Ganassi Racing driver to win on a road course in 2023, and the pace shown at the Thermal Club this weekend can fill him with some confidence that the season will be fruitful for him. 

Herta and Rossi provide intrigue to flawed final format 

The Thermal 1 million Dollar Challenge format certainly split opinion, and throughout the course of the final, it seemed that the engineers had outthought the organisers. 

The first 10 laps of the final were farcical – by prohibiting teams to change tyres during the ten minute ‘half time’ period, and on a circuit with aggressive tyre wear, it meant that some drivers took tyre saving to a new level. 

Colton Herta only just scraped into the final, finishing in 6^th place in heat 1, forcing him to start on the back row of the grid. Instead of charging towards the front, he decided to save tyres from the outset, consistently lapping over 7 seconds off the pace of Palou. 

By lap 7, he was over 53 seconds back, in the knowledge that all this ground would be made up when the cars came to a stop at half time. Rossi also employed the same strategy from 9^th, as did Canapino in 10^th. 

After a farcical first half which saw no on track passes, Rossi and Herta set about making up places for the big prize money. Initially it looked as if Rossi would be best poised to challenge towards the front, but a fracas with Newgarden saw them both run wide at turn two whilst battling for 5^th on lap 3, allowing Lundqvist and Herta to sneak by. 

Herta made light work of Chip Ganassi’s Lundqvist for 5^th, and then passed Marcus Armstrong for 4^th, a move which earnt the Californian $50,000 in the process. He was too far back to catch the impressive Meyer Shank Racing car of Rosenqvist in 3^rd, with McLaughlin and Palou way out in the distance. 

Rossi eventually passed Newgarden for 7^th, but ran out of time to close up on the Chip Ganassi cars ahead of him. 

“Who is going to pay for the damage?”

The most exciting moment of the heat races was the run into the first corner in heat 1, which saw a multi-car incident involving Rinus VeeKay and Romain Grosjean, caused by Scott Dixon. 

Dixon misjudged his braking into the first corner, spinning Grosjean who was then unable to stop himself careering into the slowing pack ahead. He collected VeeKay, damaged Lundgaard’s sidepod, and was unable to make anymore progress in the heat. 

Grosjean was clearly furious at the time, asking NBC’s Kevin Lee: “who is going to pay for the damage? We are coming here with no points on the line, we do nothing wrong, and the car is completely smashed”. 

Many drivers and team owners were unhappy with their cars being wrecked, and for no gain, which begs the question as to whether Indycar’s 1 million dollar challenge was worth it, something that will be discussed in a long feature to follow. 

The NTT INDYCAR Series continues in four weeks’ time, at the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach.