Curt Cavin -INDYCAR Staff Writer
The unofficial second half of the 2025 NTT INDYCAR SERIES season begins this weekend.
Chip Ganassi Racing’s Alex Palou might have a strong hold on the series championship, but there is still much to be decided in the remaining 11 races.
SEE: Event Details
Beginning with Sunday’s Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix presented by Lear, the schedule features a pair of street course races, four events on permanent road courses and five races on oval tracks. As only two drivers have won races this season – Palou and Andretti Global’s Kyle Kirkwood – there are a host of drivers and their teams that seek to reach victory lane in 2025.
All 11 races will air live on FOX, the network that delivered the series’ largest broadcast rating of the Indianapolis 500 presented by Gainbridge since 2008. More than 7 million people tuned in to watch Indy, making it the largest motorsports audience of the year.
There’s still so much action to unfold. Here are five things to watch:
Palou Chasing History
We’re watching a historic season through the eyes of Palou, who has won five of the first six races this year highlighted by his first Indy victory. Palou also scored five wins in his 2023 championship season. Prior to that, the last driver to win at least five races in a season was Simon Pagenaud in 2016. The last driver to win six in a campaign was Will Power in 2011.
Palou seems to reach another exclusive club with each achievement. The last driver to win seven races in a season was Sebastien Bourdais in 2006. Only eight times in history has a driver won eight or more races in a season, the record being 10 shared by A.J. Foyt (1964) and Al Unser (1970).
This Detroit street circuit is one of the five venues remaining on this year’s calendar where Palou has won races in the past. He captured the Motor City’s inaugural downtown event in 2023. He has won twice each at Road America, WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca and Portland International Raceway. In 2023, he won at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course.
From Balance to Dominance
Palou’s 112-point lead over his nearest challenger gives him more than a two-race advantage heading into the summer stretch. The battle behind him is interesting.
Arrow McLaren teammates Pato O’Ward (194 points) and Christian Lundgaard (181) are in a tight race for second place, with Felix Rosenqvist of Meyer Shank Racing w/Curb-Agajanian third at 165. All of them are seeking their first race wins of the season.
Palou’s dominance this year is in stark contrast to how last season played out. A year ago, seven drivers won two or more races, with O’Ward and Team Penske’s Power and Scott McLaughlin winning three races each. Scott Dixon of Chip Ganassi Racing, Josef Newgarden of Team Penske and Colton Herta of Andretti Global w/Curb-Agajanian joined Palou as double race winners. All but Palou are seeking their first win of 2025.
While Palou only led 14 laps at Indy, he still has more laps led this season (163) than drivers in positions second through sixth in the standings combined (157).
Two Circuits, Seven Winners
Detroit has staged two NTT INDYCAR SERIES races on this nine-turn, 1.645-mile street circuit. Palou won the first, Dixon the second. That makes Chip Ganassi Racing 2-for-2.
Four other drivers have occupied the other four positions on the podium. Andretti Global’s Marcus Ericsson and Chip Ganassi Racing’s Marcus Armstrong were second and third last year, with Power and Rosenqvist in those places in 2023.
Dixon has been the most successful driver in Detroit history, winning four times. His first win came on the Belle Isle circuit in 2012. He also won in 2018 and 2019.
Seven drivers in this 27-car field have won in Detroit. Power has won three times (2014, 2018 and 2022), Graham Rahal (both ends of the 2017 doubleheader), and Newgarden (2019), Ericsson (2021), O’Ward (2021) and Palou (2023) once each.
Dixon, Ericsson, Cautions in 2024
It seems like forever ago that the series was racing in Detroit. Dixon’s victory pushed him to the championship lead by 18 points over Palou, who finished 16th in one of his worst results of the season. Palou had been collected by Newgarden’s contact with Kirkwood in the very tight Turn 3, a hairpin that helped fuel four of the event-record eight caution flags and several other dustups.
Herta won the pole and led the first 33 (of 100) laps before light rain altered the race complexion. As teams went back and forth with wet and dry Firestone Firehawk tire compounds, Herta got dropped to mid-pack. His haste to return to a contending position resulted in him overshooting Turn 5 in an inside move that was optimistic at best.
Dixon led the final 35 laps in another demonstration of his ability to mix fuel conservation with pace, but he might have had trouble holding off Ericsson had the race gone a bit longer as Ericsson, who considers Detroit his best market, was on the charge. Ericsson has a string of top-nine finishes in the past five Detroit races, with two different teams using two different circuits.
Busy Month Comes to End
The busiest month of the NTT INDYCAR SERIES season comes to a close this weekend with the final two days of May. This will be the fourth race of the month with “500” qualifying added in. Cars will have been on track 16 of the 31 days. There are only six such days in June, including Sunday’s race.
This weekend’s first practice is 3 p.m. ET Friday, with FS2, the FOX Sports app and the INDYCAR Radio Network the outlets for consumption. FS1 will have the Saturday action, which includes the second practice at 9 a.m. and qualifying for the NTT P1 Award at noon.
Sunday, the pre-race practice will be at 9:30 a.m. on FS1 with the 100-lap race at 12:30 p.m. on FOX.
