Alex Palou Wins IndyCar Season Opener In St. Petersburg

Alex Palou’s IndyCar title defense is off to a perfect start.

The Spaniard won the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg after starting the race from eighth.

Palou took the lead on lap 75 of the 100-lap event and found himself under fire from a charging Josef Newgarden, who won the race last year, but was disqualified six weeks later for misusing his car’s push-to-pass feature.

He tried to use it to catch Palou in the closing laps an closed the gap from 4.5 seconds on lap 95 to less than one second by lap 95, but couldn’t get by and ran low on fuel the last lap and finished third after being passed by Palou’s teammate, Scott Dixon.

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“What an amazing job by everybody,” Palou said after the race. “They gave me everything we needed this weekend to win. I told you yesterday we had a really, really fast car.”

“It’s been 138 days since [the season finale at] Nashville, and I’ve been dreaming about this every single night.”

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The IndyCar series takes two weekends off before the next race at The Thermal Club in California, which hosted a $1 million exhibition race last year that Palou won.

Full St. Petersburg Results:

1. (8) Alex Palou, Honda, 100, Running
2. (6) Scott Dixon, Honda, 100, Running
3. (10) Josef Newgarden, Chevrolet, 100, Running
4. (1) Scott McLaughlin, Chevrolet, 100, Running
5. (9) Kyle Kirkwood, Honda, 100, Running
6. (7) Marcus Ericsson, Honda, 100, Running
7. (3) Felix Rosenqvist, Honda, 100, Running
8. (5) Christian Lundgaard, Chevrolet, 100, Running
9. (12) Rinus VeeKay, Honda, 100, Running
10. (20) Alexander Rossi, Chevrolet, 100, Running
11. (23) Pato O’Ward, Chevrolet, 100, Running
12. (21) Graham Rahal, Honda, 100, Running
13. (17) David Malukas, Chevrolet, 100, Running
14. (19) Santino Ferrucci, Chevrolet, 100, Running
15. (24) Christian Rasmussen, Chevrolet, 100, Running
16. (2) Colton Herta, Honda, 100, Running
17. (22) Conor Daly, Chevrolet, 100, Running
18. (15) Kyffin Simpson, Honda, 100, Running
19. (27) Callum Ilott, Chevrolet, 100, Running
20. (18) Robert Shwartzman, Chevrolet, 100, Running
21. (26) Sting Ray Robb, Chevrolet, 99, Running
22. (14) Devlin DeFrancesco, Honda, 99, Running
23. (25) Jacob Abel, Honda, 99, Running
24. (4) Marcus Armstrong, Honda, 46, Contact
25. (11) Nolan Siegel, Chevrolet, 0, Contact
26. (13) Will Power, Chevrolet, 0, Contact
27. (16) Louis Foster, Honda, 0, Contact