The 1.7-mile track at the Detroit Grand Prix, featuring a hairpin turn, stretches of concrete, bumpy asphalt and hundreds of manhole covers, can make the best drivers look downright amateur.
Chip Ganassi’s Álex Palou, though, aced every one of those challenges for the second time in his career, leaving no doubt as to the best driver on the IndyCar circuit.
Palou won the 2026 Detroit Grand Prix over 2025 winner Kyle Kirkwood, starting the race in the pole position and leading for 71 of the race’s 100 laps. And even for most of those 29 laps he didn’t lead, there wasn’t much doubt that he would finish on top – unless you ask Palou yourself.
“It didn’t feel like we were leading that much,” Palou said after the race. “I know we were leading, but, man, it was a lot of work.”
The limitations of the cars, IndyCar rules and the Detroit street course require more than speed to determine a winner. A victory in Detroit requires smart planning, quick adjustments, good timing and flawless execution – all of which Palou showed on Sunday.
Here are the five moments from Detroit that demonstrated why no one in IndyCar is racing better than Palou.
Starting up front
It’s easier to finish in first place when you start up top.
Palou finished as the leader in Saturday’s qualifying laps, his fastest lap coming in 0.22 seconds ahead of Andretti Global’s Will Power (who briefly overtook Palou for first place in the first half of Sunday’s race). And in a street race that doesn’t foster as many passing opportunities as a road race or oval race, starting on the pole often gives drivers a huge advantage for race day.
When asked after the race what set his team apart from others, Palou was quick to answer.
“Track position, being able to be up front was key,” he said.
Merely starting up front isn’t everything, of course. But there were several decisions throughout the race that kept Palou up front and, eventually, separated him from the rest of the pack.
Racing soft
Barry Wanser, strategist for Chip Ganassi Racing, didn’t have an in-depth strategy when it came to choosing the tires for Palou’s race.
“He just didn’t want to finish on the [soft tires], so that made it easy for us,” Wanser said.
The warming weather in Detroit forced drivers into various strategies for how they would distribute their two required soft-tire stretches. Early in the race, Palou made it clear over the radio that he wanted to finish on the standard tires to give him an advantage towards the end of the race, meaning he would have to use the soft tires on his first two stretches.
“Obviously, the tires were a big factor,” Palou said. “We kind of figured that the crossover was about 15 green laps before the primaries were better.”
And when it came to timing those changes, Palou’s team performed perfectly.
Recalibrating
Power, a three-time champ when the Detroit Grand Prix was run on Belle Isle, passed Palou on Lap 17 and held that lead with impressive defensive maneuvers for 18 laps. Palou fell even further behind on Lap 31 trying to retake the lead over Power, with Team Penske’s Scott McLaughlin and Arrow McLaren’s Christian Lundgaard overtaking Palou after what Palou admits was a “mistake” on the maneuver.
But instead of trying to make up for his mistake in the moment, Palou made his most consequential decision of the day – going to the pit on Lap 35 for his first tire change of the day when most drivers were still jockeying for position.
Palou admitted he got lucky with his timing, but that’s only part of the story. Power appeared to lose momentum after pitting himself, falling too far behind the rest of the pack despite having just led for 18 laps.
Palou, meanwhile, got a head start with a clearer track as most of the drivers headed to the pit, needing three laps to go from 16th place to fourth place and then only three more to retake the lead.
From there, Palou’s win felt like a foregone conclusion.
Pushing to pass
The closest a driver came to passing Palou in the late stages of the race was Kirkwood after the final restart, where he trailed Palou by less than a second and had a small advantage in push-to-pass time.
But after the final green flag waved, Palou used his push-to-pass immediately – not necessarily to get far ahead of Kirkwood, but to force Kirkwood to use much of his push-to-pass just to keep up.
And with Kirkwood using soft tires in the final stretch, he was no match to keep up with Palou and his standard tires in the final laps.
“I think we had more pace than him because of the tires,” Palou said. “Once my tires were up to temperature on the primaries, I was able to control the pace and the grip of the car.”
Palou admitted that he might have been in trouble had there been another restart at the end of the race, especially with Kirkwood finishing with more push-to-start time than him. But fortunately for Palou, his plan paid off.
Finishing clean
Ultimately, Kirkwood and Palou went for opposite strategies – Kirkwood using the standard tires in the middle part of the race to push from sixth place to second, and Palou saving his standard tires for the end to race away from any challengers. Palou ended up finishing 3 seconds ahead of Kirkwood and more than 5 seconds ahead of third-place finisher Graham Rahal.
Rahal, who moved up to ninth in the overall standings following the podium finish, commented on the need for drivers to bounce back from “bad weekends” before adding a caveat to his statement.
“Maybe not with Álex, he’s in a league of his own,” Rahal said.
And as Palou now has a commanding 62-point lead over Kirkwood in the overall standings after having won half of this season’s eight races – with no other driver owning more than one victory – it might take a few bad weekends for Palou to fall from his top spot.
Otherwise, you might as well pencil the Spaniard in for a record-tying fourth-straight championship. A league of his own, indeed.
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You can reach Christian at cromo@freepress.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: 5 ways Álex Palou showed IndyCar dominance at the Detroit Grand Prix
Reporting by Christian Romo, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
