Palou Flexes Oval Muscles With Strong Nashville IndyCar Win

Alex Palou celebrates in victory lane Monday at Nashville Superspeedway. (Chris Owens/Penske Entertainment photo)

By Thomas Hughes, SWN Open-Wheel Correspondent

LEBANON, Tenn. (July 20, 2026) – Racetracks requiring exclusively left turns don’t speak to the natural repertoire of Chip Ganassi Racing’s Alex Palou.

The 29-year-old Spaniard has won at oval tracks before, but just two of his 23 prior wins came on tracks requiring left turns only. His specialty comes on the road courses, where his clinical style of racing and habit of rarely putting a foot wrong serve to his advantage in a way that few other drivers can reach.

It seemed like Palou’s defining weakness remained on the ovals, until Monday.

After the Borchetta Bourbon Music City Grand Prix was delayed from a Sunday afternoon start, then shortened by 75 laps due to forecasted excessive heat, Palou took advantage of a late caution involving Ganassi teammate Scott Dixon and Ed Carpenter Racing’s Alexander Rossi to win at Nashville Superspeedway and secure his fifth victory of the NTT IndyCar Series season.

Palou bested Team Penske’s triumvirate of Josef Newgarden, David Malukas and Scott McLaughlin, leading 97 laps and extending his title lead even further with the 24th victory of his seven-year Indy car career.

The victory also marked Chip Ganassi Racing’s 150th all-time win in its American open-wheel racing tenure, which dates back to 1990.

“I knew we had the great car,” Palou said. “It’s one of those tracks that we've been struggling in the past. I know last year we were second, but we kind of got very lucky with a yellow there. Today, it helped us. … I’m just so happy that everything worked.”

Malukas paced the field for 59 laps, but the complexion of the race changed shortly after halfway. Palou slipped onto pit road just before Dixon and Rossi tangled on lap 122 to bring out the afternoon’s second caution.

With several of the frontrunners forced to pit after the yellow, Palou cycled to the race lead on lap 131 once the stops were complete. He never gave up the top spot again, despite a lap-180 incident for rookie Dennis Hauger which set up a 32-lap sprint to the finish.

The closing stint looked set to become a defensive exercise. Newgarden, Malukas and Meyer Shank Racing’s Felix Rosenqvist all bolted on the softer Firestone alternates, while Palou and strategist Barry Wanser trusted the more durable primary compound.

Following the final restart, Newgarden repeatedly edged within a few tenths of a second, but Palou never offered a clean opening. As the laps wound down and traffic entered the equation, the primary tires held their pace while the alternates began to fade, allowing Palou to gradually pull clear.

Despite running his final stints on hard tires while his challengers utilized softs, no one could catch the Spaniard, whose rubber enabled him to hold onto his advantage as his opponents’ aged.

Newgarden immediately pressured the rear wing of the No. 10 Honda, closing to within a few car lengths through the opening laps after the restart. Palou never blinked.

The Spaniard defended the preferred line, navigated through lapped traffic without surrendering momentum and, as the softer tires began to lose their edge, gradually stretched the gap from there.

“Once you get into traffic, you're fighting with the car a lot,” Palou said. “I think everybody's on the same page. That's why you see biggest differences once you get through traffic. At the beginning I couldn't really go up high. …Aat the end I was very comfortable with it. It was a pleasure to drive it.”

Palou won by .8731 seconds ahead of Newgarden for his fifth victory of the season and 13th in IndyCar’s last 29 races. Malukas, meanwhile, finished third.

“Yeah, it was an alright day, OK day,” Newgarden said. “We had a good, fast car. Chevy did a great job. We'll take second and move on. … We just didn’t have a stint there at the end.”

Malukas’ third-place finish was particularly notable, given that he suffered a crash in Saturday practice and was forced to the hospital before the race. Malukas went on an alternate strategy early on the race, eventually settling onto the lead pack and leading 59 laps of the 225-lap event.

Malukas finished 1.2198 seconds behind the pack and gained 22 spots from 25th on the grid, being the only car to finish the race on a three-stop strategy.

“This is definitely not going to be one I’m going to forget for a very long time,” Malukas said. “Just super, super happy. Obviously exhausted. But just so happy.”

Scott McLaughlin finished in fourth, grabbing his fourth top five of the season, while Rosenqvist finished fifth, his second-best finish of the season on a non-oval. Andretti Global’s Marcus Ericsson was next in sixth, finishing with his third-best finish of the year.

For the first time, Rahal Letterman Lanigan’s Mick Schumacher earned a top-10 finish, finishing in eighth place. Schumacher has toiled through a difficult rookie season; prior to Nashville, he had not finished higher than 16th.

Andretti Global’s Kyle Kirkwood, who started on the pole, crossed the finish line a disappointing 10th.

It is unquestionably the road and street courses that favor Palou, but with his third career victory on ovals — and his third in the past two seasons, joining wins in the 2025 Indianapolis 500 and at Iowa — he now appears to be rounding into a fully-formed Palou at the peak of his powers.  

Palou now leads the championship by 83 points over Malukas, who jumped Kirkwood by four markers in the updated standings. Arrow McLaren’s Christian Lundgaard and Pato O’Ward round out the top five in the championship with six rounds to go in the title hunt.

First of the final six races of the season is the OnlyBulls Grand Prix of Portland in nearly three weeks – a 110-lap event set for Saturday, Aug. 9 at 4 p.m. ET. The race will air live on FOX, the IndyCar Radio Network and SiriusXM IndyCar Nation, channel 218.

Team Penske has won four of the last six IndyCar races at the track, though Will Power – the two-time defending event winner and a three-time victor at Portland overall – Isn’t with the team anymore, having moved to Andretti Global.

Palou won at Portland in both 2021 and 2023 and appears to be in prime position to do so again. 

“We were very good last year on road courses,” Palou said. “Now suddenly we're good on street courses out of nowhere. That's the kind of stuff you cannot really predict much.”