Barber Motorsports Park (Leeds, Ala.) — If stats don’t lie, Alex Palou won the INDYCAR race Sunday by 13.2775 seconds over Christian Lundgaard.In this case, Palou says stats lie. He didn’t deliver the butt-whipping that leading 79 of 90 laps and that margin of victory would indicate. Lundgaard had a slow final pit stop and with no cautions, couldn’t make up the time. Alex Palou (center), Christian Lundgaard (L) in second place and Graham Rahal (R) were the podium finishers at Barber. [BARBER HIGHLIGHTS: Alex Palou Coasts to Repeat in Alabama]”If you look at the result and you don’t follow the race, the timing, maybe then you look like you were so much faster than everybody else,” the driver of the Chip Ganassi No. 10 car said in his postrace news conference. “That was not the truth.”We had an amazing car. We had an amazing race. But it was not easy. It was tough.”Here are my takeaways:1. Palou Still Has ItEven though he’s not the season-long points leader — Kyle Kirkwood, driver of the No. 27 car for Andretti Global, has a two-point lead on Palou — the three-time defending series champion Palou is showing similar strength to last year. Maybe he’s not that dominant, but he still has shown that when other drivers or teams make mistakes, he will make them pay. With his second win of the season, is Alex Palou the championship favorite once again? Lundgaard might have caught him and made a race of it, but Palou, even though he had to use one more set of the primary tires (the harder of the two compounds, which means they are slower but last longer) than originally planned, never had a hiccup on the 2.3-mile course.”Alex is the same Alex as last year,” Lundgaard said in his postrace news conference. “I just do think there are cars and drivers that are showing up more this year than last year.”2. Lundgaard Frustration JustifiedChristian Lundgaard, driver of No. 7 for Arrow McLaren, lost about 10 seconds on a pit stop when the team had trouble tightening the right rear wheel. He had pitted five laps later than Palou and felt with the fresher tires and the potential to actually come out of the pits ahead of Palou, he would have had a chance to win the race.Instead, for the second consecutive year, Lundgaard finished second to Palou at Barber. Christian Lundgaard had to settle for second place after a costly pit miscue. [ALL ABOUT BARBER: Track the Vision of Dairy Farmer who Loved Motorsports]”With the pace and how the race panned out today,…
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2026-03-29 22:39:19
