The race at Laguna Seca this year was good, if not overly exciting. With strategic twists proving the highlight around the corkscrew, as Alex Palou delivered one of his dominant drives that we’ve become used to seeing over the past few years. He had to work hard to get this win, but superior pace combined with superior strategy led to a superior performance.

After achieving pole on Saturday, I was confident that Palou was going to take an easy win. The start placed some doubt into this inevitability, as Kyle Kirkwood made a fantastic move on the outside of the first couple of corners to take the lead. Whilst this made Palou’s job harder, it was quite clear during the first stint that Palou had better pace than Kirkwood. He was able to keep within a second of Kirkwood during the entire stint, in a track notoriously hard to follow at due to its twists and turns. It appeared that Palou would be able to pull off an overcut when Kirkwood pit to change his degrading tyres, but Alexander Rossi added an extra complication, by undercutting Kirkwood. Palou was forced to stop the next lap to prevent any further undercuts, but in doing so was passed by Kyle Kirkwood and Colton Herta on warmer tyres, placing him fourth at the beginning of the second stint. Without a strategic offset, it looked at this point like Palou’s chances of winning were fading. But a strategic offset was what he received.

During the the second stint a caution came out when Luca Ghiotto crashed. The leading trio of Alexander Rossi, Colton Hera and Kyle Kirkwood decided to pit, with Alex Palou electing to stay out. Herta jumped Rossi in the pits and was seen at this point by the commentary team as the favorite to win, as he would only need to make one more pit stop to Palou’s two. This confidence in Herta’s strategy was reinforced when Nolan Seigel bought out a second caution in his McLaren, no doubt filling Zak Brown with confidence that he’d made the right decision in firing Theo Pourchaire. For Palou to win the race, he would have to show vastly superior pace to the rest of the field, which the commentators did not expect to happen. However, the commentators forgot one thing, they were discussing Alex Palou.

When Palou made his second stop, he came out in third, behind Rossi and Herta. It became clear from this point that he’d taken the preferred strategy, as the drivers ahead of him were in a heavy state of fuel saving. Palou was able to dispatch with Rossi with relative ease and as the commentators were talking about how he did not have to instantly overtake Colton Herta to win, he went and overtook Herta regardless. From this point onwards, the only thing that kept the others in the game were the large number of cautions leaving Palou to manage multiple restarts. However, in Palou’s typical style, he did so with ease. The only major effect that the cautions had was preventing Romain Grosjean’s charge to the podium. Grosjean had followed Palou’s strategy and was looking set to take the first podium for his team. That this shock result was on the table showed the benefit of the three-stopper, it allowed drivers to push forwards rather than forcing them to look in their mirrors.

So, it was a fun, if not thrilling race at Laguna Seca. Palou put the pride themed livery into a deserved win and reminded everyone why he is already a two-time IndyCar champion. With every race, it’s looking more and more like Palou’s championship to lose.