In Driver’s Eye with James Hinchcliffe, the six-time INDYCAR winner will bring you inside the mind of a racer while breaking down the nuts and bolts of the sport for fans.
A lot of people in INDYCAR are walking around saying, “I told you so.”
Alex Palou and Chip Ganassi Racing returned to Barber Motorsports Park last weekend as the heavy favorites. And they duly delivered, putting on an absolute clinic and earning all available points — for starting on the pole, for leading a lap, for leading the most laps and, of course, for winning.
But let’s be honest: We’ve talked a lot about Palou, his team and their combined greatness. So, instead, I want to examine his closest competitor last weekend in Christian Lundgaard and the pain of seeing an opportunity to win… evaporate.
At Barber, the Arrow McLaren driver was putting up a strong fight against reigning champ Palou for three quarters of the race — until a pivotal 17.8-second final pit stop eliminated his chance to even fight for the win.
Let’s break it down.
Christian Lundgaard during the 2026 Children’s of Alabama Indy Grand Prix at Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham, Alabama. (Photo by David J. Griffin/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Lundgaard closed the gap behind Palou and was attempting a strategic move called the overcut.
The overcut is when you pit a lap or two later than your competitor. You stay out and use the speed and grip from your hot tires to run faster lap times than the other guy, who pitted before you and returns to the track on cold tires before they eventually get up to temperature and peak grip.
With the overcut, Lundgaard opened the gap enough that, with a flawless pit stop, he would have come out neck and neck with Palou, and the race for the win would have been on. But a flawless pit stop it was not…
There was a bobble in the pits that cost Lundgaard and his Arrow McLaren team something in the neighborhood of 10 seconds — all but eliminating themselves from contention and handing Palou enough breathing room to cruise to an “easy” win. (No win in INDYCAR is truly easy, but you know what I mean!) Lundgaard’s No. 7 team finished comfortably in second.
The issue was with Lundgaard’s right-rear tire, which, for one reason or another, was not secured to the car when it dropped off the air jacks. Lundgaard then started to pull away, but he had to stop. The car went back in the air, the tire was secured and then he was finally able to rejoin.
It’s an awful feeling for a driver in the cockpit during a botched pit stop. You’re helpless, stationary. There’s nothing you can do.
A strong pit stop usually lasts about seven or eight seconds, and even that feels like an eternity from behind the wheel.
When something goes wrong and you’re stuck stationary for longer than the usual time, it’s complete agony. When an unexpectedly long pit stop happens while you’re fighting for the win, it is almost unbearable.
Seconds feel like hours. And you know all the hard work you and the team have done — not just on race day but also over the weekend, through practice and qualifying, in the weeks and months leading up to the season back at the shop, all of it — was for what feels like nothing.
[INDYCAR POWER RANKINGS: Alex Palou Is Back on Top]
There are 100 issues that may go unsuitable throughout a pit cease, and groups report each cease, in observe and races, and pour over video to see what went unsuitable and the way they’ll do higher.
Generally, a crew member makes a mistake. Generally, the driving force overshoots their marks and that slows everybody down. Generally, tools fails. The hot button is at all times to organize to the nth diploma after which execute flawlessly on the day.
That’s not what the No. 7 Arrow McLaren workforce managed. However that’s precisely what Palou’s No. 10 workforce did.
Palou has turn out to be such a pressure in INDYCAR which you could nearly see how a lot strain everyone seems to be beneath to beat him. On this case, as in lots of others during the last three years, the No. 10 workforce beat the sector as a lot as the sector beat themselves.
Everybody else has to cease making Palou’s job simpler for him. To take down a workforce operating in addition to Palou and his CGR crew are, you need to be excellent.
SOUND LIKE AN INDYCAR EXPERT
Let’s discuss tires.
The Barber weekend was an fascinating one when it comes to groups’ methods for the Firestone tires. Firestone brings two kinds of tires to all of the street and road programs: the hards and the softs.
There are the first tires — nicknamed the exhausting ones — which have black sidewalls. Usually, they are a tougher compound, which implies they might be slower over a single lap, however they will not put on as a lot by way of a full tank of gas, or stint.
(Picture by Larry Placido/Icon Sportswire through Getty Pictures)
The alternate tire, or the softs, are denoted by the pink sidewalls and are the alternative; extra grip and quicker lap time over a lap, however they have a tendency to fall off quicker and are sometimes slower by the tip of a cycle.
You need to run one set of every at tracks like Barber and different street programs, so there’s some fascinating technique at play.
The trick in INDYCAR racing is figuring out which tires would be the most well-liked ones, and at Barber, many groups acquired it unsuitable. They got here into the weekend pondering it might be a “smooth” race, that means the alternate could be most well-liked.
However after the morning warm-up on Sunday, it grew to become clear that it wasn’t that easy!
Some groups hadn’t saved sufficient hards — you solely get 5 units of every by way of observe, qualifying and race day itself at such a observe — to run the race the way in which they needed.
It was an fascinating scenario, proving that even when you could have a number of the smartest folks on the planet on the case, the race observe can nonetheless throw you a curveball!
1 FOR THE ROAD
As we put a bow on Barber, I wish to throw an honorable point out shout-out to Graham Rahal.
In case you’ve been watching FOX Sports activities and INDYCAR’s new digital docuseries, “All In” — go test it out in case you haven’t already! — then you understand what Rahal uses as his predominant motivation at this late stage in his profession: his children.
He desires his children to be pleased with him and to see him up on the rostrum, amassing trophies and spraying champagne. Effectively, it was a well-timed return to the podium for the Ohio native, who bagged his first top-3 end since 2023.
It was a gritty, hard-fought battle to the tip, and little question one thing that his household, who sadly needed to watch from house, will likely be tremendous pleased with.
