Takeaways From St. Pete - IndyCar 2026 Round 1 Recap

The first weekend of the IndyCar season has come to a close. There have been some interesting moves in the off-season and several teams making major financial investments, and we finally have a chance to see how all of those have paid off. So, what exactly have we learned?

Alex Palou is inevitable

A big theme from the media leading up to the St. Pete GP was the question of, "How do you stop Alex Palou?"

Apparently the answer is, "You don't."

After the first round of pit stops, once his team got him into the lead, he didn't look back. The only things that could have potentially stopped him were the mandatory stint on the harder black-sidewalled tires at the end of the race while his rivals were all on reds and lapped traffic slowing him down. Neither ended up being a factor, and he scored the largest margin of victory in St. Pete history. If this is a sign of how this season is going to go for Alex Palou, the rest of the field has a lot of work to do.

New tire strategy

New regulations were added in the off-season requiring two stints on the softer red tires, rather than just one as it has been in seasons past. Most teams thought this was going to be a red race anyway, so it's hard to tell just what kind of impact this regulation is going to have. One thing that is clear is that the reds are still worth a couple of tenths of a second over the blacks, despite the red compound being hardened slightly in the off-season. However, it wasn't easy to tell exactly where the crossover point is between the compounds, so I guess we'll have to wait and see on that front.

Penske's mixed weekend

Last year was not great for Team Penske, with 15 DNFs recorded across the three cars. Their star driver, Will Power, was allowed to walk at the end of the season, with his ride going to David Malukas, who has big shoes to fill this season.

Penske's theme for the weekend was set in practice 1, with Scott McLaughlin topping the charts and Josef Newgarden needing to be pulled out of the gravel trap. Qualifying was more of the same, with McLaughlin on pole, Malukas making it into the Fast 6, and Newgarden starting 23rd.

Ultimately, the weekend was mostly salvaged across all three cars, with McLaughlin coming home 2nd and Newgarden rallying all the way up to 7th. Malukas, who went a lap down early in the race due to a brake lockup that ultimately resulted in a tire failure, still managed to secure a 13th-place finish. Overall, it seems Penske's woes could finally be over. I just hope we don't end up with a third major cheating scandal in as many seasons.

Andretti is Andretti

Andretti Global had a chance at a second-place finish when Marcus Ericsson was able to leapfrog McLaughlin for what ultimately became second place. However, on the final pit stop, they kept him out on track for too long in an ill-handling car, costing him that track position and ultimately relegating him to 6th. Likewise, they had another chance with Kyle Kirkwood, but this time messed up the fuel strategy by calling him in too early. He wasn't able to save enough fuel while maintaining the pace and dropped to fourth. These aren't bad results, but they certainly could have been better, and I have a hard time giving Andretti the benefit of the doubt with how much of a disaster their team operations have been for over a decade. Hopefully they clean things up and can keep bringing home results.

As for Will Power, he was struggling with the brakes all weekend, and ended up with a DNF after a hard crash that damaged the suspension. They did get the car repaired but were only able to get him one additional spot, resulting in a 22nd place finish. Clearly Power isn't comfortable with the car, so we'll have to see how they can improve it for him as the season continues.

DCR's surprise

There was a lot of talk about the massive financial investments various teams had made over the off-season. Then Dale Coyne Racing came out and out-qualified all of them.

Both rookie Dennis Hauger and veteran Romain Grosjean made it into the Fast 6 in qualifying. While the pit strategies did push them back a bit, they still finished a respectable 10th and 8th, respectively.

Hauger is effectively still on the Andretti development ladder, so a top 10 on debut is definitely a good showing for him. I suspect this puts some pressure on Ericsson, who I think is the most likely to be ousted if Andretti wants to bring Hauger into the team properly. We'll have to see if he can maintain this pace while running for a C-tier team. Grosjean also had some good runs for DCR in his rookie year, so we'll see if he can finally get that elusive first win.

The Siegel experiment

McLaren managed to get a podium with Christian Lundgaard, with Pato O'Ward finishing 5th behind him. Their teammate, Nolan Siegel, finished 20th, 1 lap down.

Siegel showed some potential when he was first called up, but he's been completely underwhelming ever since, despite being continually hyped up by team principal Tony Kanaan. However, this season, Kanaan had publicly put Siegel on notice, and it doesn't look like Siegel has the talent to meet the expectations. The Siegel experiment ran its course a long time ago, and it's time for McLaren, Zak Brown, and Kanaan to finally take action.

The Unknowns

There are a few storylines we didn't get to see to the finish in this race. Mick Schumacher ended up involved in an early crash on the first lap. He wasn't particularly impressive in practice or qualifying, but it still would have been nice to see how he did in the actual race.

Scott Dixon was recovering very well in typical Scott Dixon fashion after a lackluster qualifying, but a loose wheel ended his day early, so we didn't get to see how his day would have progressed. He did have an uncharacteristic crash in practice 1, so we'll have to see how the rest of his season goes after that rough start.

Lastly, Prema Racing was entirely absent from the first race of the season. We know they've been looking for buyers for the team, so it's still not clear if we're going to see them on track at all this season. Not that I had high expectations for them, but missing one round already puts them on the back foot, so we'll see if they show up at Phoenix or if they're completely gone from the series.

Conclusion

A single race isn't a perfect indicator of the season, and there's still a lot of time for things to change and drivers to improve. Still, this is our first real indicator of what to expect. It remains to be seen if anyone can stop Alex Palou, but I'm certainly not going to be betting against him based on what I've seen.