IndyCar 2026 Round 4 Recap

After a pair of street courses and an oval, IndyCar has made its way to the first permanent road course of the season at Barber Motorsports Park. There was a fair bit of excitement over the weekend, so let's look at some of the storylines from the race.

Alex Palou Is Inevitable

At the start of the weekend, the drivers and their teams thought Barber would be a "red race", with the softer "alternate" tires being the preferred compound. Through qualifying and warmup, however, questions began to emerge regarding whether the harder black-sidewalled "primary" tires were actually better. While some teams stuck with the reds, most teams shifted strategies to use the primary tires.

In particular, Alex Palou was forced to run used black tires for his final two stints. He lost a significant amount of time to Christian Lundgaard in the penultimate stint, only catching a break due to a 17-second pit stop from Lundgaard's team. Lundgaard still managed to bring home a 2nd-place finish, but he easily could have taken a win if that pit stop had gone as planned.

Palou indisputably has a ton of talent, but sometimes you need a little luck as well, and he got that today. It's his second consecutive Barber win, and it helps close the points gap from his DNF in Phoenix.

The Ride Never Ends

On Friday, Scott McLaughlin topped the timing charts in practice 1. On Saturday, he dropped a wheel into the grass on the run down to turn 1, spinning and punching through the catch fence on corner exit. As dramatic as the crash was, going through the fence was probably the best-case scenario, leaving the car mostly intact, although Penske did decide to put McLaughlin in a backup car. He qualified it in 14th, although he dropped to 16th in the race.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the resilience of Team Penske is impressive, but the fact that they keep putting themselves into these situations is concerning. McLaughlin in particular seems very susceptible to this, with the most dramatic example being the Fast 12 warmup session for last year's Indy 500. It's something the team is going to need to figure out how to clean up.

If He Didn't Have Bad Luck...

Will Power's qualifying came to an early end when he experienced a rear brake failure in turn 5, putting him hard into the tire wall. He was ultimately able to claw back a 12th-place finish.

While you could call it a freak accident, Andretti has a long history of dysfunction, and Power has been fighting brake issues all season long. Power said at the start of the season that he thought Andretti had the pieces it needed to be a championship contender, but after four races seeing it from the inside, I wonder if he's rethinking that opinion.

Panic Time for Dixon Fans?

Scott Dixon hasn't started in the top 12 at all this season, and that streak continued this weekend with a 13th-place starting position. After the first stint, he had driven his way inside the top 10, and he brought home a 7th-place finish. Still, the lack of qualifying pace and up-front running is a bit of a concern.

Dixon has a talent for staying in the championship hunt even when facing adversity, and he hasn't really had any bad results other than the loose wheel in St. Pete. It's still early in the season, but as a Dixon fan, I can't help but feel a little worried.

Changes for Schumacher

Three races into the season, Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing has made a personnel change on the pit box for Mich Schumacher. Mike Pawlowski is moving to an internal role, with Eddie Jones taking over as Schumacher's race engineer. Only one race into their relationship, it's too early to read anything into this, so I'll refrain from editorializing and give you the objective facts.

In practice 1, he was dead last on the timing charts in the first two segments and second-last in the third, putting him 23rd in the combined standings. In practice 2, after jumping to the top of the standings early, he ultimately ended up in 19th overall. He qualified 20th on the field, converting it into a 24th-place finishing position.

Compared to his teammates, Louis Foster struggled all weekend in practice and qualifying, finishing 25th and last. Graham Rahal, meanwhile, managed a 3rd-place starting spot, running well all race on Sunday for a hard-won podium.

Make all of that what you will.

Lapped Menaces

The race was nearly decided by issues with lapped traffic, with both Schumacher and Foster fighting Palou to stay on the lead lap at the start of the final stint. I appreciate that lapped cars still have something to fight for in the event that a full-course yellow comes out, but at some point maintaining the integrity of the fight for the lead has to outweigh being fair to the cars fighting for literally last. I don't think lapped cars should just pull out of the way for the leaders like they do in F1, but they certainly shouldn't be fighting or defending against the lead-lap cars, especially during the final stint of the race.

Conclusion

With no yellows and not a whole lot of on-track action, strategy and execution were the main focus of this race. Palou's win puts him two points behind Kyle Kirkwood for the championship lead. It's only four races in, so we'll see if Palou continues to flex his dominance or if someone else breaks through as a championship contender.