Alex Palou’s aim for tomorrow’s inaugural NTT IndyCar Series race on the new Detroit downtown street circuit is to control his rivals from the front. Whether that’s the right strategy, he says, is an open question.
The Spaniard put the No. 10 Chip Ganassi Racing Honda on pole for tomorrow’s race, which is the first on the new layout after the event moved from its previous home on Belle Isle. The short, tight and bumpy track has prompted raised eyebrows from some drivers – reinforced by an incident-laden Indy NXT race – but Palou said he hopes to take advantage of whatever flexibility is granted to him through running up front, and hopes it pays off.
“It’s going to be tough,” Palou said. “But I think the idea is to try to stay up front. Maybe there’s a faster strategy to (pit) 10 laps before, try to run fast. (But) if you drop to 10th, there’s a caution, you’re going to stay there. That happened to us the first year in Nashville.
“At the same time, we don’t know what the tire deg is. It’s an unknown for everybody, but at least we start (in front), and we have a bit more margin to try and decide. It’s fun, honestly. It’s fun because nobody knows. The engineers have to think about all the different outcomes and different strategies. We don’t know if there’s going to be 20 laps of yellow, or maybe there’s none, like Detroit last year.
[lawrence-auto-related count=3 category=1408]
“I think it’s going to be a bit better for us (than the Indy NXT field) just because we have two tire compounds. We have pit stops. We have more tire deg and a lot more laps. Hopefully our race is a bit more action on track. That’s it.
“We’ll have to see how the tires hold on, or not. We saw something during practice, but as we keep on having traffic, we don’t have, like, 10 continuous laps. We’ll see tomorrow on the warmup if we can get some tire deg sense and see how the race going to be.”
Palou’s first job on Sunday will be to stay ahead of Team Penske’s Scott McLaughlin, who will line up alongside him on the front row. “It’s a long straight, so they’re going to get a big tow from me,” he said. But McLaughlin says the keys to success will be tire preservation and patience.
“It’s going to be all that tire life; tire life is going to be key,” he said. “One thing that’s good about this track, it’s a lot of stop-start corners. If you get better runs than others, use the push to pass, I think it’s going to race similar to Nashville.
“Everyone says we crash a lot in Nashville. I think it’s going to race very well. It’s just going to be up to us, the etiquette of the drivers, to figure it out along the way. Looking at it, there’s going to be a lot of passes; opportunities. Hopefully, I only have to make one.”