WEST ALLIS, Wis. — With the 2025 NTT IndyCar Series Championship clinched, Alex Palou is certainly not slowing down.
He proved that Saturday by winning the pole at The Milwaukee Mile for Sunday’s Snap-On 250. Palou won his sixth pole of the season, knocking Chicago’s David Malukas from the top spot as the final car to make a qualification attempt on the 1.015-mile short oval.
Palou’s two-lap average speed of 162.971 mph gave the fans a thrill, topping Malukas earlier two-lap average of 162.256 mph.
Palou also leads the series with eight victories and is attempting to match the record shared by A.J. Foyt in 1964 and Al Unser in 1970 for most wins in a season with 10.
“That’s what I’m working toward, obviously,” Palou said. “I think that’s our biggest goal. It’s a goal that probably I’m not going to have the chance to try and get it again in my career, so having that chance, I need to go for it.
“I know the best way is to obviously start up front and to try and win tomorrow, so yeah, I don’t know what it would mean. I guess it would just make this year even more magical.”
Palou was the second fastest in Saturday morning’s practice, and with oval qualifications based on the points standings in inverse order, Palou would have the last chance at the top speed.
“I guess I didn’t expect it,” Palou said. “I wanted it, and I felt really good after practice, but there’s been so many times that after practice I feel like we found something or that I have confidence in, and it’s just because you had a clean lap or whatever.
“I knew my lap this morning was on a completely clear lap, so I was like, I don’t know if I have much more speed than that. We made a couple of small changes to try and get a little bit faster, and yeah, worked out.”
Palou clinched his fourth NTT IndyCar Series Championship two weeks ago at Portland so with that wrapped up, he is in a unique position of having nothing to lose and race to win over the final two races of the season at Milwaukee and Nashville.
That is the attitude he is taking into Sunday’s race.
“Yeah, for sure,” Palou said. “I think I personally took it more than all other times that I’ve been on ovals in qualifying. I knew that, as I said yesterday, for me starting P8 today or P3 didn’t really change much. But getting the pole or not getting the pole, it was everything.
“I for sure carried a bit more speed than my brain thought I could do it. So, it’s probably always there, so I might need to do it more often.”
Because he doesn’t have to worry about points on Sunday will Palou take a few more chances he might not otherwise take?
“Yeah, for sure,” Palou said. “That doesn’t mean that I’ll go crazy. Yeah, I would never do that. I wouldn’t drive crazy. But for sure, if I’m on the fence of should I try and get that pass or not, I’ll for sure go for it.”
For Malukas, his two-lap average of 162.256 mph in the No. 4 Chevrolet was also popular with the crowd, many of those from his hometown of Chicago.
It was Malukas second front row start of 2025, the fourth time he has started second in his career.
“They were two beautiful laps,” Malukas said. “I crossed that line, I wasn’t even looking at the time and I knew it was fast. Sometimes you just know it’s going to be good, and I crossed, and I was like, that was really beautiful. I really think that’s going to be the one.
“I just had to wait until the end, and I saw him (Palou) come out of 4, and I was like, ‘Oh, no.’ I was like put the ghost thing in there; I think he’s got it on this one.
“I saw the ghost.
“It’s still good. Going to be on the front row again here at Milwaukee. We have a good race car. We’ll see what we can do.”
Pato O’Ward of Arrow McLaren was third with a two-lap average of 162.078 mph in the No. 5 Chevrolet. He stars alongside Team Penske driver Scott McLaughlin, who ran a two-lap average of 161.758 mph in the No. 3 Chevrolet.
Scott Dixon of Chip Ganassi Racing qualified fifth in the No. 9 PNC Bank Honda with a two-lap average of 160.951 mph but is over his allotment of engine changes. He was one of three entries that have been assessed a nine-grid spot penalty and will start 14th.
The other two drivers with nine-position penalties are Kyffin Simpson and Louis Foster.
The 27 cars in Sunday’s race at The Milwaukee Mile return for a final practice session later on Saturday. Malukas believes it is an important opportunity to better prepare for what they believe will be a chaotic race.
“It’s going to be a tire deg race, and it’s going to be a lot of fun,” Malukas said. “From a viewing standpoint, the car when you put new tires on and you’re going out and doing some undercuts, it’s going to be fun. It’s going to be a fantastic race, and honestly, it’s one of those races that you don’t know where we’re going to be at until we get a yellow or until the race finishes, and we’re just going to go out there and try to be as fast as we can and try to pass as many people as we can.
“This afternoon is going to be kind of all the answers. It’s just all so unfortunate because I was behind Palou in practice and he was so fast on passing people. At a race earlier this year where it was just me and Palou in the front and just battling him again. It’s going to be a little bit like that again to start, and then obviously the beautiful chaos of Milwaukee is going to unfold, and we’ll see where we end up after all of that.
“It’s going to be a good race. We have some questions to get answered for this practice this afternoon, and I’m pretty sure we’ll be able to answer them.”
