Random Thoughts on Barber
Barber Motorsports Park is quickly becoming the playground for Alex Palou. In the past two visits by the NTT IndyCar Series to the 2.3-mile natural terrain road course, Palou has barely broken a sweat as he drove off and left the field to battle for second place. Last year, Palou won by sixteen seconds. Yesterday, he won by more than thirteen seconds. His domination became so tiresome, his assumed win was such a foregone conclusion that the DOX TV booth turned their attention entirely to the podium battle between Christian Lundgaard, Graham Rahal and David Malukas; who finished second, third and fourth respectively.
Palou is now only two points out of the lead in the championship standings; just behind Kyle Kirkwood, who finished fifth.
I would like to say this was an exciting race, but when a driver leads 79 out of 90 laps from the pole and wins by 13 seconds – that doesn’t produce many edge-of-your-seat moments. Sure there were some exciting moves by various drivers, but Palou basically leading wire to wire except for pit stop shuffles and no caution periods – will make this year’s race at Barber mesh with last year’s as races to forget.
It’s a shame because several drivers had some really good drives, but no yellows and domination up front is not ideal, especially going up against the Elite Eight. Of course, my Tennessee Vols did their best to make everyone change their channels as they laid an egg in the Elite Eight for the third straight year. Not many feel sorry for Vols fans, as few teams make it that far, that consistently. Anyway, I digress…
In all honesty, I watched the race live for the first forty laps before switching over to the game. I saw the last fifty laps a couple of hours delayed. It ended up being a fairly uninspiring day of watching sports in our household.
Based on the severity of the crashes we saw on Saturday, I was afraid we might be in for a crashfest on Sunday. I’m glad that didn’t happen, but we needed more than tire strategy to make Sunday’s race interesting.
Speaking of the two Saturday crashes, they were some of the more frightening crashes I’ve seen in a while. We viewers happened to be riding live with Will Power, when his rear brakes failed as he entered the braking zone for Turn Five. Watch live as he headed straight for the barrier head-on was unnerving, to say the least.
But that crash paled in comparison to his former Penske teammate, Scott McLaughlin, earlier in the Saturday morning practice. McLaughlin dipped a right wheel as he was setting up for Turn One. The car rotated slowly, then backed into the tire-barrier at speed. Seeing half of the car, including the roll hoop on the other side of the cables, made me fear the worst. Fortunately, both drivers walked away from their severe mishaps.
On the bright side, the event looked really good on television. Aside from one small set of bleachers on the backstretch, there are no seats at Barber. Fans bring camping chairs, blankets and coolers and make a day out of it. It’s hard to get a read on how good the crowd is, but from what I know about the grounds there over all the years I’ve been to Barber – I’d say they had a very good crowd there.
I fear that the strong television ratings we’ve enjoyed for the first three events may not hold for Barber, with basketball and baseball on other channels. Even if it dips below a million viewers for the first time this season, the series has still enjoyed a very strong start to the season. I hope that momentum doesn’t suffer too much with only one race in April (Long Beach) and it is three weeks from yesterday.
Congratulations to Alex Palou for turning in another stellar performance. It’s not his fault that he is so good. He’s just doing his job. It’s up to everyone else to catch him. He’s still not even leading the points, but it sure feels like he’s running away with another championship. Time will tell.
TV Coverage: Is it me or was FOX off of their game a little bit this weekend? I didn’t feel any real letdown from the on-air talent, although I could’ve gone without Will Buxton slobbering all over Graham Rahal wish to be on the podium for his kids. That was a nice story, but Buxton took it to the extreme. In all candor, I was pulling for Graham to keep the podium finish – but I think we all could’ve survived the broadcast without Buxton’s gushing.
Getting back to FOX’s off weekend – it seemed like the production crew was not in sync. There were wrong graphics that Hinchcliffe had to explain away to not confuse viewers. There were incorrect radio dialogues played for viewers and they showed camera shots that had nothing to do with the points being made in the booth.
On the bright side, they had several mentions and tributes throughout all of the weekend broadcasts regarding the late George Barber.
It’s good that the booth and the pit reporters had a solid weekend, because those behind the scenes at FOX were a little off their game.
Good & Bad Times at Rahal: I’m not sure any team made as many offseason moves as Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing (RLLR) did. Adding the midseason hiring of Jay Frye as team president last year, they have made quite the haul adding Gavin Ward, Ryan Briscoe, Brian Barnhart and Kyle Sagan to various positions to help bolster results.
Graham Rahal has been the beneficiary of these moves. In four races, Rahal has two Top-Ten finishes, with one being a podium. I am happy about that, as I’ve always thought Graham Rahal was a much better driver than his results have shown. Good for him, and I hope his positive season continues.
But what about his teammates? I don’t think much is expected this year from Mick Schumacher. He has had a few good moments already, but it’s going to take him a while to acclimate to IndyCar. So far, he has performed slightly better than I expected (which wasn’t a lot).
Louis Foster is the one I think that needs to get it in gear. After winning eight Indy NXT races in 2024, on his way to winning the championship – many fell in love with the Brit. The same ones that fell in love with him waxed on about what a stellar rookie season he had in 2025, his first year with RLLR. Like most rookies he had a few good moments, but he had some rookie mistakes that left many scratching their heads.
Last year, Foster had two eleventh-place finished – the Indy GP and Road America. Those were the two highlights. Beyond that, he was doing good to finish fourteenth – and there were seven out of the seventeen races, that Foster finished twentieth or worse. This year, Foster has finished fourteenth, twenty-third, thirteenth and twenty-fifth.
From an outside standpoint, I think Louis Foster might want to focus on improving his craft, rather than experimenting with his odd facial hair designs. He is also starting to come off as someone not as serious about his racing as he is coming up with zingers and one-liners. Louis Foster is twenty-two years old, and is obviously still maturing. But he might take a cur from other drivers close to his age that seem more committed to being better race car drivers than unique personalities.
Is Penske Back? Two races into the 2026 season many were boasting that Team Penske was back, and their 2025 foray into the abyss was simply an aberration. Now that we are four races into the eighteen-race schedule for 2026, the fortunes at Team Penske indicate they are headed more toward mediocrity (for them) than superiority. Josef Newgarden overcame a poor qualifying effort at St. Petersburg to finish seventh. The next week, he won at Phoenix and all was right with the world. But Newgarden finished fifteenth at Arlington and had a very quiet tenth place finish at Barber to put him fifth in the championship standings. At Foyt, Coyne or Juncos, they would be breaking out the champagne. At Team Penske, that’s cause for concern.
David Malukas is having a decent transition to Team Penske, but he needs to get that elusive first win. Scott McLaughlin is developing a nasty habit of setting top speed early in the weekend, then destroying his car on Saturday – ultimately killing his weekend.
The team has almost three weeks to get things back to where they were after two races, and set the proper tone heading into the Month of May.
Pit Problems: I’m old school. I remember when football teams spent two months pounding into each other, until they mastered the fundamentals before they start of the season. Then the Players Association got involved and cut back practice time to almost nothing. Consequently, the first half of the season is spent watching missed tackles, dropped passes and missed assignments. For someone old like me, it’s hard to watch the basic fundamentals of the game falling by the wayside.
It seems the same thing is happening with IndyCar teams. There is no Players Association to butt in, but it seems like the basic fundamentals of a pit stop are being ignored and/or taken for granted. In only four races, how many dropped center nuts have we seen this season? There is so much pressure to shave one-tenth of a second off of the pit time; teams seem to be focused more on doing a stop quickly, than doing it correctly.
I get so frustrated watching m Tennessee Vols in football. They seem more intent on making the big hit that will get them on SportsCenter than they are on simply making the tackle. If they lunge at the receiver and connect, they will get their 15 seconds of fame that night. If they miss, the receiver runs untouched for a touchdown.
Racing is a team sport, but it is harder for the public to see that. If a pit stop is run with perfection, it is expected and no one is singled out. But if Lundgaard’s right-rear tire changer fumbles the nut – it is disastrous and the crew member is singled out. That mistake prevented Lundgaard from mounting a challenge for Palou. I’m not saying Lundgaard would’ve won, but he had a chance until that mistake. Now we’ll never know.
Mistakes happen. They always have and they always will. But it seems we are seeing way more bungled pit stops this season that in year’s past. The old school in me can’t help but wonder if fundamentals are being ignored.
Drive of the Day: I considered naming Will Power as the recipient of this award. After all, he had driven from the back of the field to be up near the Top-Five consistently. He ended up with a twelfth-place finish after starting twenty-third. But then it occurred to me that Power’s crash is what put him back there. A rear brake failure wasn’t his fault, but as I said above – this is a team sport. Maybe a team member did something wrong while assembling the car, or maybe it was a weak component that came from te manufacturer that way. Regardless, an Andretti car is expected to battle for the Top-Ten in the hands of a driver like Will Power. In short, Power really did nothing on Sunday he wasn’t expected to do.
My pick for this highly coveted award goes to Christian Lundgaard. Not only did he overcome a lackluster qualifying effort that saw him start tenth, he put himself in position to contend for the win…that is, until the dreaded pit stop that set him back. Still, he fought his way up to second. That put him on the podium and gave him the Oilpressure.com Drive of the Day award.
All in All: Since the NTT IndyCar Series began racing at Barber Motorsports Park, there have been some extremely exciting races and there have been some duds. Most of the duds came early in those years. I would rate this race as somewhere in-between. It certainly wasn’t a dud, but some may have found it easy to nod off while watching it. It was not the most scintillating of races, but I would rather watch a dull race than no race at all. It happens. But t was still a pretty day at a beautiful race track, where shiny race cars zoomed by spectators. By the way, have you noticed that race cars are all shiny again? There are none of the dreaded matte finishes in the field this year. That’s a good thing.
Now let’s hope that we can keep the momentum going for the next three weeks before Long Beach. After that, we will be looking at the Open Test at IMS on April 28-29. Then it’s the Month of May. It’ll be here before we know it.
George Phillips
Oilpressure 
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