“It's not like we got beaten, but we lost it”: Alex Palou doesn’t sugarcoat his emotions after heartbreaking Mid-Ohio defeat

Chip Ganassi Racing driver Alex Palou recently spoke about his race at Mid-Ohio. The championship leader spoke about losing out on first place after a rare mistake.

The Spaniard drives the #10 Chip Ganassi car powered by Honda. He finished the race at Mid-Ohio in second place after he went wide at Turn 9. The mistake allowed his teammate, Scott Dixon, to pass through and eventually take the victory.

During the post-race press conference, Alex Palou was asked if losing out on this victory hurts more than any other wins. He replied (via ASAP Sports):

"Yeah, for sure. I agree with that. I think when you lose -- I think we lost today. It's not like we got beaten, but we lost it, myself. Yeah, that's going to hurt a little bit. I'm hopefully going to learn from that. It's still good in a way that we got one-two; we lost it but we kept it in the team. I think that's going to keep the team happier and Chip happier."

"But yeah, for sure it hurts, man. It hurts doing a big mistake like that when you could have just -- it's easy now to just say, save a little bit there, you don't need to be on the limit. But when you're driving, you don't feel like you're that in the limit. Yeah, it'll take a couple of hours, but then at the end of the day we still finished second, still had an amazing weekend, and we should be proud about that," he added.

Palou led 75 laps of the race and was dominating the event. He drove a lap at an average speed of 111.159.

Alex Palou has had a spectacular 2025 season. He has won six out of the 10 races held so far and is currently leading the drivers' championship by 113 points. The 28-year-old also became the first Spanish driver to win the Indy 500 this season.

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Alex Palou speaks up about Will Power's Mid-Ohio confrontation

On Saturday, July 5, after the second practice session, Will Power got somewhat blocked by the #10 car driver after the former exited the pit lane. After the session, Power marched up to Palou to confront him about the same.

While talking to the media, Alex Palou was questioned if he knew why Power was mad at him. He replied (via Bob Pockrass on X):

"Look, I think if you look at Practice 1 or 2, everybody is complaining about traffic, and we're all angry that we don't get clear laps. But maybe he thought we did something personal to him. For sure that was not the intention. I don't know if you saw, but I was always like a second or two seconds in front of him. He was just having to back off. I never tried to defend or anything"

"I think he was just a little bit upset, and that's OK. But yeah, I knew that he was coming... I just didn't want to start to get into an argument. Yeah, it happens. It was my first time with him, so it's good," he added.

Alex Palou is currently chasing his fourth IndyCar Series championship.