This weekend, the NTT IndyCar Series heads to its ninth race of the year at perhaps the most popular permanent road course circuit on the schedule: Road America.
On Sunday (June 22), the 27-car grid will hit the 4-mile layout for the 55-lap XPEL Gran Prix at Road America.
Located in Wisconsin, the road course is a driver’s definition of perfection, crafted with high-speed corners, rolling terrain, long straights for overtaking and some of the most scenic sights a track can offer.
This will be year three with the pavement that was installed after the 2022 race. It’s been very good for the racing, but it hasn’t had an event yet with the hybrid, so that will be important to watch.
Alex Palou continues to lead the championship, but with Kyle Kirkwood‘s win at World Wide Technology Raceway last Sunday (June 15), the previously gargantuan gap has decayed to 73 points. However, the competition should expect Palou to be a contender on Sunday.
Last Year
Team Penske was the dominant force in 2024, with Will Power using an overcut strategy to leap from third to first and outlast a hard-charging Josef Newgarden for the win.
With the victory, it broke a 34-race winless streak for the two-time champion.
A lot has changed for the team since then. They’re in a rough stretch that brings to mind the late 1990s when the team was either unlucky or uncompetitive.
Recovery
It’s hard to believe, but Palou hasn’t been his usual stellar self in the last two races. He finished 25th at Detroit and was mostly in mid-pack at Gateway until attrition bumped him up to eighth at the end. It’s not his worst stretch in the last two years — he finished 2024 with a 19th and 11th — but it’s brought his record-setting pace down from spectacular to just awesome.
No worries heading into Road America, he’s won there in 2021 and 2023, both in championship years, and finished fourth last year.
Expect him to bounce back this weekend. He also has a fresh and famous sponsor onboard this weekend, for good measure.
Climb From the Pit
Newgarden continues to have his worst season since he moved to Team Penske in 2017. His one podium and two additional top 10s in the first nine races are statistically only beaten by his rookie season in 2012, when he had no top 10s at all, and 2014, when he managed just two top 10s. Out of the three Penske cars, he is the furthest down the standings in 16th.
On the road and street circuits, Newgarden continues to lack front-running pace, leading just two laps at St. Petersburg, which is also his only podium. This trend isn’t new, as he led 36 laps on similar tracks in 2024. In previous seasons, he’s capitalized on historically consistent oval finishes, but that hasn’t been the case in 2025. At Indianapolis, he had fuel pressure issues that knocked him out and at Gateway, he crashed out.
Road America is a good place to get a positive finish, though. While it might not fix his season with how deep and competitive the field is, it might provide some confidence. The last three years there, he won in 2022 and finished second the next two times.
Kirkwood Trifecta
For the third time this season, IndyCar has the possibility of a driver winning three in a row. Palou failed to do it on his first try, finishing second at the third race of the year at Long Beach. But he didn’t let it slip by him again when he took the Indy 500, after winning the previous two races.
The guy who took the one race that prevented a magnificent six-race winning streak was the winner of the last two IndyCar stops: Kyle Kirkwood.
With three wins on the season now, Kirkwood shares the 2025 win column with Palou. No one else in the paddock has been able to put the final touches on a sprint to the finish to get a W like those two.
Now that the oval win is in hand, Kirkwood aims to grab a permanent road course trophy. He finished fifth at Road America last year.
General Motors Is Winless
Honda has won every race this year, including the Indy 500. Does that continue this weekend?
At some point, Chevrolet has to taste champagne in victory lane, but where? Since Palou has been dominant and Andretti Global has climbed back into consistent winning form with Kirkwood, the Chevy camp has to wonder when their teams will step up.
Team Penske’s struggles have been documented. Arrow McLaren is GM’s Team B, and has been closer to wthe inner’s circle than Penske, with four runner-ups in nine races.
At some point, one of those six cars will win. Keep your eye on McLaren’s Christian Lundgaard, his calling is the road courses, so he might get Chevy’s first triumph of the year.
What Else?
Chip Ganassi Racing won the pole last year in a wet qualifying session, but it wasn’t with who you think. Linus Lundqvist took the honors, but he wasn’t brought back with the team; instead, they went with Kyffin Simpson, who hasn’t consistently run well enough to be a pole favorite.
Four drivers haven’t earned a top 10 yet after running the full schedule. Out of those four, rookie Louis Foster had the best shot of earning one at Gateway, before brushing the wall and hitting Newgarden. He had an 11th at the Indy road course race, which bodes well for him this weekend.
Another Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing driver in need of a good run is Graham Rahal. He had a poorly performing car at Gateway and was lapped quickly. Since his sixth at the Indy Grand Prix, his best result is 17th.
Frontstretch Predictions
Back on a road course, so it’s leaning toward Palou again. I took a race off since it was oval time, but back to our regularly scheduled programming.
Lundgaard always does well on the road courses, so I’ll pick him second, with Newgarden getting his second podium of the year.
- Palou
- Lundgaard
- Newgarden
The 55-lap XPEL Grand Prix gets underway on Sunday, June 22, at 1:30 p.m. ET with coverage provided by FOX.
Tom is an IndyCar writer at Frontstretch, joining in March 2023. Besides writing the IndyCar Previews and frequent editions of Inside IndyCar, he will hop on as a fill-in guest on the Open Wheel podcast The Pit Straight. A native Hoosier, he calls Fort Wayne home. Follow Tom on Twitter @TomBlackburn42.