Round 14 of the 2025 NTT IndyCar Series season will be contested on the 2.238-mile permanent road course facility at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca. The 11-turn circuit with its famed Corkscrew corner and elevation drop will host the Java House Grand Prix of Monterey Sunday (July 27).
The track is renowned for its tricky tire wear due to the sandy conditions, but has had stellar racing since a repave in 2023.
Last year
Alex Palou took his second win at the track and last of 2024 when the race was held as the eighth event, after Road America. He won the pole and led the most laps, dominating from the end of the first stint until the checkered flag.
Outlook? Doubtful
Pato O’Ward and his Arrow McLaren team had a brilliant strategy and a little luck to win at Toronto and stay in the title hunt.
Doing that again this coming weekend is going to be very challenging, if not impossible. Palou is hitting a two-race stretch where he won’t lack any confidence when he unloads off the truck. In four races at Laguna Seca, he has two wins and two other podiums.
For good measure, O’Ward has even suggested to Frontstretch that Laguna may be the track that makes Palou’s championship campaign.
Coming in hot
O’Ward may be grasping to stay in bazooka range of Palou, but it shouldn’t be overlooked he is in one of the best stretches of his IndyCar career. In the last four races, he has two wins with two fifth places. Couple that with a five-race stretch in May and June when he finished no worse than seventh, and in any other year, he would be up in the points lead.
Unfortunately, he is driving in the Palou era and is 99 points back. As mentioned, Laguna Seca isn’t a track the championship leader has faltered at before, so O’Ward will have to beat him at his own game and win the dang thing. At this point in the year, every point counts, and the pole and most laps led are two valuable bonuses he should aim for, as well as the win.
In four previous Laguna starts, O’Ward has been good, but not great. He hasn’t finished outside the top 10, but has only one top five, a fifth, in his record book. That’s not good enough.
With two ovals to finish the season, O’Ward has to win to control his own destiny because Palou has the advantage this weekend.
Get back at it
Santino Ferrucci missed Toronto due to a morning warm-up crash. He fell from 10th to 12th in points, 19 outside the top 10. His run from the Indy 500 through Road America, with two podiums and two other top fives, has been followed by an eighth and two mid-pack runs. That Did Not Start froze his momentum like a tractor beam.
He still can climb back to his career best ninth in the championship from a year ago, but he has to put all the bad results behind him. Besides Road America, where strategy got him third, his pace hasn’t matched 2024 on permanent road courses — not surprising when looking at A. J. Foyt Racing’s Team Penske technical partners and seeing their troubles as well.
He finished ninth at Laguna a year ago, one of four top 10s on permanent road courses, and there is no better place to repeat than coming off the missed Toronto race.
Team Penske
This goes without saying, but is this the weekend Team Penske rids itself of this crumby bad luck? They have had 14 DNFs — Josef Newgarden and Scott McLaughlin five each and Will Power four — and outside Iowa, haven’t fought for a win since Detroit.
There is nothing the team can do except keep plugging away to get to the finish. McLaughlin is in the midst of two back-to-back 26th-place results, after a fourth in Iowa Race 1, which interrupted a spiral that has been running since the Indianapolis Grand Prix. Power has been better, but his three DNFs since Gateway have washed out his early good runs in the season.
Then there is Newgarden. If Iowa were lifted out of the schedule (figuratively for now), he’d have four straight DNFs. Even his runs at his best track in Iowa corn country left a bad taste, as he dominated both and left with a second and a 10th.
At some point, this dark cloud will evaporate, but it might not be until the Astor Cup is handed out. Team Penske can right the ship, with a decent result this weekend, but they’ve not won at Laguna since the track returned to the schedule in 2019. Helio Castroneves was the last Penske driver to put them in victory lane in 2001.
Rookie battle
Louis Foster and Robert Shwartzman are tied in the Rookie of the Year award fight at 159 points apiece. Shwartzman has two top 10s, and his amazing pole run at the Indy 500 backs up his chances, while Foster has been qualifying well as of late. What’s beating Foster, though, is that he isn’t cracking the top 10.
Since his first IndyCar pole at Road America, he made the Firestone Fast 6 at Mid-Ohio and was one off from advancing again at Toronto. Going back to the Sonsio Grand Prix at Indianapolis, he has made the Fast 6 three times in 2025. But his best result is 11th at Road America and Indy. He’s consistently grabbing anywhere from 11th to 14th — six of his results are in that range — but no top 10s.
Meanwhile, Shartzman is showing some prowess on ovals, with a ninth at Iowa Race 2 and 10th at Gateway.
With two ovals at the end of the year, it’s looking like at least one title chase will go down to the wire.
What else?
Rinus VeeKay is coming off a second at Toronto, his best result since 2021. As discussed on “The Pit Straight” earlier in the week, he has a lot of confidence heading into the last four races, but Laguna hasn’t been kind to him. His 14th-place result in 2022 is his best finish.
Christian Lundgaard is holding fifth in the championship, with his summer drift down the finishing order continuing after Toronto, where late contact dropped him to 13th. Laguna is his type of track, a natural terrain course with tire wear, so he can get his season corrected on Sunday.
Kyle Kirkwood sits third in the championship, but has lost ground to O’Ward in second. If not for the contact that spun him on pit road, he might have finished fourth, where teammate Colton Herta ended up. He has one top five at Laguna in three attempts, but this has been his best year yet, so he will be competitive.
Frontstretch predictions
Palou wins. I can’t go any other way on this one. He’s too good here. O’Ward stays up in the fight, extending his great stretch with a second-place run. Power gets Penske a podium to get them off the talking points list heading to Portland.
- Palou
- O’Ward
- Power
Coverage for the 95-lap Java House Grand Prix of Monterey at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca starts at 3 p.m. ET, Sunday (July 27), on 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.