The beautiful 4.014-mile track nestled in the hills of Wisconsin is the next stop in the 2026 NTT IndyCar season.
Alex Palou heads in as the defending winner, while still maintaining a 49-point lead in the championship.
This track is one of the crown jewels on the IndyCar schedule, up there with Long Beach and Indianapolis as a must-win for any driver in the field. Its 55 laps are a testament to the length of the circuit and how much it takes to make it around the longest track raced on all year.
Last Year
Palou continued his 2025 championship season with his sixth win of the year when he took the checkered flag. Teammate Scott Dixon led the most laps but had to stop for a splash of fuel at the end, and Palou had enough to get to the end.
Palou Marches On
After World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway, there was a sigh of relief from the rest of the field because Palou, the unstoppable force, hit an immovable object in the form of an empty fuel tank. Sometimes even Hercules gets a muscle strain in the journey.
While the points standings tightened, don’t expect this to be the point in time when the fight is on for the Astor Cup. Palou went through similar hiccups in the last two years. The team is still in control because the four-time champion’s performance doesn’t decline in the face of adversity.
With three wins at the National Park of Speed and being the defending winner, he won’t have to step up his game to course correct his season. Instead, drivers like Kyle Kirkwood and David Malukas will be forced to be perfect to close the gap further.
Kirkwood’s Chance
A 49-point gap to Palou isn’t abandon ship time for Kirkwood’s season quite yet. After 2025, just being less than 50 points back is reason to dance after the championship was won by a shade under 200 points.
Coming off a respectable sixth at Gateway to chip into the lead, the American can further tighten the battle up front if he can nab the first permanent road course win of his career. For all his prowess and talent in handling street courses, he’s only placed fourth as his personal best on the scenic tracks like Road America and Barber Motorsports Park. Surprising.
Good news for him: this weekend is his best shot to win, as two of his four top fives at road courses are at the four-mile track in Wisconsin.
Malukas Rebound
All the pundits — like me — were vocal heading into Gateway that it was Malukas’ win and no one was going to best him. This is why I don’t gamble; I clearly don’t know what I’m talking about because Malukas was uncompetitive, which is not like him at that circuit. He rebounded to seventh, but two straight races of lackluster results put him 19 points behind Kirkwood in third in the championship. This comes after the best stretch of his career — two runner-ups, including the heartbreaking loss at Indianapolis.
After taking a beach day on the first turn on Road America’s opening lap in 2025, he surged back to finish seventh with AJ Foyt Enterprises, his first top 10 there. Team Penske historically runs well at this track, even with their recent struggles the last two seasons. They swept the podium in 2024, and it was Malukas’ team that won that day. Since he didn’t get his first career win at Gateway, maybe his salvation is in cheese country.
Arrow Teammates
The beautiful green grass and dense forest foliage of Road America are a welcome sight for Arrow McLaren’s Christian Lundgaard and Pato O’Ward. For Lundgaard, his history on permanent road courses is phenomenal. Now he doesn’t match the 16 wins Palou has, but he’s still very good. Nine of his 12 career podiums come from these tracks, and the last time the series visited one, the Sonsio Grand Prix at Indianapolis, he was victorious. However, there is one caveat to this — he’s never podiumed at Road America.
O’Ward left Gateway frustrated. As he told our Frontstretch crew, he’s been having a challenging year. That’s a remarkable comment, considering he is still fifth in the points standings on the back of six top fives, but not breaking through with any podiums. Road America is hit or miss for O’Ward since his second-place run in 2020 when he lost out to Felix Rosenqvist in the late going. Only one other podium since.
What Else?
Speaking of Rosenqvist, the 2026 Indy 500 winner is returning to the track where he notched his first career win, and a runner-up in 2025. The Swede gets around Road America pretty well, with a win already this season; his Honda power might get him another sterling result.
Josef Newgarden’s struggles on road and street courses are known, but his last win on one was at Road America in 2022, and he hasn’t lost pace there since. Two straight runner-ups after his win were followed by a good run last year until he lost it out of the last turn and hit the barrier before the pit entrance. Coming off his win at Gateway, the momentum is there to break his twisty track winless streak.
Louis Foster earned a surprising first career pole last year here. While his 2026 results aren’t stellar, with just two top 10s, returning to Road America might be a confidence booster.
Teammate Graham Rahal’s three podiums this year are the most since 2020 for his No. 15 Honda team. Two are permanent road courses — Barber and Indy Grand Prix — so these have been his best type of track in 2026.
Frontstretch Predictions
It’s still on the rest of the field to show they can beat Palou, and I don’t see it yet. Sure, there was a stumble at Gateway, but that’s not a big hole. If anything, it just gave me some copy to put in this preview. Instead, he bounces back and wins at Road America. Lundgaard chases him to the end, and Kirkwood gets his first podium on a permanent road course.
- Palou
- Lundgaard
- Kirkwood
The IndyCar Xpel Grand Prix at Road America gets underway Sunday (June 21) at 2 p.m. ET 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.
Thanks for choosing to comment on this article. A name and email address are required to post a comment. The email address is not publicly visible or shared. Please keep in mind that comments are moderated according to our comment policy.