Alex Palou won the Grand Prix of Long Beach from third position on the grid, taking advantage of a perfect pit stop by Chip Ganassi Racing to overtake Felix Rosenqvist with 30 laps remaining and never relinquishing the lead.

Rosenqvist started from pole position, led 51 of 90 laps, and built a three-second advantage over Palou in the middle portion of the race. The race slipped away from him in the pits. On the final stop, with 30 laps to go, Chip Ganassi was faster than Meyer Shank Racing, and Palou emerged ahead for the first time all afternoon. He never lost the lead again.

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Rosenqvist had controlled the race from the start with Pato O'Ward in second and Palou third, but Palou passed O'Ward on lap 2 and settled behind the number 60 without letting go. Over the first 31 laps, the gap between the two remained below a second and a half, with Rosenqvist managing the lead without giving up too much ground. The first round of pit stops did not change the order between them; both exited on the softer alternate compound, and Rosenqvist kept the lead.

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Josef Newgarden attempted a three-stop strategy from the start, pitting from 12th place on lap 12 to exit into clean air. The gamble put him at the front of the race for a stretch, with an advantage of up to 16 seconds over Rosenqvist, but when he made his second stop, he fell back into the pack and finished 14th. Marcus Ericsson retired on lap 44 due to a hybrid system issue in his Andretti Global car, the only mechanical retirement of the race.

In the middle stint, Palou chipped away at Rosenqvist's lead from three seconds to less than one, never threatening on track but staying close enough that any incident could change the outcome. That incident came on lap 58, when a yellow flag for debris forced everyone's final stop. Chip Ganassi was faster than Meyer Shank in that stop, and Palou exited ahead. On the restart, he drove away and closed the race with a 3.9-second margin.

For Rosenqvist, the afternoon summed up what an entire season can be: speed to win and a result that slips away on a detail. In the four previous rounds, he had not finished better than 13th and arrived at Long Beach without any wins or podiums in 2026. He started on pole, led more laps than anyone, and finished second. "A little bittersweet," he admitted. "I don't think our stop was slow, theirs was just very good. That's how this works." It was his best result since Road America in June 2025 and the first time MSR could celebrate something this season.

Scott Dixon finished third, putting two Chip Ganassi cars in the top three. Kyle Kirkwood was fourth, and Pato O'Ward fifth, in a race where O'Ward started from the front row but lost second place on lap 2 and never regained it. Alexander Rossi recovered from 18th to ninth. Will Power received a drive-through penalty for hitting a member of the Foyt team's pit crew during the final stop and fell to 19th place.

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The championship

Palou now leads Kirkwood by 17 points, a reversal from how they arrived at Long Beach, where Kirkwood had a two-point advantage. The gap between them has swung in opposite directions at each round, with Kirkwood holding a 26-point margin before Barber, where Palou won by 13 seconds and Kirkwood finished fifth. With three wins in five races, Palou has 22 career victories and is aiming for his fifth series title, which would put him alone as the winningest driver in IndyCar history, ahead of the record he currently shares with other drivers at four championships.

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The next round is the Sonsio Grand Prix at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Saturday, May 9th, the first event of the Month of May.

Pos	#	Piloto	Equipo	Motor	Gap
1	#10	Alex Palou	Chip Ganassi Racing	Honda	-
2	#60	Felix Rosenqvist	Meyer Shank w/ Curb-Agajanian	Honda	+3.9663
3	#9	Scott Dixon	Chip Ganassi Racing	Honda	+5.4463
4	#27	Kyle Kirkwood	Andretti Global w/ Curb-Agajanian	Chevrolet	+5.9730
5	#5	Pato O'Ward	Arrow McLaren	Chevrolet	+11.8705
6	#3	Scott McLaughlin	Team Penske	Chevrolet	+12.9059
7	#12	David Malukas	Team Penske	Chevrolet	+13.4837
8	#15	Graham Rahal	Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing	Honda	+27.5674
9	#20	Alexander Rossi	ECR	Chevrolet	+27.6345
10	#8	Kyffin Simpson	Chip Ganassi Racing	Honda	+28.7286
11	#19	Dennis Hauger	Dale Coyne Racing	Honda	+28.9918
12	#6	Nolan Siegel	Arrow McLaren	Chevrolet	+29.9126
13	#76	Rinus VeeKay	Juncos Hollinger Racing	Chevrolet	+30.5866
14	#2	Josef Newgarden	Team Penske	Chevrolet	+30.8410
15	#21	Christian Rasmussen	ECR	Chevrolet	+31.1661
16	#45	Louis Foster	Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing	Honda	+36.1636
17	#47	Mick Schumacher	Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing	Honda	+36.9674
18	#14	Santino Ferrucci	A.J. Foyt Enterprises	Chevrolet	+40.8660
19	#26	Will Power	Andretti Global	Chevrolet	+41.1840
20	#7	Christian Lundgaard	Arrow McLaren	Chevrolet	+42.1752
21	#18	Romain Grosjean	Dale Coyne Racing	Honda	+42.8422
22	#4	Caio Collet	A.J. Foyt Enterprises	Chevrolet	+43.6647
23	#77	Sting Ray Robb	Juncos Hollinger Racing	Chevrolet	+44.7036
24	#66	Marcus Armstrong	Meyer Shank w/ Curb-Agajanian	Honda	+1 vuelta
25	#28	Marcus Ericsson	Andretti Global	Chevrolet	+52 vueltas