Honda Indy 200 at Mid Ohio recap
The Arrow McLaren standout was far happier capturing The Honda Indy 200 at Mid-Ohio Presented by the 2025 Civic Hybrid versus having the previous win handed to them at the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg presented by RP Funding six weeks after the fact when the Team Penske’s Josef Newgarden was disqualified.
The victory pushed O’Ward’s career win total to six, but it was the first time since the July 24, 2022, race at Iowa Speedway that his car was the first to cross the finish line. In St. Petersburg in March, O’Ward was the second finisher.
Coincidentally, the Hy-Vee INDYCAR Race Weekend doubleheader at Iowa Speedway is next on the NTT INDYCAR SERIES schedule. O’Ward still has a large deficit to Palou, but 70 points isn’t too much to erase over the remaining eight races. O’Ward has won two series races on oval tracks in his still-young career – that’s two more than Palou – so he has the confidence to use the six oval races left this season as a springboard to his first series title. O’Ward sits third in the standings.
At Lap 21, for example, O’Ward trailed the driver of the No. 10 Ridgeline Lubricants Chip Ganassi Racing Honda by 5.6 seconds. The next-closest driver was David Malukas, who was 16 seconds out of the lead in his second race in Meyer Shank Racing’s No. 66 AutoNation/Arctic Wolf Honda. When Scott McLaughlin got to third place in the No. 3 Sonsio Team Penske Chevrolet, he felt so far behind Palou and O’Ward that he described the laps he turned without pressure from behind as “a test session.”
Sunday’s race will be remembered for the “proper” duel between O’Ward and Palou, but there were other interesting takeaways, as well.
Hybrid Technology Debuts
It wasn’t a perfect first outing, but the benefits of the new energy recovery system were clear. Among them: Romain Grosjean’s late-race ability to restart his No. 77 Juncos Hollinger Chevrolet without assistance, a situation that in the past likely would have led to a race-ending caution flag. Grosjean was able to use the hybrid supercapacitors to refire his engine and return to the track, and the race stayed green while Palou kept chasing O’Ward.
Additionally intriguing was the use of the additional horsepower by the drivers on the track’s backstretch. Mid-Ohio’s tight and twisty circuit doesn’t have a plethora of passing places, but it offered enough to show this technology will only add more intriguing racing moving forward.
O’Ward noted that if a driver forgot to deploy the stored energy when available, it cost him a tenth and a half (of a second) that’s for free, (and) maybe a little bit more.
All photo credit: John Lucas Jr.