Álex Palou won the pole and stood on the front row as the 110th running of the Indianapolis 500 took place today at Indianapolis Motor Speedway; Palou was trying to win back-to-back Indy 500 races in front of a field stacked with past champions and newcomers.
Palou’s pole position mattered because this year’s field carries historic weight: The Athletic counted nine past winners among the starters and four rookies making their first 500 starts. The same report noted that six drivers have managed back-to-back victories in Indianapolis history — a rarity that adds texture to Palou’s bid from the pole.
The roster of names on the entry list underlines why the race drew attention. Josef Newgarden is listed among drivers who have won the Indianapolis 500 multiple times, and Takuma Sato likewise has multiple victories to his credit. Helio Castroneves, who first won the race a quarter century ago, is also in the field; Castroneves has won the Indianapolis 500 four times. That four-win mark is shared: FOX Sports noted that four racers share the record for the most Indy 500 victories, and the list of four-time winners includes Al Unser, A.J. Foyt and Rick Mears alongside Castroneves. No driver has ever won the Indianapolis 500 more than four times.
The historical thread is long. Ray Harroun won the first Indianapolis 500 in 1911, and the race has built a ledger of champions carried every year on the Borg-Warner Trophy. Josef Newgarden’s name appears on that ledger for 2024, and his multiple victories place him among the proven performers a modern field must reckon with.
The arithmetic on Sunday was simple but brutal: four rookies with everything to gain, nine past winners with everything to protect, and the driver on pole — Palou — chasing the kind of consecutive success only six men in the race’s history have achieved. That mix is what made the start so keenly watched, and why the pole carried weight beyond a single lap time.
There is, however, a friction in the record as presented: the timeline notes Josef Newgarden as the 2024 winner while Palou entered today trying to complete back-to-back wins. The contradiction highlights how narrow the margins and how complicated chronologies can be in fast-moving coverage; it also sharpens the central fact of the day — the result on the track, not in any preview, will settle who adds what to the sport’s ledger.
The race’s significance also rests on the ceiling that no one has broken: four is the maximum number of Indianapolis 500 victories any driver has achieved, and four drivers already sit at that summit. The presence of multiple past winners in the field raises immediate questions about whether anyone can climb to that peak, whether a past champion can stop Palou’s attempt, or whether a rookie will upset the established order.
For readers asking who won indy 500 in 2025, today’s checkered flag at Indianapolis Motor Speedway was meant to provide the answer. What the field offered in advance was a reminder that the Indianapolis 500 remains a collision of eras — a place where a driver who first won a quarter century ago stands beside rookies making their first laps, and where the written history can be altered in 200 laps.
Looking beyond today, FOX Sports has outlined the next calendar note for the event: the 2026 Indianapolis 500 will air on FOX at 12:30 p.m. ET, with the pre-race show beginning at 10 a.m. ET. But the single question that mattered as the 110th unfolded was sharper: which driver in this jammed field — one of the nine past winners, one of the four rookies, or the pole-sitter Álex Palou — would cross the line and change the record books?
