Who is Alex Palou? Indy 500 champ on sushi, owning a coffee shop & needing sleep

INDIANAPOLIS — Who is Alex Palou?

He’s a 28-year-old from Spain. And the 2025 Indianapolis 500 champion.

Palou (his name rhymes with "hello" in case you were wondering) has won three of the last four INDYCAR titles and his victory Sunday at Indianapolis Motor Speedway thrust him even more into the national sports conversation.

So who is Palou? We asked him to give us some insight on Monday, a day after his thrilling victory:

Who is Alex Palou?

I'm a really happy person right now. I'm a racing driver. I drive the No. 10 DHL Honda for Chip Ganassi Racing.

And when you're not in your driver's suit, who are you, as far as your personality? How would your wife describe you? 

That's tough. I don't know. I like spending a lot of time with my family nowadays, with my daughter — she's less than 2 years old. Apart from that, working on the race cars and working with my team, with my mechanics, my engineers, and some SIM [simulator] racing here and there whenever I have some free time. But, yeah. That’s Alex Palou. I don't do much apart from racing.

Can you work on your car? Can you change your brakes and do that kind of stuff? 

I don’t think I would trust my mechanical skills. I think I could do it. But I wouldn't trust it, so probably I wouldn't do a very good job.

At some point you'll go celebrate with a meal that you get to choose what it is. What would the meal of choice be to celebrate this win?

I would love to celebrate with sushi, with a really good sushi. I love sushi, and I think that's what I'm going to choose. In 2021, when I won my first INDYCAR race, I said that I was going to celebrate with fried chicken. But that was probably one of the worst decisions I made. Because after that, I had many interviews bringing