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

Bob Pockrass

FOX Motorsports Insider

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 fried chicken to me, and I got sick of eating fried chicken a lot. So some pieces of good sushi. That’s how I’m going to celebrate.

Like a California roll, a rainbow roll?

I’m more of like a real sushi. Nigiris, really good tuna. I like rolls as well, but I’m more like a nigiri guy.

When you want to try to forget about racing, what do you do?

I read. I love reading about people that have been successful in sport or in business or in life in general.

More biography rather than fiction?

Yes. I’m not really a big fiction guy. It’s tough for me to get going again — because sometimes I’ll stay awake and then a week without being able to read. So just biography stuff.

Do you read those to get ideas on how to be successful yourself? Or you’re just kind of interested in these people?

Just interested. Obviously, if you get a good idea or if it serves as a role model, that’s going to be good. But it’s just more interested. There’s a lot of people that from the outside look at successful athletes or business people, men and women, that we see it from outside as if they had a really easy life or if it’s been a one-day thing for them, like they suddenly had an idea and that’s it. But actually, when you learn about it, how they started the companies or how they started their careers, you see that they had a lot of up and downs, a lot of moments where they were on the edge of not being able to be successful. I like reading that stuff.

And if there was one written about you, would it be easy life or up-and-down?

It would be a very cool life, but it would be not as easy as some people might think. Not super hard. I have a really amazing life, but there’s been some moments in my career where I didn’t know if I was going to be able to do the next race without a good result that weekend. So there’s a lot of people that don’t know that, but apart from that, it’s been an amazing career.

Did you enjoy that type of pressure?

No. I think that’s tough. That’s a tough pressure. That’s the kind of pressure that doesn’t really allow you to take 100 percent out of yourself. Maybe you back off a little bit. The good pressure is one when people expect something from you, and they are thinking that you’re going to be good or successful on track.

Those times where you didn’t know your next race if you didn’t perform, was that because of sponsorship or because they had other drivers that they wanted to potentially put in the car?

It was just more like economical stuff.

Have you had any other job than being a race car driver?

I used to own a coffee shop together with my wife. I owned it, but I was also serving coffees and cleaning tables. That was back in 2018 and 2019, and we sold it in the end of 2020 when we moved to the U.S.

Did you enjoy that?

Some parts, yeah. It was super fun. We built it from zero with no idea about business or coffee or anything. We just had an idea. We wanted to try and see if we could make it just in case my racing career was not going well, just so we had something. And it was really fun. It was really hard. COVID hit us, and it was tough times for the business. But it was an amazing learning step that we did.

So are you a coffee snob?

I am now, yes.

Is it hard for you to find a good cup of coffee now that you know how to make it?

It is, but I’m not that kind of person that cannot drink normal coffee. I drink any kinds of coffee. I just love coffee. Even the worst coffee, I am going to drink it.

I imagine you’ve had a ton of texts that you haven’t returned. But which ones have you returned? Who is so important to you that you had to return their texts already?

I’ve not had the chance to return texts. I have read a lot of them, but last night, when I was done with the media, we went to the Pacers game. And when we got home at the bus, I wanted to get sleep to be ready at 6 a.m. this morning [for more photos and media]. But I replied to all my family, the family members that were not here, and also to all the racing drivers that were yesterday competing with us and that I didn’t have the chance to speak directly.

You were able to sleep last night. Were you able to sleep the night before the 500?

Yes, it was actually quite good. I was able to sleep last night a little bit. But it’s true that when I woke up around, 2 or 3 a.m., I realized that that we won the 500 so I just got so excited that it took me another hour to fall asleep. And I was just like, ‘Oh, man, I don’t know if I’m going to fall asleep before 6 or not.’ But before the 500 I slept very good.

What causes you to lose sleep?

Excitement, just being excited or I think being worried, probably. Excited for the race doesn’t make me lose sleep because I know sleep is so super important to make me feel good. But the excitement after a race makes me lose sleep every single time.

Growing up, did you think that winning the Indy 500 was realistic?

No. Not at all.

You thought that was just a dream that would never happen?

Not even being part of it. As a kid. Obviously, once you start getting closer and you go to Japan Super Formula [racing], then you see that it’s a realistic goal to one day be part of the Indy 500. But no, not when I was a kid.

Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR and IndyCar for FOX Sports. He has spent decades covering motorsports, including over 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass.