Fredrik Broden
That Spain’s Alex Palou captured the inaugural Thermal Grand Prix on Sunday, March 23 may not prove the event’s most memorable or lasting turn for desert dwellers.
That the host Thermal Club officially added to the growing cannon of desert sporting fare will undoubtedly prove both indelible and (hopefully) enduring.
The winner of last year’s $1 Million Challenge exhibition event at the club, Palou’s back-to-back desert dominance was formalized with the debut of Thermal’s official NTT IndyCar Series race; the victory for three-time IndyCar season champion Palou of Chip Ganassi Racing also proved the Spaniard’s second win in as many IndyCar races this season.
Not that the Thermal victory came with ease. Palou trailed leader Palo O’Ward (Arrow McLaren) by nine seconds with 15 of the race’s 65 laps remaining. Nonetheless, he managed to pass O’Ward, the eventual runner-up, on Turn 7 (of 19) across Thermal’s 3.067-miles Twin Palms’ raceway, doing so en route to his 13th career title.
In concert with Palou’s checkered flag, the host club can now formally lay claim to an engaging new chapter of Coachella Valley pro sporting fare, a catalogue which includes the PGA Tour (American Express), the PGA Tour Champions (Galleri Classic), the WTA/ATP Tours (BNP Paribas Open) and the 36 (regular season) home game of the American Hockey League (Coachella Valley Firebirds).
And, just as each existing desert sporting event has had to find its way, its niche, its audience, its vibe -- the debut Thermal Grand Prix both proved and will prove no different in navigation.
Considering that it was the Club’s debut event, there were surprisingly few glitches. Ok, the nationally-televised race was lost by Fox for 20-minutes due to technical issues. And unseasonably hot temperatures reverberated the heat to drivers, perspiring crews, and umbrella’d fans alike, but so it goes with timing events as the desert trends toward the shoulder season.
Further assess will no doubt find some portion of the general public fandom craving a bit more in the way of coddle. While the debut event got a lot right in its first iteration – DJ, food truck circle, access to pits, awesome print program, well-perched GA grandstands – future iterations of the Grand Prix will no doubt see enhanced continuity in getting folks around the venue with more shuttles and golf carts, as well as keeping spectators more in the real-time know with more flatscreen displays of the live action around the grounds.
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For many, if not most, a chance to see how the other half lives no doubt provided an extra gear of Grand Prix enthuse. From the prime perches of multi-million-dollar Thermal Club homes overlooking the track to the ongoing array of private jets overhead in descent to the nearby Jacqueline Cochrane Regional Airport, the general public got a sniff of the club’s unique pairing of affluence and motor oil. Carved by mountain surrounds and pretty palms, the club’s setting is superb, its track is a beauty and the proximity to the action is enthralling. Rare is the chance for the dude in baggy cargo shorts to spend a day in a billionaire’s playground, and, to its credit, the club’s race day vibe proved open-armed and wholly welcoming.
To wit: inside the event’s V.I.P. area was an In-N-Out food truck. Yes, the afflluent like cheeseburgers, too, just as said class enjoys fast objects and loud noises and the genuine feel and thrill and rumble and electricity one enjoys in their bones when a world-class machine storms by at 190 mph.
Sure, such access and opportunity may only arrive for the local proletariat one long weekend a year; but, if the debut Grand Prix proved a sporting seed for annual track action, then the desert’s sporting scene is all the better for these gates being opened.
