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Alex Palou kicks off IndyCar hybrid era with pole at Mid-Ohio

Published

2 years ago

July 6, 2024

Alex Palou kicks off IndyCar hybrid era with pole at Mid-Ohio

LEXINGTON, Ohio – With a brand-new tool at the drivers’ fingertips and countless more data figures to track and analyze, two of the best teams and drivers in IndyCar couldn’t help but make series history Saturday afternoon.

In the debut of hybrid technology in qualifying at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, Chip Ganassi Racing’s Alex Palou edged Arrow McLaren’s Pato O’Ward by 24 ten-thousands of a second to take pole for Sunday’s 80-lap race, marking the tightest front row in the Fast 6 qualifying format’s history that dates back to 2005 (0.0027 seconds in the 2023 GMR Grand Prix on the IMS road course).

“It means he went to the bathroom before qualifying,” quipped O’Ward to thunderous laughs in the Mid-Ohio media center. “We’re all out here pushing, pushing, pushing. That’s the beauty of it and what makes it exciting and fun. I’m looking forward to tomorrow.

“It’s irritating and annoying to miss it by just that little bit. I was really happy with the lap, but there’s always more available. You find little bits and pieces here and there, but this is a really strong start for tomorrow, and it should be a good race.”

At a track that has seen nine different winners in its last 10 IndyCar races – with seven of those winners coming from the front row – starting position means everything at Mid-Ohio, particularly with a brand-new repave and where teams will be learning on the fly about how to best maximize the new 60 horsepower boosts available each lap.

‘Combatting the change’: How introduction of hybrid will (and won’t) change IndyCar in 2024

O’Ward and Palou agreed that a car, driver and team reaping the full benefits from IndyCar’s new Energy Recovery System might gain a maximum of two tenths a second per lap, making the bespoke system something too impactful to ignore – but not something to prioritize while forgetting about traditional driving and optimal car balance across an entire lap.

“You don’t want to give up one-and-a-half tenths for free that’s available to you, but it’s a lot of work to get those,” Palou said. “But it’s free lap time, so you need to take it.”

“I think tomorrow, it’ll be a challenge for everybody to see whether you’re going to keep the same strategy or change it up a little bit,” added O’Ward. “It’s become a tool for all the drivers and the teams to either make your lives a lot easier or harder. I think it will be interesting.”

The relatively small amounts of boost – drivers are allowed to use 310 kilojoules of energy from the ERS per lap, amounting to eight or so seconds of 60 additional horsepower – have made for a bit of a paradox for teams in the leadup to this weekend as they try to decipher what to tinker with and how much.

Every change leads to another – potentially leading to information overload, Palou admitted. The system isn’t expected to lead to or allow for a massive sea change in the drivers finishing on podiums, winning races or capturing poles, but it’s also something that can have just enough an impact that teams can’t ignore it entirely and solely treat it as a 100-pound brick in the back of their cars either.

“There’s too much stuff to look at now – too many options to get distracted with,” said Palou, adding that the amount of information to scroll through in the cockpit has already made an impression. “The engineers have the ability to focus on what’s really important. This morning, I was saying, ‘Let’s take a look at deploy and regen,’ and my engineer said, ‘Don’t look at that. Look at your driving first, and then focus on the percent of charge.’”

After nearly five years, it’s arrived: Explaining IndyCar’s new hybrid system

Several of Palou’s title challengers starting in a hole Sunday

Staring from pole Sunday at a track that has favored strong qualifying performances has a chance to pay big dividends for Palou, as the two-time champ enters the oval-heavy portion of the 2024 schedule starting next weekend. Yet to log an oval win among his 11 career victories that have all come in the last three-plus years, Palou currently holds a 23-point cushion over 2022 champ Will Power and 32 over his Ganassi teammate and six-time champ Scott Dixon.

Only three members of the current top-10 made Saturday’s Fast 6 – Colton Herta qualified 4th – and five of those failed to make it out of the first round, including Power (who qualified 16th and is 2nd in points), Dixon (14th/3rd), Andretti Global’s Kyle Kirkwood (15th/5th), Josef Newgarden (18th/9th) and Felix Rosenqvist (13th/10th).

Standout performances

Two of IndyCar’s young guns shined Saturday, including:

David Malukas: qualified 3^rd in just his second race back from his surgically-repaired left wrist and in his second race with Meyer Shank Racing. The 22-year-old’s results also marks the best for the team’s home track in MSR’s history.

Christian Rasmussen: After a rough start to his rookie IndyCar campaign where he currently sits 22nd in points, the young Dane made his first career Fast 12 Saturday at Mid-Ohio. Ahead of this weekend, he’d only started inside the top-15 twice. The Ed Carpenter Racing driver qualified 9th for Sunday’s race.

How to watch, listen: IndyCar Series Mid-Ohio schedule, TV, streaming in hybrid engine debut

IndyCar qualifying results at Mid-Ohio

1. Alex Palou

2. Pato O’Ward

3. David Malukas

4. Colton Herta

5. Marcus Armstrong

6. Marcus Ericsson

7. Scott McLaughlin

8. Alexander Rossi

9. Christian Rasmussen

10. Christian Lundgaard

11. Linus Lundqvist

12. Romain Grosjean

13. Felix Rosenqvist

14. Scott Dixon

15. Kyle Kirkwood

16. Will Power

17. Nolan Siegel

18. Josef Newgarden

19. Graham Rahal

20. Rinus VeeKay

21. Santino Ferrucci

22. Agustin Canapino

23. Pietro Fittipaldi

24. Kyffin Simpson

25. Toby Sowery

26. Sting Ray Robb

27. Jack Harvey

*For undergoing an unapproved engine change by moving to their fifth of the year, Armstrong, Rosenqvist and Fittipaldi all will drop six spots on the grid for tomorrow’s race.

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Ohio woman sentenced in $775,000 Medicaid scheme

Published

7 hours ago

February 27, 2026

Press Room

COLUMBUS — A Lake County woman was sentenced this morning to jail time and ordered to pay $775,000 in restitution for fraudulently billing Medicaid, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost announced. “She inflated her earnings through brazen fraud, but her scheme burst wide open when our investigators got the case,” Yost said. “Cheating taxpayers comes with […]

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‘Catastrophic’ Ohio farm fire kills 6,000 hogs and pigs, officials say

Published

19 hours ago

February 27, 2026

Press Room

‘Catastrophic’ Ohio farm fire kills 6,000 hogs and pigs, officials say

A wind-swept blaze at an Ohio hog farm complex caused “catastrophic” damage and left thousands of pigs dead, fire officials said, marking another devastating barn inferno contributing to the deaths of millions of animals in recent years.

The massive fire occurred on Wednesday, Feb. 25, at Fine Oak Farms in Union Township, Madison County, located west of Ohio’s capital of Columbus, according to the Central Townships Joint Fire District. Fire crews received a report of a barn fire shortly before 12 p.m. local time.

The incident was later upgraded to a commercial structure fire after Chief Brian Bennington observed a “large column of smoke visible from a distance” and requested additional resources. Multiple local fire departments, along with several other emergency agencies, were called to the scene.

“What our crews encountered upon arrival was a very difficult and heartbreaking incident,” Bennington said in a statement on Feb. 26.

The fire chief described the facility as a large farm complex used for hog production consisting of five large agricultural buildings, including four that housed about 7,500 hogs. When crews arrived at the scene, they found two of the barns engulfed in flames, Bennington said.

Crews were challenged by windy conditions that significantly impacted fire suppression efforts, according to Bennington. Three barns were destroyed in the fire, and about 6,000 hogs and pigs were killed.

Firefighters saved one barn and about 1,500 hogs, the fire chief added. No injuries were reported in the incident.

Bennington highlighted the assistance of the farming community throughout Madison and Clark counties, as multiple farmers responded with water trucks to help with water supply efforts. “Rural Ohio’s agricultural community is tight-knit, and they truly step up when one of their own is in need,” he said.

The incident remains under investigation, and the Ohio State Fire Marshal’s Office will determine the fire’s cause and origin. Bennington said there is no suspicion of arson and no ongoing threat to the public at this time.

‘Rapidly changing fire behavior conditions’

Heavy smoke from the fire could be seen for miles, and Bennington said first-arriving units were met with fire conditions coming from the opposite side of the hog farm complex.

The fire chief noted that the incident required extensive water-shuttle operations due to rural water-supply limitations in the area. Crews attempted to cut the fire off by deploying multiple handlines and using an aerial device, but “faced extremely challenging conditions throughout the incident,” according to Bennington.

Sustained winds of about 20 mph with gusts up to 35 mph accelerated the fire’s spread, Bennington said. The high winds made it “extremely difficult” to contain forward fire progression and created “rapidly changing fire behavior conditions” across the agricultural complex, he added.

After about four to five hours, the fire was contained by fire personnel from four different counties, according to the fire chief.

“Unfortunately, the fire resulted in catastrophic damage to the business,” Bennington said in an earlier statement on Feb. 25. “A significant portion of the agricultural structures were destroyed.”

Latest major fire to impact an Ohio hog farm

The incident at Fine Oak Farms is the latest major fire to cause significant damage to an Ohio hog farm in recent years.

In August 2024, about 1,100 pigs were killed in Versailles, a village about 50 miles northwest of Dayton, Ohio, according to data from the nonprofit Animal Welfare Institute. In March 2022, about 2,000 hogs died in a barn fire at Kenneth Scholl Hog Farm in Brown Township, just west of Columbus.

Before the fire at Fine Oak Farms, the Animal Welfare Institute reported that other barn fires in Ohio this year killed 162 sheep, horses, cows, chickens, and other animals.

Hundreds of thousands of animals killed in barn fires each year

Data from the Animal Welfare Institute shows that hundreds of thousands of animals are killed in barn fires across the country each year. Since 2013, over 9 million farm animals have been killed in barn fires, according to the organization.

As of Feb. 26, the Animal Welfare Institute reported that 118,738 farm animals have died in U.S. barn fires this year, including the incident at Fine Oak Farms. The majority of farm animals killed were chickens in separate incidents in North Carolina and Georgia in January, and another incident in Missouri earlier this month.

“Most fatal barn fires occurred in colder states, particularly the Upper Midwest and the Northeast. New York, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Illinois had the highest number of barn fires, respectively,” according to the organization. “The amount of cold weather a state experienced appeared to be a greater factor in the prevalence of barn fires than the intensity of a state’s animal agriculture production.”

In an updated report on farm animal deaths due to barn fires in 2025, the Animal Welfare Institute said more than 2.53 million farm animals were killed in barn fires from 2022 to 2024. The organization noted that the high death toll was “driven primarily” by fires at large operations that housed several thousand to over 1 million farm animals.

The majority of deaths in these incidents during that period, over 98%, were farmed birds, such as chickens and turkeys, according to the Animal Welfare Institute. But in 2023, a massive fire at a west Texas dairy farm became the single deadliest event involving livestock in the state’s history and the deadliest cattle fire in America in at least a decade.

18,000 head of cattle perished in the fire at the South Fork Dairy farm near Dimmitt, Texas. At the time, Roger Malone, who is the former mayor of Dimmitt, called the incident “mind-boggling.”

“I don’t think it’s ever happened before around here. It’s a real tragedy,” Malone said.

Contributing: Rick Jervis, USA TODAY; Shahid Meighan, Columbus Dispatch

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Ohio’s LaRose pushes back on voter fraud critics, Democrats

Published

1 day ago

February 26, 2026

Press Room

Ohio’s LaRose pushes back on voter fraud critics, Democrats

Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose discussed voter fraud and Ohio’s efforts to prevent it during a recent radio appearance.

LaRose appeared on “The Bill Cunningham” radio show, where he defended the state’s efforts to minimize voter fraud. A clip posted on X shows audio of LaRose arguing that policies aimed at preventing voter fraud are necessary even though cases are rare.

Here’s what to know.

Secretary of State Frank LaRose says voter fraud in Ohio is rare, compares prevention efforts to TSA security

In the clip, LaRose says that Democrats claim voter fraud is rare, and should be ignored.

“The left claims that voter fraud is rare, so we should just ignore it,” he said. “Well, airplane hijackings are also rare — we don’t abolish the TSA. The reason why we keep voter fraud rare in states like Ohio because we do these very things that they’re trying to take away from me.”

LaRose announced the inaugural meeting of the new Ohio Election Integrity Commission, which replaces what he called the flawed Ohio Elections Commission, in January 2026. The new committee, he says, will be used in “enforcing Ohio’s election laws, reviewing alleged violations, and ensuring accountability in matters relating to voting.”

In October 2025, LaRose said that he forwarded more than 1,000 cases of voter fraud to the U.S. Department of Justice. The cases involved 1,084 noncitizen individuals who appear to have registered to vote unlawfully in Ohio, and 167 noncitizens who appear to have also cast a ballot in a federal election since 2018.

In February 2026, President Donald Trump said Republicans should “nationalize” elections. He also accused Democrats of bringing migrants into the United States to illegally vote, a claim that is not backed by evidence, USA TODAY reports.

Voter fraud in the U.S. is considered rare nationwide, according to NPR, but there are still debates from both political sides on how frequently it occurs.

What is voter fraud?

Electoral fraud is defined as illegally interfering with the process of an election, according to Ballotpedia. This includes in-person voter fraud, absentee or mail ballots and illegal voter suppression.

Criminal penalties can include fines or imprisonment for up to five years, according to U.S. code. In Ohio, election interference can carry a felony of the fourth degree, according to Ohio Code.

Voter fraud is often a topic of debate among Democrats and Republicans, where organizations such as the conservative Heritage Foundation maintains a database claiming to show nearly 1,500 cases of election fraud since the year 2000.

Meanwhile, research by law professor Justin Leavitt published in 2014 found 31 cases of in-person voter fraud among billions of ballots cast from 2000–2014, according to Ballotpedia.

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