rejected

Alex Palou’s 2025 season was the best for an IndyCar driver in nearly 20 years.

He won a career-high eight races, including the Indianapolis 500. He won his third straight series title and his fourth championship overall. He made the podium 13 times in 17 races.

Yet if you ask Palou, he’ll tell you he’s going into Saturday’s qualifying for Sunday’s Grand Prix of Long Beach needing to prove himself all over again.

“Who cares about what we did last year?” he said. “It’s cool to have four championships, but the only important year is 2026. Everybody started with zero points on the board and we need to do it all over again.”

That’s far easier said than done, although Palou is off to a fast start in his quest for a fifth championship having won two of the first four races on the IndyCar schedule to stand second in the driver standings, two points behind defending Long Beach champion Kyle Kirkwood.

“Last year was magical,” said Palou, who has captured 10 of the last 21 checkered flags, dating to 2024. “As an athlete you always want to keep on improving, but I need to be realistic and understand that to win eight races in IndyCar in the same year, it’s pretty tough to beat.

“So although I want to achieve that, we just need to take 2026 separately and just try our best, try to win as many races as possible and then obviously fight for the [Indy] 500 and the championship.”

Winning Long Beach, one of the few prizes on the IndyCar circuit that has eluded him, would be a big step in that drive for five. But that won’t be easy since passing on the tight 1.968-mile street course, with its 11 turns, is difficult. That makes track position important, putting a premium on Saturday’s qualifying and on pit stops in Sunday’s race.

“It’s always super tough to be competitive there,” Palou said of Long Beach, where he finished second last April, giving him three straight podium finishes. “One of the only bad things about street racing [is] that it’s really tough for us to overtake with how tight the tracks are and all the bumps.

“It just makes it super challenging.”

Alex Palou competes during the Grand Prix of St. Petersburg in Florida on March 1.

(David Jensen / Getty Images)

Not as challenging as the race Palou, the most successful Spanish driver in IndyCar history, had to run just to get into a race car.

As a boy growing up in the tiny Catalan village of Sant Antoni de Vilamajor, Palou started kart racing about the same time he started grade school. He was 15 when he finished second in the 2012 European karting championship yet he didn’t see much of a future beyond that.

Lewis Hamilton had finished in the same spot 13 years earlier, then went on to become the most successful Formula One driver in history. But England has a long-established history with open-wheel racing and Spain did not.

“He came from nothing, showing up at a carting track and then having these big dreams and aspirations. And here he is,” said Barry Wanser, the senior manager of IndyCar operations for Chip Ganassi Racing.

“I know he’s very proud he’s the first Spaniard to win the Indianapolis 500. That’s just absolutely incredible.”

But that was never the goal.

“Honestly,” Palou said, “my goal was just to have fun. When we started, I never wanted to be a race car driver for a living. I never thought that it would be possible.”

Before Palou, Fernando Alonso, a two-time F1 champion, was Spain’s most successful open-wheel driver. After Alonso is Carlos Sainz Jr., who has won four F1 races; Pedro de la Rosa, who made more than 100 F1 starts but climbed the podium just once; and Oriol Servià, who ran 79 IndyCar races in nine years but never placed higher than fourth before retiring in 2019, one year before Palou made his debut in the series.

Aside from Alonso, those drivers were good but not great, leaving the road from Spain to success in open-wheel racing a narrow one. That’s a path Palou is now widening.

“I would say that for sure it’s helping future generations that I’m here and that I had success,” he said, “just because they can know that with a normal European background you can come to the U.S. and fight for wins and championships.”

Alex Palou celebrates after winning the Grand Prix of St. Petersburg on March 1.

(David Jensen / Getty Images)

Wanser said what makes Palou so good is his feel for both the car and the track and his ability to communicate with his team.

“He has a very unique ability to understand what he needs the car to do to maximize performance on the tires,” said Wanser, the race strategist for Ganassi’s No. 10 car who has sometimes been called Palou’s indispensable partner. “You’re talking about road courses, street courses, for the primary [tires] — the hards and the softs — and understanding what he needs for qualifying and also what the car needs for reducing tire deg[redation] during the race.”

For now Palou, who turned 29 earlier this month, appears content with mastering those skills in IndyCar rather that following the natural progression into an F1 ride.

He said he went “all in” to win an F1 seat following his first IndyCar title in 2021, but doubts about whether he’d be given a competitive car led him to back out. Rumors linking him to Red Bull’s F1 team surfaced after last year’s Indy 500, but Palou shot those down too, saying he was staying with Ganassi.

Wanser, obviously, is happy with that decision and hopes it will pay off Sunday in Long Beach.

“Alex is very young, right?” he said. “IndyCar is so competitive that we could never, ever think about being complacent. If we start heading down that road, we will get beat and get beat often.

“It’s nonstop trying to constantly improve, knowing every weekend we show up to the racetrack it’s going to be difficult to win.”

Many people make simple mistakes when submitting passport photos, which often require them to reapply. Here, learn what to avoid and how to take the perfect photo.

When planning a trip, it’s common to want to spend as little as possible and avoid traps that can land us with unexpected costs. But if it’s time to renew your passport or apply for one, making simple mistakes could end up costing you an extra £102.

UK passport fees exceed £100 for a standard application, so it’s important to ensure everything is correct and up to standard when submitting your application. While there are plenty of official guidelines out there, many applications are still delayed or rejected each year due to photo issues, according to CEWE’s creative lead, Adrianne Yates.

READ MORE: Full list of new passport fees – up to £239READ MORE: British passport change scheduled Wednesday April 8 ‘for first time’

According to HM Passport Office, your passport photo must meet strict requirements so you don’t have to reapply and pay new fees.

For the perfect photo, stand in front of a plain, light-coloured background, use balanced lighting with no shadows, and take a clear, natural image of your face. You’ll also need to keep your expression neutral – so no smiling – with your mouth closed and eyes open.

If you’re wearing glasses, make sure they don’t cause glare. Headwear is only allowed for religious or medical reasons. Additionally, the image must be in colour, unedited, and taken within the last month to reflect your current look.

While these rules are generally well known, Adrianne Yates has shared some lesser-known tips that could help you even further – to avoid an expensive mistake.

The first one is to not tense up – by simply breathing out just before the photo is taken, as people often hold tension in their face without realising.

She says overthinking can also backfire, as trying too hard to take the perfect photo can leave you with what she describes as a “startled” look, which she says could lead to your photo being rejected.

And one of the most common mistakes people make is not paying enough attention to the lighting rules. The rules clearly state that there should be no shadows, but even faint ones, if overlooked, can cause problems. Adrianne highlights how hair, in particular, can cast shadows across your face, so keep that in mind and make sure your features are fully visible.

CONTROVERSIAL rapper Kanye West asked to perform at Tottenham Hotspur’s stadium — but was turned down due to the club’s historical connection to London’s Jewish community.

Yesterday Pepsi pulled their sponsorship of Wireless Festival in protest at the American performing there for three nights in July.

It came after The Sun on Sunday revealed that Sir Keir Starmer said it was “deeply concerning” that West had been booked despite previously making antisemitic remarks, as well as glorifying the Nazi leader in his song Heil Hitler.

A source said: “Kanye’s team had wanted him to play a run of shows at Tottenham before they considered Wireless.

“As part of his big music comeback, they thought he warranted a headline run of shows and chose the Tottenham stadium as their venue of choice.

“But when they approached Tottenham with their proposal, the club rejected it.

“There was no way they would allow Kanye to perform at the club given its history with the Jewish community.

“They then made the proposal to Wireless, which was accepted.”

The Sun revealed last month that 48-year-old West would headline all three nights of the festival in Finsbury Park, North London.

The performances are his first UK gigs since his 2015 Glastonbury headline slot.

But there are growing calls to ban him from entering the UK at all amid rising incidents of antisemitism.

West has previously apologised for his remarks and blamed them on his bipolar disorder.

SACRAMENTO — As Democratic leaders in California challenge President Trump’s latest effort to restrict the use of mail-in ballots, they also must grapple with a troubling development in the last election.

A significant number of mail-in ballots arrived too late to be counted in the Nov. 4 special election for Proposition 50, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s successful measure to reconfigure the state’s congressional districts, according to state data.

Ballots came in late at an average rate four times higher than that of the 2024 election, with rural counties seeing some of the biggest increases, according to a Times review.

“Something changed,” said Melvin E. Levey, who heads the Merced County Registrar of Voters. “We don’t like seeing late ballots and if someone has made the effort to vote, we want to count it.”

Merced saw almost a sevenfold increase in late-arriving mail ballots in the November election compared with the year before.

Vote-by-mail ballots are considered late if they are not postmarked on or ahead of election day or do not arrive within seven days of election day.

The issue appears to be linked to the U.S. Postal Service, which last year reduced the number of trips to pick up mail at post offices in mostly rural areas. Election officials warned before Nov. 4 that the Postal Service changes could delay the postmarking of ballots and lead to votes not being counted.

During the Nov. 4 election in California, an average of 8 out of every 1,000 vote-by-mail ballots were rejected by counties because they arrived too late, according to Secretary of State data. In the 2024 general election, which included the presidential race, an average of 2 of every 1,000 vote-by-mail ballots were rejected for being late.

In Kern County, for example, 3,303 mail-in ballots — or 1.95% of returned mail-in ballots — were not counted in the 2025 special election because they arrived too late. In 2024, that number was 332 — or 0.14%. And in Riverside County, 5,831 ballots — or 0.95% of those mailed in — were deemed too late to count, more than double the number of late ballots rejected in 2024.

Postal Service spokesperson Cathy Purcell recommended that voters mail their ballot a week in advance of when it must be received by election officials to ensure it arrives on time.

“You should never be mailing your ballot on election day,” Purcell told The Times.

Before last’s year’s special election, California Secretary of State Shirley Weber issued a similar warning about the delays. Anyone dropping off their ballot at a post office on election day should get it postmarked at the counter, she said.

“We don’t want anyone to just toss it into the mailbox as we have been able to do in the past and have it counted,” she said. “The Postal Service has said that they may not be counted in certain areas.”

California voter data expert Paul Mitchell expressed astonishment about the Postal Service’s guidance.

“We’ve had six, eight years of elections where people were feeling confident about mailing in their ballot,” said Mitchell, vice president of the voter data firm Political Data Inc. “Now the USPS is saying they have to mail it in a week early.”

“That is a dramatic change that can disenfranchise voters who are just following the same pattern that they’ve used in prior elections,” he added.

Democrats have been defending the vote-by-mail system in the face of Republican attacks. Trump recently signed an executive order to impose federal restrictions on mail-in ballots and, without evidence, has long criticized mail-in ballots as a source of fraud and a factor in his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden.

The Nov. 4 special election on Proposition 50 was the Democrats’ attempt to counter Trump’s push for Republican-led states, most notably Texas, to redraw their electoral maps to keep Democrats from gaining control of the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2026 midterms and upending his agenda. The ballot measure overwhelmingly passed.

Nearly 89% of votes in the Nov. 4 election were vote-by-mail ballots, according to Weber’s office. In addition to Proposition 50, tax measures were also on the ballots in some counties.

Postal Service changes

About a month before the Nov. 4 election, Weber and Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta held a news conference to encourage California voters to vote early because of service changes at the U.S. Postal Service.

Bonta told reporters that voters living 50 or more miles from six large mail processing centers in urban areas who mailed their ballots on election day would not have those ballots postmarked in time. The centers are in Los Angeles, Bell Gardens, San Diego, Santa Clarita, Richmond and West Sacramento, according to Bonta’s office.

The changes at the U.S. Postal Service are part of a 10-year plan that kicked off several years ago aimed at improving services and reducing costs at the independent federal agency.

In the 17 counties that are mostly or entirely within the 50-mile distance from the mail facilities, the average rate of late ballots doubled in the November 2025 election compared with the election the year before — from 2.5 per 1,000 ballots received in 2024 to 5.6 per 1,000 in 2025.

But in counties that are entirely or mostly outside of the 50-mile radius, the average rate of late ballots quadrupled — from 2 per 1,000 ballots received in 2024 to 9.3 per 1,000 in 2025, state election records show.

Similar complaints about late ballots because of the mail changes have been reported in other states, including in Snohomish County, Wash., according to the New York Times.

The U.S. Postal Services told the Times that there are “any number of factors” that may affect the timeliness of mail.

“The Postal Service has successfully delivered America’s election mail, and we are confident that we will do so again this year,” spokesperson Nikolaj Hagen said. “We rely on long-standing, robust and tested policies and procedures, which have proven successful in the secure and timely delivery of election mail.”

Hagen added that “adjustments to our transportation operations will result in some mailpieces not arriving at our originating processing facilities on the same day that they are mailed.”

Postmarks are generally applied at those processing facilities, Hagen said, so the postmark date may not reflect the date the mail was collected by a letter carrier, dropped off at a retail location, or placed in a collection box.

While the U.S. Postal Service uses postmarking as an internal tool to track the place and date the mail was accepted, outside entities also use the postmarks for their own purposes, including the Internal Revenue Service, which requires federal tax returns to be mailed by April 15.

Several U.S. senators, including Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), sent a letter in January to USPS Postmaster Gen. Dave Steiner warning that changes to postmarking will make it more difficult for people, particularly those in rural areas, to vote by mail and pay tax bills on time.

On Tuesday, Trump signed an executive order that seeks to put new federal controls on voting by mail in states, repeating his long-held but unsubstantiated claim that mail-in ballots are a source of widespread fraud in U.S. elections.

The order directs the U.S. Postal Service to take control of mail balloting by designing new envelopes with special bar codes that will allow the federal government to ensure that such ballots go out only to eligible voters.

States must follow the USPS process if they plan to use the federal mail system for sending or receiving ballots. They also must submit to the USPS lists of eligible voters in advance of such ballots passing through the mail system.

Separately, the Republican National Committee is challenging a Mississippi law that allows ballots that arrive up to five days after election day to be accepted and counted. The case was argued before the conservative-leaning U.S. Supreme Court in March.

Times staff reporter Kevin Rector contributed to this report.