Written by Archie O’Reilly
It has been a special year for Alex Palou.
It has been his first as a father after welcoming daughter Lucia last December. And to cap off 2024, he has won a memorable first IndyCar championship since entering fatherhood.
“They say winning is the best thing in life, which I agree,” Palou said. “They say being a dad is the best thing in life, which I double agree. But when you do both the same year, it’s really super special.
“It’s been an amazing year of learning - maybe sleeping a little bit less, not being able to be on the simulator as much as I used to at home, playing video games.
“It’s been amazing. I wouldn’t change anything that I’m living at the moment. It was the best thing to have her at my first win this year at the Indy road course, to have her today celebrating.”
Winning a third title in four years with Chip Ganassi Racing, and in only his fifth season as an IndyCar driver, Palou has become the 13th three-time champion in the premier American open-wheel category. At 27 years old, five months and 14 days, he is the second-youngest to achieve this after Sam Hornish Jr. (three months and six days younger).
Palou, who moved to IndyCar from Super Formula in 2020, is already halfway to teammate Scott Dixon’s title tally after a 24-year career for the New Zealander. Dixon’s six championships are bettered only by A.J. Foyt’s seven.
“I love this sport,” Palou said. “I love to have the opportunity to be in a position to win races and championships.
“I’m not setting a goal of trying to win four or five or anything like that. I think it’s surreal to have won three IndyCar championships. Never thought in my best dreams that I would be in this position.
“I take one race at a time, one lap at a time. For me, every lap that I’m doing is the most important of my life. I do the same for every race. Hopefully we can keep on winning races and championships.”
The road to the third championship
Palou has become the first driver to defend a championship since Dario Franchitti, who won consecutively in 2009, 2010 and 2011. The Scot won three of his four IndyCar championships with Ganassi and remains with the team in a driver management capacity.
“He still reminded me that he did it once more so I still have one more year to catch him. Hopefully we can,” Palou said with a smile.
“He said that we did a really good job… He was very happy. He’s a big part of it. He’s helping us in different ways. He knows that everything he says and everything he can try to tell us during every single weekend, it’s huge, especially for me and the rookies at the ovals.”
While unable to match five victories in 2023 - four of which came in a five-race period - Palou has continued to go from strength-to-strength in 2024. The championship did go down to the final race unlike in 2023 - as much as Will Power was always unlikely to close a 33-point gap - but Palou’s trademark consistency has been elevated to yet another level.
He won on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course and again at Laguna Seca, along with three runner-up finishes and a further third-place result. And all 13 top-10 results were incredibly top-five finishes.
There were anomalous results - finding himself innocently caught up in Josef Newgarden’s spin in Detroit, a crash at Iowa Speedway and a mechanical issue in the second Milwaukee Mile race - but Palou’s consistency otherwise comfortably sealed him the title.
“I think in the past I was very consistent,” he said. “I think this year was even better, except the last, I would say three/four races.
“Trying to maximise, I think we can do a little bit better. [We] let somebody else win at Mid-Ohio, which could have been ours. Some other races like Iowa [Race] One. Learned a tonne. Hopefully next year I’m strong.”
Continuing to strive for even more
Palou is not ready to settle. While he is performing at a level that slots him among IndyCar’s greats, he wants to extract even more and continue to learn “many, many things”.
“It’s been a really quick, short, but at the same time long, season,” he said. “Everything happens so quick. Especially [because] I did Le Mans, couldn’t really rest that week. It just feels like we started two weeks ago.
“We learned a tonne with the hybrid. I think we learned a tonne today with the alternates on an oval, having to run two sets. Got trapped at the beginning because of those alternates. There’s many, many things that we learned this year that makes us stronger next year.”
While he has been the class of the field over the season, Palou does not feel he has been comfortably clear of the rest at any one point.
“I would say we’ve not been amazing anywhere, except Thermal - and that didn’t count,” he said. “Indy road course, it was our first win, but we’ve always been [good] there.
“Even when we were struggling a little bit, like Toronto - we had that penalty in qualifying for interference - we were starting P-bananas and still made it to top five. I think those were the days where, instead of having a really bad day, we actually made points to all the other competitors.”
He continues to earmark ovals as a point for improvement, even though he achieved a career-best oval finish of second at Iowa - beaten only by Power after a fortuitous caution - and four top fives.
“[I need to] try and up my game on ovals,” he said. “Well, we’ve improved. I was leading in [Nashville] practice. I feel like it was all bad in qualifying. There’s something there. I don’t know how to get that from me, as you can see. We’ll get it next year.”
The absence of an oval win is on his mind.
“Imagine when we win on an oval,” he said, grinning. “Jokes aside, I know that I need to win. I want to win more than anything else at the moment. Is it going to be next year? Is it going to be in two years? We’ve been close, trying, feeling more comfortable. It will come one day.”
The story of sealing at Nashville
The Nashville weekend was far from straightforward for Palou. A top-10 finish would essentially have sealed the deal and he knew Power would need a podium to stand any chance of overcoming his 33-point deficit. But there was jeopardy.
“I actually liked [the car] in practice,” he said. “Suddenly we just didn’t have the same balance during qualifying. We went back to our practice setup for [the race] and it worked the same way. I was quite comfortable. I don’t think that we still had the pace to be top three today with a normal starting position but I think we were pretty close.”
After topping opening practice, Palou qualified a lowly 15th and was demoted a further nine spots due to an unapproved engine change. Confined to a 24th-place start with Power 20 positions ahead, Palou knew he would have to make ground quickly.
“At the beginning I had to go for it,” he said.”I had to take some chances on the start trying to make up some room. Just starting so far back, we needed to gain. Everything was working right - up to 15th or 16th, something like that [in the early laps], which was already a good step.”
Then things changed. With little over 10 laps having been run, Power pulled into pit lane.
Why? Unfathomably, his lap belt appeared to fail and became unclipped. He had already dropped to the lower end of the top 10 on the alternate tyres but this unlikeliest situation essentially anticlimactically decided the title for Palou.
“I saw the 12 going into pit lane,” Palou said. “At first I was like: ‘Oh, what strategy are they going to pull off?’
“Unfortunately that’s not the way obviously you want your biggest competitor to go down on the season finale. At the same time that’s what happened to us two weeks ago. It’s racing. It’s motorsport. That’s what makes this sport so hard.
“After that we were doing our own race, obviously keeping an eye on the No.12 car but just trying to move forward.”
Palou eventually came home in 11th - his fourth-worst result of the year and only the fourth finish outside the top five - following a recovery from being trapped laps down after a caution. He managed to make his way as high as sixth but knew “it was probably not the day to try to win the race and get into an accident at the end” with a championship to clinch.
Power offered his congratulations to Palou as he was presented with the Astor Cup and the pair shared words on the astonishing travails of the Aussie’s race.
“He was explaining to me what happened… I was like: ‘Man, ‘it’s crazy that that happened,’” Palou said. “Normally it never happens. Same as what happened to me and the battery two weeks ago. Obviously it was very dangerous what happened to him. You don’t want to see that. I’m glad that nothing happened and he was still able to finish the race.”
After a recurrence of the issue late in the race, Power finished eight laps down in 24th, losing out on his own bid to become a three-time champion and dropping to fourth in the standings.
“I was not going to cry… I was not celebrating,” Palou said of Power’s strife. “That’s how it goes. I think he was not crying when I couldn’t start at Milwaukee - he was crying of happiness. No, he was happy but he was not celebrating that I couldn’t run.
“When it’s not your day, it is what it is. You cannot do anything. Same goes for when it’s your day. Like me, it was my day. It was not meant to be for him - it was meant to be for me.”
And so celebrations were cued for Palou. There was a poignant note too after veteran strategist Barry Wanser missed out on the celebrations last year due to his battle with cancer. Now recovered, Wanser was present for the party in Nashville.
“He was super pumped,” Palou said of Wanser. “Obviously I was as well. I said: ‘Hey, we did it again just for you.’ It was pretty cool that we were able to win and he was able to be here. He sets the mentality, he sets the spirit of the No.10 car - I would say the CGR team but especially the No.10 car having him on the radio.”
Palou was also embraced by team owner Chip Ganassi.
“It’s an aggressive hug,” Palou joked. “He has very big and strong hands. That means maybe he’s happy or that he’s not happy at all. He was happy. I was happy. I got hurt but I was happy.”
Celebrations will continue for some time during the off-season. But Palou already has one eye on the future and knows the competition will continue to ramp up in 2025 as he continues to strive for even more.
“I’m not ruling anybody out,” he said. “It was Power heading into this weekend. Now we talk about Colton [Herta] and [Scott] McLaughlin, Pato [O’Ward]. It’s everybody. I think that’s the beauty of this series, that it’s everybody. You cannot count somebody down. [Scott] Dixon, as well. He had a really tough year - I know because I’ve been inside the team.
“It will be exciting next year.”
Comments