One of the major storylines during the offseason between the 2025 and 2026 IndyCar seasons was the lawsuit involving McLaren and Alex Palou, after Palou opted to remain with Chip Ganassi Racing for the 2024 season despite having previously committed to joining McLaren.
That decision came just one year after he had attempted to leave Ganassi for McLaren, when he had a valid contract at Ganassi that had already tied him to the team through 2023. Ganassi ultimately won out, but it was widely believed that Palou would move on the following year.
When that didn't happen, McLaren brought legal action against the Spaniard, and that case was finally resolved before the 2026 season began.
Palou responded by winning another championship and, once again, winning more races than the entire McLaren team, which actually had their best season on record with Christian Lundgaard in third place with two wins and Pato O'Ward in fourth with three.
Alex Palou admits lawsuit 'didn't make a big impact'
Palou admitted that ending a legal saga that had really dated back three and a half years was nice heading into the 2026 season. But as far as his on-track performance, he also admitted that it never had much of an effect anyway.
"Not really," Palou admitted to Beyond the Flag. "Yes, on a positive note, obviously, it was behind me, but it didn’t really make a big impact on the previous years either. I was just glad obviously that heading into 2026, I didn’t really have to think at all about it."
It's a tough point to argue. While he didn't win the 2022 championship, he still scored a 30.3812-second victory from 11th on the grid at Laguna Seca to wrap up the year, not only reminding fans that his 2021 title was no fluke, but setting the tone for the next four seasons.
That was (and still is) the largest race-winning margin since the modern sanctioning body was formed in 1994 under the name Indy Racing League and competition began two years later.
In 2023, he became the series' first five-win champion since Simon Pagenaud in 2016 and the first driver to win a title without logging a single finish outside the top eight since Tony Kanaan in 2004. In 2024, he became the first back-to-back champion since Dario Franchitti won three in a row from 2009 to 2011, despite the fact that one of his three wins didn't actually count for anything.
And in 2025, he became the first driver to lead the championship from wire-to-wire in an Indy 500-winning season since Johnny Rutherford in 1980. After winning five of the season's first six races, he finished the year with eight victories, the most in the modern era.
So he's right; it's not like it ever really affected him anyway, but of course he's glad it's all done and dusted.
Instead, the No. 10 team focused exclusively on their on-track challenges in 2026. Thermal Club, where Palou was two-for-two, was removed from the calendar. Iowa Speedway, where Palou won in 2025, lost both of its races.
Four new tracks were added, and given the fact that one was a short oval and three were street courses, it set the stage for somebody to try to finally take it to Palou and end his run of championships.
He still clinched the title before the season finale again, something that, before 2023, hadn't been done since 2007. Now he's done it three times since 2023.
"It’s remarkable," he said of his team's ability to adapt. "We had four-brand new tracks for us. We had Phoenix, we had Washington, we had Arlington, and Markham. We actually didn’t do very well at those, only at Arlington and maybe Markham a little bit."
Palou's Phoenix race ended early in a crash after he had quickly moved from 10th to fourth, but he still scored more street course points than anybody in 2026. He also took the pole position in Washington, D.C. So while he may undersell it a bit, the fact is that he adapted just as well as anybody.
"It just shows how this team is, that it’s not about just knowing how to operate in places that we’ve already been," he continued. "It’s more about being able to adapt to new tracks, new people, new cars, new conditions, new stuff. I think it kind of shows that this team is the best there is."
While the Washington race ultimately didn't go his way, he echoed the sentiment shared by everybody else on the grid about just how special that weekend was, when IndyCar took to the nation's capital as a part of the ongoing 250th anniversary celebrations.
"It was incredible; it was a 10, a 10 out of 10," he said. "Honestly, it’s the best event that we’ve had outside the 500. Just the way the promotion was, the way the event in general was organized was insane. Obviously, having so much, like the flyovers and stuff, we had so much good stuff there that it was just incredible to be part of. So yeah, it was a huge weekend for IndyCar, for drivers, for the series, for the fans. It was packed. It was a cool one."
For as dominant as Palou was in 2026, Washington weekend notwithstanding, the season still gave him and the No. 10 team plenty room to improve in 2027.
"I think it’s racing, so there are always races where it’s super easy to go back and just be like, ‘hey, I could have done better here or better there.’ I think the Indy road course, we were leading, the car was really fast, and it was a pretty straightforward race in terms of strategy and stuff. We just kind of missed the pits when it went yellow, thinking that they were closed. It was a miscommunication more than just a strategy error. That’s one of the races that kind of went away."
But Palou, who had won the Indy road course race three years in a row before having to battle back to finish fifth this year, also knows that there were certainly other times when things did go his way, so it all balances out.
"At the same time, there have been others where I’m sure someone else thought the same and that’s why we got the win," he confessed. "So I think it’s very unfair just to see the ones that we don’t get."
Right now, "balancing out" still results in Palou and the No. 10 team winning championships, because they're still clearly at the top of their game once everything is ironed out. But despite being the undisputed class of the field once again, the 29-year-old also praised several of his competitors for the seasons they had in 2026.
"There have been so many," he noted. "I think Andretti in general. [Kyle] Kirkwood was already [impressive] last year; it’s not like he suddenly came out of nowhere. But I think Andretti in general as a team. I think [Kirkwood] was already at the level last year but didn’t really have the team around him he did this year, and they were very, very strong, and I’m sure that next year they’ll be even stronger.
"There were some places where McLaren was super, super strong with both Pato and Christian. The same for Penske with [David] Malukas. He did an incredible job in his first year with a really big team. There have been so many people and drivers and teams who have done an incredible job this year."
For every one of those competitors, however, they have reached a point where success is judged not just on race wins and podiums, but on the answer to a simple yet challenging question: "did you beat Alex Palou?"
For Palou, judging success is even more simple, which is one of the reasons why he's on the run he's on. And that's because it's not always about winning, but about maximizing performance, regardless of circumstances.
"There are so many races, like Markham, that was a success for us," he recalled of his P4 finish, following a crash in qualifying. "That was a great weekend for us. Huge weekend for us. It was incredible. Super proud. Mid-Ohio, we didn’t have the pace, but we managed to give 100% and execute perfectly and we finished P5. And that day I think that we were good for a P7. So to do P5 for us was a big win, and it was a huge success.
"There are always races where we don’t win, but as long as we give 100%, we’re very happy. Arlington as well, we finished second behind Kirkwood, but I didn’t think that we had the pace that day to finish second."
On the flip side, he admits he'd rather be entering the offseason on a more positive note, given the fact that eighth place was not at all reflective of the pace of the No. 10 Honda in the season finale at Laguna Seca.
"But then Laguna, we finished eighth, and although we had an extra stop and stuff, I was not happy about that," said Palou, who had entered that race with three wins, a runner-up finish, and a third place finish in five previous Laguna Seca starts.
He knows that days like those are days he needs to avoid to keep his championship streak intact.
"Nobody in the team was [happy], because we knew we had enough speed and performance and enough everything to fight with [Scott] McLaughlin for the win, but we didn’t. So that kind of hurt us more than some of the weekends."
The 2027 season is scheduled to get underway on Sunday, March 7 with the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg, which is set to be shown live from the streets of St. Petersburg, Florida on Fox. Can Palou become the third six-time champion in IndyCar history and the first to win five championships in a row?
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