Chip Ganassi Racing's Alex Palou did what everybody expected him to at the Milwaukee Mile: stayed out of trouble and clinched his fourth consecutive NTT IndyCar championship, giving him five in six seasons behind the wheel of the No. 10 Honda. He has clinched three of his four in a row before the season finale, after IndyCar had gone 17 straight seasons with the title fight going down to the wire.
A year ago, Palou won eight races and swept both the road and street course championship as well as the oval championship en route to his fourth career title. While he once again dominated this year's road and street course battle, with five wins in 11 races (with still one race to go), IndyCar once again has a new oval champion.
It marks the third straight season that IndyCar has seen a new oval champion, and this year's champion is ironically one who still has zero career wins in the series, illustrating the level of parity that still exists within IndyCar despite Palou's run of championships.
And that new oval champion is David Malukas.
Malukas was frustrated after the second Milwaukee race (technically the first, due to the postponement), which netted him his fourth runner-up finish of the year and the sixth of his career.
He claimed that Chevrolet let him and the team down with their issue on the final restart and claimed that he is "cursed" at this point, given the fact that it marks yet another unique way in which the No. 12 team managed to let a win slip away.
But for as often as wins have slipped away, Malukas and the No. 12 team have done a remarkable job collecting points on ovals this year. His average finish in the six oval races was 3.5, and he never finished lower than seventh, recording four podium finishes along the way. In addition to Milwaukee, he also finished runner-up in the Indy 500 after losing the lead coming to the checkered flag.
Tough day to come so close to his first IndyCar win but congrats to @malukasdavid on clinching the #IndyCar oval championship in his first year with Team Penske.
— Beyond the Flag (@Beyond_The_Flag) August 31, 2026
Not a small feat. He's the third consecutive first-time oval champ (2024 McLaughlin, 2025 Palou).
As far as the oval points battle is concerned, he beat Arrow McLaren's Pato O'Ward, who swept the Milwaukee weekend, by just three points. Reigning oval champion Palou finished fifth in the standings with a win at Nashville Superspeedway, while Team Penske's Josef Newgarden, who also won twice (Phoenix Raceway and World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway), was fourth, in large part due to two DNFs at Indy and Milwaukee.
Team Penske's Scott McLaughlin, who won the 2024 oval championship, was third, with nothing lower than an eighth place finish on an oval this year, despite recording no wins himself. His most recent win came in the second race of the 2024 Milwaukee doubleheader.
Both McLaughlin and Palou earned their first career oval victories en route to their first oval championship later in the same year. Malukas has gone one step further and won the oval title while he is still in pursuit of his first oval (or any IndyCar) victory.
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