I can totally imagine hearing Will Buxton opening up Fox's broadcast of next Sunday's IndyCar street race in Washington, D.C. by talking about how it's only a 133-point lead for Alex Palou, the championship battle is far from over, and there are six drivers with a legitimate chance of taking the fight to the four-time champion before season's end.
Because that's been the theme over the past few weeks as Palou has built up that lead. You respect the passion and the attempted promotion of the competitiveness of the sport, but at some point, it becomes time to cut the act and accept the fact that it's basically 49-0 with five minutes to go in the fourth quarter.
Palou made a rare mistake in qualifying for the inaugural street race in Markham, but it still only meant he would start 11th. He was still the betting favorite.
And for as huge of a deal as that supposedly was, with the Fox broadcast team stating it would have HUGE championship implications, Kyle Kirkwood, his closest "rival" in the championship battle, qualified 16th and started 22nd with an engine penalty.
By the way, credit to James Hinchcliffe for admitting that Kirkwood's nickname "King of the Streets" is ridiculous and not fair to Palou, who entered Sunday's race with three wins and a runner-up finishes in street races this year. Kirkwood doesn't have a win since, technically speaking, winter.
Then came the race itself.
Kirkwood straight-up crashed, after which point the Fox team still referred to him as "King of the Streets". Wishful thinking.
David Malukas, who has zero career wins but was still third in the championship and billed another one of Palou's alleged closest "challengers", made late wall contact and finished 17th.
And Palou, for all the talk about how this could be the turning point in the championship for the drivers already eight zillion lightyears behind him in the standings, still finished fourth, allowing him to extend his lead by 23 points.
Nobody took advantage of the supposed turning point. Missed opportunities all around.
The broadcast booth has obviously given him his flowers; there's no doubt about it. But they also openly root against him every single week. Townsend Bell admitted to being "sick to my stomach" when Palou won at Nashville Superspeedway, moments after screaming "THIS IS JOSEF NEWGARDEN'S HOUSE!" on live TV.
Again, come on. Just stop. Give it up.
At least they don't try to hide it, like Sky Sports did during the years Max Verstappen spent week in and week out dominating Formula 1.
When Palou made light contact with Alexander Rossi on Sunday, causing one of Rossi's tires to go down, they argued that he should be penalized. Drivers were banging wheel-to-wheel all race, and the only penalty that was actually issued for contact was when Nolan Siegel spun Newgarden out.
Dennis Hauger wasn't even penalized for wrecking Scott Dixon and Christian Rasmussen. And look at Marcus Ericsson's crucial late pass on Will Power.
The Palou tap was never going to warrant a penalty, despite the Fox team's best efforts to encourage the series to apply a different set of rules, just because he's Alex Palou. As Newgarden once famously said after a similarly chaotic Nashville street race, "Welcome to IndyCar." Palou Derangement Syndrome is real. Maybe the cure is napping during a NASCAR race.
At the end of the day, it boils down to Palou's dominance allegedly being tiresome, and you do respect the fact that fans (and "unbiased" announcers) want parity.
But we got exactly that on Sunday, with Ericsson earning his first win since March 2023 and Romain Grosjean earning a runner-up finish for Dale Coyne Racing, which, by the way, have now scored at least one podium finish in 13 consecutive seasons they've employed at least one full-time driver, an impressive streak that nobody talks about for a team that consistently punches above their weight.
Yet Palou still took another massive step toward what would be a fourth consecutive and fifth title since 2021.
They've tried to justify Palou's huge points lead, which is actually bigger than it was a year ago at this time, as being a byproduct of so many drivers getting better and taking points off of each other, rather than just one challenger emerging as his biggest threat.
That's interesting (and completely incorrect).
Because again, Kirkwood hasn't won since March.
Malukas, despite being Team Penske's top driver, has never won.
Christian Lundgaard has already been dropped by his team for next year.
And Pato O'Ward, with his one podium finish, is where he has been all seven years he's been with Arrow McLaren, smack in the middle of Tier 1B.
That's your entire championship top five, right there.
It's IndyCar's equivalent of the AFC East of the Tom Brady era. Who has actually gotten markedly better?
Palou. That's it.
IndyCar has one elite driver right now, and aside from Newgarden's back-to-back Indy 500 wins in 2023 and 2024, that's been the case for a while now.
There's a legitimate case to be made that this year's second-best driver is Felix Rosenqvist, because of his Indy 500 win. Nobody has ever driven a lap like he did on lap 200 around Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and nobody else has even come close to having that kind of a true standout moment this year.
Palou has had so many that he's forgotten how many, referencing after his Portland win that it was his fifth of the year. It was really his sixth. His 14 wins since the start of 2025 give him more wins during that stretch alone than any other active driver not named Newgarden, Will Power, or Scott Dixon have earned during their entire careers.
For years, IndyCar was billed as the most competitive series on the planet. There's a reason that 17 consecutive championships had come down to the season finale, before Palou sealed two of three before the finale from 2023 to 2025. And he can mathematically clinch this weekend in Washington, D.C., with three races remaining on the calendar afterward, something that hasn't been achieved since the 2002 CART season.
Don't blame Palou for doing what he's supposed to do: dominating on days he can dominate, and capitalizing on others' mistakes even when things don't go his way – and in the case of Markham, even after making his own, something we also saw at the Indy road course and at Road America when what could've been disastrous results still quietly turned into top five finishes.
There's a reason he's been the benchmark. There's a reason everyone's goal isn't just to win; it's to beat Alex Palou. There's a reason it's hard to beat him over a full 18-race season. And there's a reason nobody has been able to do it since 2022. Right now, IndyCar simply doesn't have a driver capable of taking that next step, and nobody has even shown they might be ready to fight.
Race 15 of 18 on the 2026 NTT IndyCar Series schedule is the Freedom 250 Grand Prix on the street of Washington, D.C. Live coverage is set to be provided by Fox beginning at 12:00 p.m. ET on Sunday, August 23, so start a free trial of FuboTV now and don't miss it!
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