Forget F1; Verstappen-like Alex Palou taking IndyCar to the ‘Max’

Generational-talent Max Verstappen has ruled Formula 1 for the past five years.

And while it is becoming increasingly clear that he likely won’t be winning his fifth straight world championship this fall, open-wheel racing has found a champion cut from the same proverbial cloth in the North American series who is rivaling similar dominance to Verstappen’s performance in F1 – “The Pinnacle of Motorsport” – in 2023.

Meet 2025 Alex Palou, the three-time IndyCar champion and most recent victor of the coveted Indy 500, a driver whom F1 has shockingly decided to pass over in recent years, despite Palou dominating IndyCar to the same tune as the F1 star at his peak.   

From the looks of things, Palou appears to be entering his peak in the NTT IndyCar Series, as crazy as that sounds for a multi-time champ. He is seeking his third straight Astor Cup, awarded to the series champion, and fourth in the past five seasons, and he finally broke through and won the "Greatest Spectacle in Racing” on Memorial Day Weekend, a race that had eluded him since joining the series in 2020.  

Palou won two races in the entire 2024 championship season. He has won three more races than that already in 2025, capturing five of the first seven, and we haven't even reached the halfway point of the year. I guess it didn't matter that he wasn't the betting favorite in the Indy 500 after all.

While Palou left the Motor City following this past weekend’s Detroit Grand Prix with the second worst result for an Indy 500 winner in the next race over this past decade, his sheer dominance to start the year shouldn’t go unnoticed.

In 2023, Verstappen was fresh off back-to-back F1 titles himself after winning the 2021 crown in the controversial final race of the season against the legendary Lewis Hamilton, a seven-time world champion.

During the ground effect era, the 27-year-old Dutch driver has been unmatched, but never better than two years ago. That season, Red Bull's RB19 won 21 out of 22 races, with Verstappen winning 19 of them.

With the 19 victories, he obliterated the previous record for wins in a championship, which he himself set the previous year. He would win the title in 2023, and then seal his fourth in 2024. Only 17 drivers in the history of F1 have scored more than 19 wins in the entirety of their career, let alone in a single season.

Could we be seeing the same peek for Palou in IndyCar this year?

Alex Palou evoking shades of Indy greats

When you look closely at what Palou has accomplished thus far, the first Spaniard to ever win the Indy 500 will challenge arguably the greatest IndyCar season in history. That belongs to perhaps the greatest driver the series has ever seen: A.J. Foyt.  

The legendary Texan got his 1964 campaign rolling in style by winning the first seven races in a row, Indy 500 included, and added three more victories later in the year to set a record equaled only by Al Unser since (1970).

Foyt would go on to win his fourth USAC Championship in five years, something Palou is looking to do in the modern version of the series.

Although Palou’s latest race wasn’t a step in that direction, there’s no reason to believe he won’t get back to his winning ways at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway on Sunday, June 15, when IndyCar is scheduled to return with the Bommarito Automotive Group 500.

The latest result marked Palou’s first DNF since the first leg of the Iowa Speedway doubleheader last July. It was just the third race the 28-year-old has failed to finish a race dating back to the start of 2022.

Palou’s original racing dream was F1, but following his Indy 500 win, he told reporters that F1 “is not calling me anymore”, and that he wants to get another Indy 500 victory instead. F1 may have bypassed Palou that past few years, but now Palou seems comfortable returning the favor and being dominant in IndyCar, like the best of the best in F1.

Interestingly enough, Foyt, like Palou, shunned F1. Technically, Foyt is considered an F1 driver, since back then the Indy 500 was part of the series calendar. However, he never competed in any other Grand Prix, despite showing great versatility. Foyt won the Daytona 500 and 24 Hours of Le Mans, too, but rejected the chance to compete against the heavyweights of F1.

Palou flirted with those F1 dreams in 2022. He participated in practice with McLaren at the United States Grand Prix and sought an opportunity with the team that ultimately wound up with him embroiled in a legal battle with Zak Brown and his team.

Palou participated in four races in Formula 2 in 2017. He then drove full-time in Formula 3 in 2018, finishing seventh in the standings.

Williams F1 driver Carlos Sainz Jr. told ESPN that “someone who is capable of winning the Indy 500, at least he should at some point be given the chance to show what he can do in Formula 1.”

Sainz is likely on to something there, but it likely won’t be Palou who bucks that trend after pumping the brakes on the F1 talk.

What we are watching, though, is the next great IndyCar legend in the making. You can make a case that Palou has already cemented that status.

“I think he’s one of the greats. It’s that simple," Palou’s IndyCar boss, Chip Ganassi, told reporters following his first Indy 500 victory. “Certainly we’ve had some great drivers on our team, and he’s right there, at worst, shoulder-to-shoulder with all the rest of them."