How an IndyCar announcer nearly took Alex Palou's seat

When the dust settled on the 2019 IndyCar season, all indications were that Sebastien Bourdais returning to Dale Coyne Racing for a fourth year in a row.

The four-time Champ Car champion won on the Streets of St. Petersburg, going from last to first to open up the 2017 season. It was his first season with Dale Coyne's team since his part-time effort in 2011, and he was a legitimate championship contender before crashing in his Indy 500 qualifying attempt. His injuries resulted in nine missed starts.

Then in 2018, Bourdais again won in St. Pete, and he finished in seventh place in the championship standings, his best ever finish in the modern IndyCar Series.

In 2019, Bourdais still had a respectable year, finishing in 11th place in the standings with a podium finish and eight other top 10 finishes. But it was his first winless season since 2013, when he drove for Dragon Racing, and just before Thanksgiving, it was confirmed that he would not be back with the team in 2020.

Santino Ferrucci returned to Dale Coyne Racing in 2020 after an impressive rookie season, and he ended up taking Bourdais' place behind the wheel of the No. 18 Honda. But Bourdais' surprise departure, which resulted in a full-time move to IMSA, left one seat open at Dale Coyne Racing.

Coyne claimed that he had narrowed a list of about 10 drivers to four, and he named three of them: Sergio Sette Camara, Alex Palou, and James Hinchcliffe.

He never named the fourth, and he didn't need to.

Camara had been in Formula 2 for three years at the time and won three races along the way. Palou had been competing in Japanese Super Formula, along with Japanese Super GT, after spending four years across GP3 and Formula 3.

Hinchcliffe had a deal to return to Schmidt Peterson Motorsports in 2020, but after the team partnered with McLaren and switched from Honda to Chevrolet, he was left without a ride. McLaren were also reportedly not pleased with Hinchcliffe appearing in ESPN The Body Issue in 2019, and that displeasure was said to have played a role in his departure.

Hinchcliffe may have seemed like the most reliable option for Coyne at the time.

He was a series veteran with six wins to his name and finished between eighth and 13th place in the championship in all eight of his seasons as a full-time driver. Before he was forced to miss most of the 2015 season following his harrowing Indy 500 practice crash, he had already won a race.

But Dale Coyne Racing went with Palou, forming a partnership with Team Goh to do so. Palou drove the No. 55 Honda in 2020.

Camara has still never competed in IndyCar, and Hinchcliffe ended up joining NBC Sports as an IndyCar analyst in 2020. He also landed a part-time deal to run select races for Andretti Autosport.

Hinchcliffe, who competed full-time for Andretti from 2012 to 2014, rejoined the team full-time 2021. But in 2022, he made he full-time move to the NBC Sports broadcast booth, where he remained through 2024 before Fox acquired the series broadcast rights.

He is now a full-time analyst in the Fox Sports booth, alongside longtime NBC colleague and fellow former driver Townsend Bell and new lead announcer Will Buxton.

But in 2020, after Coyne didn't sign Hinchcliffe, Palou was perhaps the biggest unknown at the time.

There didn't appear to be much to glean from his rookie season. He finished three spots behind Ferrucci in the championship standings, and he crashed out of the Indy 500.

Skip ahead five years later, and it's clear that Coyne's decision was the first step on the road to a modern dynasty.

"One bad day", as Palou says, from anybody who set up his Dale Coyne Racing deal, very well could have resulted in him never getting a taste of IndyCar, where he is now a three-time champion and newly crowned Indy 500 winner.

"I was going to stay in Japan," Palou told Beyond the Flag after his Indy 500 win. "I was going to be able to extend my contract there and stay there in Japan for a long time. Obviously, that was not what I wanted, or what I was pushing for. I wanted to get a chance to go to IndyCar and see what I could do there, see if I would like it. I knew I was going to like it, but you never know until you're there."

He got that chance, and he took advantage.

"But yeah, that changed everything," he continued. "It was a decision by Honda, by Dale Coyne, by my sponsors that I had in Japan, Roger [Yasukawa], who is managing me now, and made it possible. So yeah, just one bad day from one of those persons of just being grumpy or something, I would not have been here today. So it’s pretty, pretty special."

The bright spots from his rookie season, which included a podium finish in only his second ever road course start at Road America, and a row three qualifying effort for the Indy 500, were enough to land him a surprise ride with Chip Ganassi Racing in 2021.

At first, that wasn't even going to happen; Chip Ganassi's team thought Felix Rosenqvist was going to stay in the No. 10 Honda, but the 2019 Rookie of the Year and 2020 first-time winner left for McLaren.The Palou move came as somewhat of a shock after one season, a season in which he himself fell shy of Rookie of the Year honors with only two top 10 finishes.

Not many knew just how special he could become.

The rest is history for the now three-time series champion and Indy 500 winner.

Palou won his first race with Chip Ganassi Racing, and with a three-win season, he won his first championship. During a "down" year in 2022 which was embroiled in contract and legal drama when he tried to join McLaren himself, he still finished in fifth place in the standings, and he put the series on notice by winning at Laguna Seca by more than 30 seconds to close out the year.

In 2023, Palou became the first driver to win a championship before the season finale since Bourdais won the 2007 Champ Car title, and he did it with a series-high five wins and no finishes lower than eighth place all year.

In 2024, fresh off more contract drama when he this time refused to join McLaren, he became the first repeat champion since Dario Franchitti won three titles in a row from 2009 to 2011.

This year, he has five wins in the first six races, including the Indy 500. IndyCar has not seen a start like this since 1979, when A.J. Foyt won five of the first six races, though his only non-win ironically came at Indy.

Palou is the first reigning series champion to win the "Greatest Spectacle in Racing" since Franchitti won it in 2012, and he is seeking to become the first driver to win three titles in a row since Franchitti. He is also seeking to become the first driver to win the Indy 500 and the championship in the same year since Franchitti won both in 2010.

And had Coyne signed Hinchcliffe, perhaps Palou never ends up even getting an IndyCar opportunity at all.