Alex Palou's third straight IndyCar championship was never in doubt. After the three-time champion won five of the first six races of the year, placing second in the only non-win, it appeared inevitable that he would eventually be crowned champion for the fourth time in the last five years.
It became a matter of when, not if, and that "when" was before the season's penultimate race, marking the earliest a championship has been clinched since Cristiano da Matta won the 2002 CART title.
Yet the IndyCar oval championship came down to the wire, and hardly a word was said about it.
IndyCar completely ignores tight oval battle
In 2010, IndyCar began awarding the A.J. Foyt Oval Trophy and the Mario Andretti Road Course Trophy to the top scorer in each (with street courses falling under the road course umbrella).
Despite the fact that that tradition ended after 2012, points have still been tallied for both disciplines (obviously) – and it goes without saying that anyone who has access to a spreadsheet can throw it together.
Heading into the season finale at Nashville Superspeedway, Palou only had a 13-point advantage in the oval standings over two-time oval champion Pato O'Ward, after entering the previous race at Milwaukee Mile just one point behind O'Ward.
O'Ward looked well-positioned to win the title, having taken pole and led the most laps. A win would have scored him 54 points, meaning that Palou would have needed to score 41 points (second place with laps led) to tie O'Ward. Both would have had two oval wins, so Palou would have won the tiebreaker due to his two runner-up finishes (O'Ward had one).
Then O'Ward crashed into the turn two wall due to a tire failure.
O'Ward's tire failure, which all but sealed the oval championship for Palou, was somewhat reminiscent of Will Power's early crash at Fontana in 2012, a crash which meant that Ryan Hunter-Reay only needed to finish inside the top five to seal his first title.
It was impactful, and it changed the outcome of the championship (or in this case, the oval championship).
We're talking about O'Ward, the series' most popular driver, battling for the oval title against the series champion and Indy 500 winner, who had never previously won that particular title.
That's a storyline, headline, you name it. It's big.
Yet IndyCar failed to capitalize.
The broadcast failed to mention it, and nobody seemed to care.
Palou, who became the first driver since the Foyt and Andretti trophies first came into existence to lead the series in both oval points and road and street course points in the same season, hopes that changes in the future.
"I think that would be fun," he told Beyond the Flag. "Yeah, I think it would be fun."
It really wouldn't take much effort for the series, given the fact that anybody can keep track of these stats. And believe it or not, the series does actually still keep track.
"Honestly, although we don't really celebrate it or we don't keep track of it as much, IndyCar still keeps track of it," Palou said. "You can see on the classification the amount of points you've scored on road and street courses and the amount of points you've scored on ovals."
Even though there wasn't any kind of a trophy presentation (like there should be), Palou was extremely satisfied to walk away as the 2025 IndyCar oval champion, especially since he had entered the season without ever having won on an oval.
"It was amazing to get my first oval championship," he said. "And normally I've been sixth, seventh, fifth, but never up there. I think we went to Milwaukee tied on points or almost the same as Pato. It was a big target of ours to get that oval championship, even though it doesn't get celebrated as much as before.
"But yeah, I think it would be something that we could bring back for sure."
Palou's oval record in 2025 included an Indy 500 win, a win at Iowa Speedway, runner-up finishes at Milwaukee and Nashville, and an additional finish of fifth at Iowa and eighth at Gateway. It was good for an average finish of 3.17.
O'Ward, who finished 44 points behind, wrapped up the season with an Iowa win, a runner-up finish at Gateway, a third place finish at Indy, fifth place finishes at Iowa and Milwaukee, and the Nashville DNF. His average finish dipped from 3.2 to 6.67 after the Nashville crash.
The first oval race of the 2026 IndyCar season is predicted to take place in early March at Phoenix Raceway, where the series hasn't raced since 2018. The Indy 500 had been the oval opener since 2022, and the 110th running is scheduled to take place on Sunday, May 24.