IndyCar: 3 changes that should scare Alex Palou’s rivals in 2025

Consistency is what has made Chip Ganassi Racing's Alex Palou an IndyCar championship contender year in and year out, and on three of four occasions since taking over behind the wheel of the No. 10 Honda, he has earned the right to hoist the Astor Cup.

Palou did lead the series in victories when he won his 2023 title with five, and his three wins in 2021 were tied for the most. But had all eight of those wins been turned into second place finishes, and the runners-up in each of those eight races been the winners, he still would have won both championships.

Though Palou did not lead the series in wins in 2024, securing only two victories, the same would have been true once again.

Beating Palou over the course of an entire 17-race season is a tall task, and though there are certainly a number of contenders capable of pulling it off, it might not be a task that gets any easier in 2025.

Chip Ganassi Racing expanded to five cars in 2024, which led many to believe that perhaps they may be stretched too thin and not be able to utilize their resources as effectively as they had when Palou won his titles in 2021 and 2023.

Though he did drop off from five wins to two and Chip Ganassi Racing won only half as many total races as Team Penske, Palou doesn't think it had an impact.

“No," Palou told Beyond the Flag. "Obviously it was not easy, but even if you don't change and if you keep the same car count, there are different things you need to overcome. Maybe you lose one person who was huge and you need to put three persons just to try to overcome that person's job.

"So obviously putting one more car to last year, it didn't make things easier for us, but at the same time, once the team was able to get all the people ready around it, get all the mechanics, get all the components, get all the structure we had around that, it actually benefited us sometimes, just to get more data, just to be able to try more stuff in the cars and so on. So it's been fun.

"I'm very glad that we've been able to, and the team has been able to, get that reward after all that hard work of hiring new people, teaching new people, preparing a new car, flying more people, and [driving] more haulers. It's a big change when you add in a fifth car, so I'm very glad that they now have a reward for that, which is our championship.”

But in 2025, Chip Ganassi Racing plan to go back to running just three cars.

Palou is set to be back behind the wheel of the No. 10 Honda (not the No. 1 Honda), Scott Dixon is expected to return behind the wheel of the No. 9 Honda, and Kyffin Simpson is expected to move from the discontinued No. 4 Honda to the No. 8 Honda, leaving Linus Lundqvist and Marcus Armstrong on the outside looking in and seeking new rides.

While there wasn't necessarily a negative impact of running five cars, as evidenced by a third Palou championship and a fourth Ganassi title in the last five years (Dixon, 2020), could the downsize back to three be a positive one like it was for Andretti Global, whose Colton Herta matched the team's best championship finish (second place) since Ryan Hunter-Reay won his 2012 title?

“I don't know, honestly," Palou admitted. "Hopefully it's a positive one, but I don't know. Making sure we have better stuff, better components, but it's tough to say.

"I think it's such a big organization that they could have done seven cars without blinking and without having any issues, so I think going from five to three won't be bad, but it won't be like, ‘oh yeah, now it's going to be so much better.’ I think they already are prepared to run more cars than five, so that's why probably it's not going to change at all.”

But that's not the only thing that could play to Palou's advantage during the 2025 IndyCar season.

Though they are dropping two cars, Chip Ganassi Racing's new technical alliance with a resurgent Meyer Shank Racing team means that there are still effectively set to be five cars with Ganassi ties on the race track in each event.

Felix Rosenqvist, whom the team never wanted to lose, and whose unexpected post-2020 move to Arrow McLaren led to Palou's signing, is set to return behind the wheel of the No. 60 Honda, and Armstrong is set to join him in the No. 66 Honda as the replacement for the A.J. Foyt Enterprises-bound David Malukas.

And by resurgent, we do mean resurgent. The team qualified roughly 10 spots better, on average, compared to where they were in 2023, and with both cars.

Malukas' average starting position of 8.7 and Rosenqvist's average starting position of 9.4 ranked seventh and eighth highest in the series, respectively, and they were notably well ahead of every Ganassi driver not named Palou (8.4). Armstrong was next at 11.1, followed by Dixon at 11.4.

Though many see technical alliances as a way for small teams to get better, they work both ways.

Just look at the progress Andretti Global made with both Herta and Kyle Kirkwood, specifically this year following their car count reduction, with their Meyer Shank Racing alliance, and look at how Foyt's alliance with Penske benefited Penske at the Indy 500 and Foyt everywhere else, resulting in Santino Ferrucci securing the team their best championship finish since 2002.

And then there's the schedule.

I've been very vocal about the nonsensical narrative that is Palou not being strong on ovals, and on far more than one occasion.

Had he not had a terrible pit stop and then uncharacteristically wrecked out at Iowa Speedway while trying to make up ground, he likely would have had back-to-back podium finishes at the series' shortest and most physical race track, and had his No. 10 Honda not had a battery issue before the second race at the Milwaukee Mile, we're probably talking about a runner-up finish – even ahead of back-to-back Indy 500 winner Josef Newgarden – in the oval standings, as opposed to a seventh.

But Milwaukee's race count reduction from two to one in favor of a points race at Thermal Club, where Palou was dominant in 2024's exhibition race, is probably more likely than not to play into his favor.

Palou won his heat race and drove away from the field in the main event. Had that event been a points race in 2024, he would have clinched the championship before the season finale for the second year in a row after it hadn't happened at all since 2007 (2005 if you exclude Champ Car).

Anything can happen on any given weekend; one year's success does not guarantee another's. But in terms of raw upside, Palou and Thermal go hand-in-hand.

The streets of St. Petersburg, Florida are scheduled to get the 2025 IndyCar season underway with the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg on Sunday, March 2. Live coverage of the entire 17-race season is set to be provided by Fox.