IndyCar: How a morning warmup completely changed the 2024 championship

At the time, six weeks had passed since IndyCar's most recent points race, the 2024 season opener, on the streets of St. Petersburg, Florida when morning warmup for April's crown jewel event on the streets of Long Beach, California exposed an infraction that turned this year's championship on its ear.

When a fluke system outage revealed that Team Penske retained access to the push-to-pass overtake system when it was shut off for the other nine teams on the grid, further investigation revealed that two of their three drivers had taken advantage of the illegal access during restarts in St. Petersburg.

Race winner Josef Newgarden, whose three separate violations occurred because he thought there had been a rule change, was stripped of the win and the 53 points he had earned on race day, leaving him with only the point he had scored by taking pole (legally) the previous day.

Third place finisher Scott McLaughlin, who admitted to one accidental push of the button, was stripped of his third place finish and the 35 points that came with it.

Fourth place finisher Will Power, who was promoted to second place due to the disqualifications of his teammates, was docked 10 points since the No. 12 team retained this illegal access, even though he didn't take advantage of it. It ended up being a net loss of two points for him.

All drivers who finished behind Newgarden and McLaughlin were promoted, with Arrow McLaren's Pato O'Ward becoming the new race winner 45 days after the race had actually happened.

But most importantly, Chip Ganassi Racing's Alex Palou was promoted from sixth place (28 points) to fourth (32 points).

He gained four points, and McLaughlin lost 35 points. As it turns out, McLaughlin ended up finishing 39 points behind Palou in the championship standings.

Asked if he had thought about that situation at all and if it made him feel a sense of "thank goodness that was discovered", Palou admitted he wasn't aware of the points scenario on the "what-if" front and even followed up with a question of his own.

“No, not really; I didn't know, actually," he admitted to Beyond the Flag. "So he actually – is it we would have been tied or he would have won?”

Told he would have been tied with McLaughlin and lost out on a tiebreaker, as McLaughlin won three races while Palou won two, Palou admitted that he probably would have pushed a little bit harder than he did at Nashville Superspeedway, where he effectively sealed the championship shortly after the green flag flew when Power had his seatbelt issue.

Power had entered the race 33 points behind, while McLaughlin, 50 points behind, was eliminated when the green flag flew since Palou started the race.

“Oh okay," he said. "Interesting! Yeah, then I think we would have had to obviously push a little bit more in the last couple of races. But he's been strong all season. He's been super competitive. He's been a great competitor, and yeah, he was, at some places, he was unbeatable. So it'll be tough to keep ourselves up there next year, but yeah, still, I'm happy that it ended the way it did for us.” 

Given the fact that this 39-point swing assumes that literally everything else had remained the same, which is taking quite a bit for granted, it's quite safe to assume that Palou is right, and he probably still would have ended up on top.

That said, it's an interesting possibility to consider, as IndyCar hasn't seen a championship decided via tiebreaker since 2015.

Despite the comical social media exchange Palou had with McLaughlin over the last few weeks, due to the fact that McLaughlin needed Palou to miss the season finale entirely to remain mathematically in championship contention, Palou said that 39-point gap probably isn't going to be something he brings up in a similar joking manner.

“No, not really," he stated. "I think we have a great relationship, and he did a really good job building up to Nashville. I thought it was amazing. It was fun for us, and it was fun for all the community following IndyCar and motorsport in general."

Palou demonstrated how great of a sport and how much of a class act he is back when this controversy all unfolded in April.

Newgarden took to social media earlier this week to share a story of how when the world, including some of his competitors, several individuals within the media, and many fans seemingly turned against him, Palou didn't.

But then Palou thought a little bit more about the 39-point McLaughlin situation and decided maybe he could try to make light of the situation, now that it's all pretty much water under the bridge.

“Yeah, I'll make fun at some point. Maybe at the prize ceremony that we will have in a couple of weeks in Indianapolis. I'll prepare something for him!

"But yeah, he is a great guy.”