"I didn't want to call myself an IndyCar driver until I won on an oval."
Those were the words of Team Penske's Scott McLaughlin in July 2024, after he secured his sixth career IndyCar victory – and first on an oval – since becoming a full-time driver in 2021.
It was hardly meant as a shot at the many drivers who hadn't won on ovals at the time, including the likes of rising youngsters Colton Herta and Kyle Kirkwood, both of whom have since shifted that narrative with oval wins themselves.
But it was a line that IndyCar fans began to latch onto when discussing the meteoric rise of Alex Palou, from relatively unknown Japanese Super Formula driver, to still relatively unknown Dale Coyne Racing IndyCar rookie, to an "oh, so that's how you pronounce it" first-year Chip Ganassi Racing driver in 2021.
It was "Hello, Palou!" from the get-go in the No. 10 Honda, with the Spaniard winning on Ganassi debut at Barber Motorsports Park in 2021 to kickstart a season in which many still doubted could truly be as special as it was.
His 17th place finish in the following race on the streets of St. Petersburg, coupled with the upcoming doubleheader at the ever-daunting Texas Motor Speedway, led skeptics to believe there was no way he could sustain a championship level of success over an entire season on a schedule as diverse as IndyCar's.
Then he found himself leading the Indy 500 with five laps to go.
Hmm. Maybe this guy is legit.
It took a record-tying fourth win from Helio Castroneves that afternoon to keep an upstart Palou from drinking the milk in just his second career Indy 500 start. And ever since then, it's become clear that Palou is, as one reporter put it after his 2023 Indy road course win, the new "king of IndyCar".
It was after that very win when Pato O'Ward fired back at a reporter for saying Palou was capable of having days when he was simply impossible to beat.
"Impossible to beat? I don't agree."
To be fair to O'Ward, that was Palou's fifth win. O'Ward had four wins himself at that point, and both first competed full-time time.
Palou's 14 wins and three championships since, though, have kind of made a statement, one of epic proportions, to the contrary.
We were looking at the real deal
But even after winning his first three championships, the 28-year-old still hadn't won on an oval. And it was something that, every time the series went to an oval, everyone in the media was quick, if not overly eager, to remind him.
Going back to 2021, Palou became only the second driver in series history to be crowned champion after having won a road course race but not an oval race (at any point in his career). The only other, Simon Pagenaud (2016), wound up becoming a series oval champion in 2019 after winning the Indy 500, so Palou was always in good company there.
But in 2023, he became the first two-time champion without an oval win. And then in 2024, he became the first three-time champion without an oval win.
It got to the point where the "without an oval win" was the focal point, rather than the rise to stardom and solidification as one of the sport's all-time greats at such an early age.
At long last, the laziest party line in the history of motorsport was laid to rest and buried on Sunday, May 25, 2025 when the checkered flag flew and the No. 10 DHL Honda crossed the yard of bricks to win the 109th running of the Indy 500.
After 15 road or street course wins, Palou was finally an oval winner, and he had achieved it on the world's single biggest stage.
"Not for them," Palou told Beyond the Flag before the race, in response to a question about his oval doubters. "It's more for me, just for being like, ‘Hey Alex, yeah you're capable of doing it,’, right? I never have the motivation of telling somebody that ‘I won it and you told me that I would never win it.’
Guess what? They did tell him that, and yes, he still won it.
"It's more for me and for my people, like, ‘Yeah, man, we just did it, and this is awesome, and let's do it again because once you win the first one, the second one feels so much easier, because you already know that you're capable of doing it and it just happens with a normal race as well in IndyCar. ... You start trusting yourself more, start trusting your team more, and you can see it in the results."
That's exactly what happened at Iowa Speedway in the second race of July's doubleheader. Palou led 194 of 275 laps from pole to notch a short oval victory, after the skeptics had conveniently shifted their attention toward his lack of one of those following his Indy triumph.
The fact that it happened at Iowa, a track where Chip Ganassi Racing hadn't won since 2010 and where even Scott Dixon still remains winless, made it even more significant.
In fact, over the last 24 months, Palou has notched a series-high 12 wins, and six of them have come at tracks where Dixon, second on IndyCar's all-time wins and championships lists, has yet to win. Four of them have come this year alone.
Palou's only Chip Ganassi Racing blemish
The 2022 season is the only season since Palou's Ganassi arrival in which he did not win the title, and it was one marred by contract controversy. He had tried to get out of his contract to race for McLaren, presumably in the Formula 1 seat that was Daniel Ricciardo's and ultimately went to current world championship leader Oscar Piastri.
Ganassi sued his own driver and was able to retain his services for 2023, at which point Palou was able, and at that point still planning, to make the move to McLaren.
Palou was winless for the vast majority of the 2022 season. The doubts crept back in regarding whether or not 2021 was truly a one-hit wonder as he spent much of the season battling for fifth and sixth in points, very reminiscent of what we had seen from Dixon's past teammates in the No. 10 car after Dario Franchitti's 2013 retirement.
Before clinching the 2025 title this past weekend at Portland International Raceway with still two of the season's 17 races remaining, Palou mentioned that contract drama is one thing he would do differently about his career, looking back.
"I think it's just a lot of small steps that I would not have tried, so the only thing, obviously I would try and avoid having any bumps with the team with contracts, but I think that's part of me," he told the media. "That's part of who I am today as well, probably, mentally."
Translation: in 2022, it wore on him. It did. He wasn't the same as he was in 2021. And now that he's a four-time champion less than 36 months later, you'd have a hard time finding someone to deny that.
He still finished in a fourth place tie in the championship standings after collecting a win of over 30 seconds to close out the season at Laguna Seca, the win that started the wave of dominance he's still riding three years later.
That winning margin, 30.3812 seconds, over (checks notes) Josef Newgarden was (and still is) the largest race-winning margin since the modern sanctioning body was formed in 1994 under the name Indy Racing League and competition began in 1996.
It remains the largest of any kind at the top level of American open-wheel racing since Alex Zanardi won by 31.737 seconds at Michigan International Speedway over Mark Blundell during the 1997 CART season.
In 2023, there was more drama when, with Formula 1 obviously no longer on the table, Palou decided against the move to McLaren, the same move Chip Ganassi Racing had to fight him in court to prevent him from making the previous offseason.
But by that point, he had already all but clinched the championship, having won four out of five races from May to July, including three in a row for the first time since Scott Dixon in 2020. He clinched the 2023 title with a race remaining on the schedule, something not done in IndyCar since Dan Wheldon in 2005 and not done at all since Sebastien Bourdais in Champ Car in 2007.
In 2025, he managed to better that mark, clinching again at Portland with not one but two races to go. It was something that Wheldon had basically done in 2005, and that Bourdais had basically done each year from 2005 to 2007, provided they simply showed up to the final two races.
But it hadn't actually been done mathematically in the modern era, with the most recent occurrence taking place in CART back in 2002 when Cristiano da Matta did it with three races to go over a 19-race season. Wins were worth 20 points at the time.
Beating Scott Dixon is no easy task; Palou's done it 4 times
I've always likened Scott Dixon to Tom Brady. So have a lot of others. It's the closest comparison to Brady you can make in a sport with so few actual similarities to football.
The New Zealander turned 45 years old in July, and he's still performing at a incredibly high level. He's still winning races, and he's still a contender in the races he doesn't win. His season win streak (21) goes back to when several of his current competitors, including teammate Kyffin Simpson, were babies.
He is often referred to as the GOAT, simply because his 59-win mark and six-championship mark, both of which trail only A.J. Foyt's (67 and seven), have come in such a competitive era, and he has sustained that level of success pretty much since he started competing in 2001, and certainly since he officially debuted in IndyCar in 2003 (and won his first title).
He has also shown zero signs of slowing down, as he quietly sits third in points, which could very well translate to his 16th (!!) top three points finish of his career, with two races to go.
But one thing you have to realize about Brady is that he, too, had his Kryptonite.
If Archie Manning and Olivia Williams had never met, Brady is probably sitting there with 12 Super Bowl rings, rather than seven. A dismal 1-5 record, especially for the one considered the GOAT, against Peyton and Eli in AFC Championship Games and Super Bowls can attest to that assertion.
Dixon has had two of the best drivers of the modern era as his teammates during his time in the No. 9 car for Ganassi, and during his time with them as their teammates, it has become hard to deny that, yes, they have largely outperformed him.
In addition to Palou from 2021 to the present, Dixon spent 2009 to 2013 alongside Dario Franchitti, a 31-time race winner, three-time Indy 500 winner, and a four-time IndyCar champion. Only A.J. Foyt surpasses the Scottish driver in all three categories.
During their time as teammates, Franchitti won three titles (2009 through 2011, which was the most recent three-peat prior to Palou) and two Indy 500s (2010 and 2012). Dixon won one title (2013). Likewise, during the first five years of Dixon's Palou era, Palou has won four titles and an Indy 500. Dixon hasn't won either.
Dixon is now on his longest ever championship drought, which is kind of impressive that it's only five years in its own right, and you can't even make the case that he's "washed", either. He placed runner-up in the championship behind Franchitti at one point and to Palou as recently as two years ago, and again, he's right there lurking in third this time around also.
They say to be the best, you have to beat the best. It's another checklist item for Palou that's been checked off (again and again) against Dixon.
Alex Palou has reached GOAT status
There will always be the debate over who really is the greatest, and the fact that you can't truly compare eras across any sport, much less one in which the cars have undergone a vast number of significant changes many times, makes it impossible to definitively determine.
I'm sure winning one Indy 500 suddenly isn't enough for the very people who said he can't be in that discussion until he won it once, but you know how it is. In any sport, the goalposts always move when you're hell-bent on denying the greatness of any modern talent. Even Dixon still faces that nitpicky criticism, having not won it since 2008 – and having "only" won it once.
Still, the bottom line is that you can now make that case for Palou. Are there others you can make that case for? Sure, even beyond the obvious names like Dixon, Foyt, and Mario Andretti.
I'm sure if you list the 10 best drivers in the history of the sport, you'll always be deemed an "idiot" for not including another 25 names, 15 of whom wouldn't fit if you actually picked 10 of the suggestions to replace your own group. That's the beauty of sport.
What has become hard, if not impossible, to dispute, however, is that while you can argue for multiple legends, Palou has reached a point where you can't really argue against him any longer.
The main argument used in support of Dixon, and one I wholeheartedly agree with, is the fact that this is a spec series. Yes, IndyCar has technically had fewer team champions than Formula 1, a series known historically for having very little parity and being an engineering war far more so than a driver battle, since 2013.
That doesn't change the fact that there are nine or 10 (out of 11) teams that can, on any given weekend, compete for podium finishes. Even Prema Racing, a first-year team which have the series' worst top result of the year (still a respectable sixth), started on pole at Indy in May.
There is still no top-level series that comes close to that.
And lest we forget, in his second ever road course start with Dale Coyne Racing and Team Goh back in 2020, Palou was on the podium, alongside Scott Dixon and Will Power.
Sure, being with Chip Ganassi Racing makes a difference. They are, after all, one of only two teams to win a championship over the past 13 years.
But let's snap back to reality here for just a brief second.
A former Ganassi driver said in 2023, after Palou won his second title, that, "If he went to another team, he wouldn't succeed as much."
I want to be clear: it wasn't stated in an inherently disrespectful way. But that driver's career win total is not what Palou's is this year alone, and it featured zero wins with Chip's team, despite the fact that part of his time competing for them came during their one and only post-CART stretch of four consecutive titles.
No disrespect to that driver's own career – and I mean that – but at any team, IndyCar races are hard to win. It's one of the reasons why, when he looks back at 2025, Palou is probably going to think more about his Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course miscue than anything else (okay, aside from maybe winning the Indy 500).
I'd like to think, two years later, that that narrative has at least been somewhat put to bed.
The reality, though, is that it never should have been discussed. If you really want to talk about Palou having "superior equipment", the first thing you have to realize is that IndyCar isn't Formula 1. And that's also the last thing you need to realize.
From the end of the Franchitti years to the start of the Palou years at Chip Ganassi Racing, a seven-year stretch that began in 2014 with Tony Kanaan in the No. 10 car and ended in 2020 with Felix Rosenqvist in the No. 10 car, Dixon won four championships.
But the No. 10 car found victory lane a grand total of two times, and ironically, had Rosenqvist not made his own decision to leave for McLaren's IndyCar team for 2021, Palou might never have gotten the chance to change that.
From 2014 to 2017, Kanaan, a former series champion and Indy 500 winner, won one race. Dixon won a championship. In 2018, Ed Jones performed worse in the No. 10 car than he did as a Dale Coyne Racing rookie the year before. Dixon won the championship. And then in 2019 to 2020, it was Rosenqvist's turn. He won one race; Dixon won another championship.
So don't listen to those who conveniently now deny the fact that parity is IndyCar's greatest strength just because Palou has won more races than he's lost this year. For the series, it still absolutely is.
Palou just happens to be stronger.
There's this ongoing myth that Palou relies strictly on a consistent, measured approach to win championships. There were debates about whether he would make the move he needed to make, if it came down to it, to win the Indy 500.
Somehow the phrase "he's thinking championship" – and yes, we all know it because Fox, and formerly NBC, would use it every week – was supposed to mean something other than racing to win.
I mean, come on. What are we actually doing here?
In 2021, Palou was tied for the series lead in wins. In 2023, he became the first five-win champion since Simon Pagenaud in 2016. And after a "down" championship year in 2024, during which he still won three total races to tie for the series lead, he matched his career-high 2023 total in only the 2025 season's first six races before going on to set a modern record with three more (so far).
No driver had won eight races in a season since 2007 when Bourdais did it in Champ Car, and no driver had even done it in the modern IndyCar series. Only Foyt, Andretti, and Al Unser have ever won more than eight races in a season, and you have to go back to 1970 when Unser did it to find the most recent instance of somebody pulling it off.
It's consistency, sure. And there is no more measured driver in IndyCar, maybe ever, than Alex Palou. But it's also dominance. And it's time to properly illustrate that fact without trying to dance around it.
Consistency is always key. So, too, is dominance.
I couldn't believe when I read that Palou was supposedly "unnecessarily aggressive" at Portland after having locked up the championship, simply because he battled hard with Christian Lundgaard for second place as both aimed to take the lead away from eventual winner Will Power.
I have a theory on that. With all due respect, maybe, just maybe, it's because he's a race car driver. Maybe, just maybe, it's because he's not worried about the outside noise. Riding around in third place – two spots below his median 2025 finish, and good for his 11th best finish of the year, by the way – just isn't what he wants to be doing.
Again: moving goalposts.
After weeks and weeks of the media (and Zak Brown, who famously sits 0-for-2 in the Alex Palou sweepstakes) pumping a longshot-of-longshots narrative that Pato O'Ward still had any semblance of a chance because he wasn't yet a thousand points behind, Palou finished high enough up the order in Portland to lock things up with two races left even if O'Ward's No. 5 Chevrolet had not experienced a mechanical issue.
He never blinked.
The funny thing about that is the fact that O'Ward actually entered Portland having averaged more points per race this year than Palou in 2021 and 2024, as well as Power when he won his second championship in 2022. He has legitimately had a championship-caliber season, and you can't not respect that.
And yet Palou was still ahead of him by 121 points (now 151).
Should Palou win one of the season's final two oval races to get to nine, it would place him, among active drivers, behind only Scott Dixon, Will Power, and Josef Newgarden on the all-time wins list – for his 2025 win total alone.
He probably should already have nine, given the late mistake that cost him the win at Mid-Ohio, back when he reminded everyone that he is still indeed human (and gave the doubters room to overreact, of course).
Following the title clincher in Portland, he has won as many championships as all other active drivers (not named Dixon) combined.
Remaining 2025 goals
Palou, winner of two of four oval races this season, is aiming to become IndyCar's oval champion for the first time. Two races, one at the Milwaukee Mile next weekend and one at Nashville Superspeedway the weekend after that, remain on the schedule.
He trails two-time oval champion O'Ward in the oval standings by just a single point in that category, with both well clear of somewhat of a surprise name, A.J. Foyt Enterprises' David Malukas, in third place.
"Yeah, I saw that the other day," Palou told us. "I think somebody from the team told me and I was like, wow, that's pretty cool.
"Normally in the past we would see that those stats, the road course and street course and the oval, and we would have a huge gap on the oval, like 60, 70 points, and I would be like, oh my goodness, that's crazy, that's like two races."
Palou finished in fifth place in the first race of last year's Milwaukee doubleheader after a late caution potentially cost him a podium finish, and he recovered to 19th in the second race after failing to take the initial green flag with a mechanical issue. He then finished in 11th at Nashville, having effectively clinched the championship early on in the race when Power's seatbelt came undone.
O'Ward won the first Milwaukee race, was knocked out of the second with a mechanical issue in the second, and placed second at Nashville.
So O'Ward and McLaren might have a slight statistical edge here, at least historically, but Palou is also performing at a different level on the ovals this year.
"It feels amazing, and I feel more comfortable," Palou said of his oval success, which also includes finishes of eighth place at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway and fifth in the first race of the Iowa doubleheader.
"Obviously in Iowa I felt a little more comfortable and we were able to get a win and get a pole there. I'm excited for Milwaukee, although last year wasn't amazing for us. We had that issue in race two."
O'Ward, who won the first race of the Iowa doubleheader, has racked up finishes of third at Indy, second at Gateway, and fifth in the second race at Iowa in his other oval starts this year.
"In Nashville we were not super competitive," Palou admitted, even though he didn't have much to race for at that point. "I look forward to that. We will also test at Nashville before the race there."
He still moved up 13 spots from his 24th place starting position, and he is optimistic for greater results this time around.
"I'm excited to just have a day of testing there and see how we can just improve a little bit, or how I can feel a little bit more comfortable, like in Iowa," he continued. "I think Iowa has been helping us a lot when we've been able to go there and test with other people as well and just get more laps.
"Hopefully we get to do the same, and we can hopefully be on top of the oval standings."
Palou, who has now led championship standings dating back to last June, became the first driver to win the Indy 500 and the IndyCar championship in the same season since Franchitti in 2010, which is specifically impressive since the Indy 500 was a double points race from 2014 to 2022.
He has also become the first to lead the standings from wire-to-wire during a season since Dixon in 2020.
And we saved the best stat for last. He is the first driver to lead the standings wire-to-wire during an Indy 500-winning season since 1980, when Johnny Rutherford pulled it off.
So adding an oval championship would just be adding more icing on top of the icing that's already been layered on top of the cake.
The 2025 IndyCar season is scheduled to conclude with races at Milwaukee on Sunday, August 24 and Nashville on Sunday, August 31. Both are set to be shown live on Fox, and both are scheduled to begin at 2:00 p.m. ET. Begin a free trial of FuboTV and don't miss either event!