Entering the IndyCar doubleheader at Iowa Speedway, there were 378 points left up for grabs in the 2025 series championship for any given driver, meaning that nobody had been mathematically eliminated from title contention. Following that doubleheader, that tally is down to 270, with just five races remaining on the 17-race calendar.
Still, five races is a long time when you're talking about a series as competitive as IndyCar, and it's even longer when you're talking about the opportunity for a contending team to make up ground.
But not when that "contending" team is Team Penske and the year is 2025.
Team Penske eliminated after just 12 races
Team Penske have had a nightmarish season pretty much since the green flag dropped in St. Petersburg and Will Power was collected in an opening lap multi-car pileup that he basically caused.
Things really began to worsen on the afternoon of Indy 500 pole day, however. It looked as though the team would once again be in the running for a front row lockout until Scott McLaughlin crashed in practice and Josef Newgarden and Will Power were pulled out of line for violations tied to what ended up being the team's second major cheating scandal since the start of 2024.
Most IndyCar fans believed that the team's low point was behind them, until McLaughlin wrecked on the race's pace lap. Newgarden was then knocked out with a mechanical issue after driving from 32nd into the top five, and Power was never a contender.
We could go on and on about similar misfortune (and, in many cases, self-inflicted errors) for the team in 2025. But at Iowa, they were supposed to turn it around.
In race one, the speed was clearly there. Newgarden dominated, and McLaughlin drove from last to fourth after yet another crash in qualifying. But it wasn't enough, as Arrow McLaren's Pato O'Ward utilized a strong final pit stop to jump Newgarden and win the race, leaving Team Penske's trio sitting from second through fourth place.
It was still the team's best performance of 2025, yet it might have been the most demoralizing, given their past dominance at the track (eight out of the last nine wins entering 2025) and Newgarden's own history (six wins) there.
Race two, however, summed up their entire season.
McLaughlin was wrecked out on the opening lap, Power was forced to retire with his third mechanical issue in four weeks, and Newgarden was snakebitten twice in the pits by coming in just before a caution, resulting in him restarted at the tail end of the lead lap.
After rallying from the back to the lead the first time, he could only finish in 10th place following the second.
And even though we are still only in mid-July, the entire Team Penske trio have been eliminated from championship contention.
Power is Penske's highest driver in eighth place in the championship standings. He has scored 244 points, placing him 271 points behind Palou.
Yes, any two Penske drivers combined still have fewer points than Palou this year.
Even if Palou sits out the season's final five races, Power can only get to within one point of him, and that's with five perfect 54-point (pole, most laps led, win) races, which obviously isn't going to happen. Even if it looked as though it was going to happen, something would inevitably prevent it from happening, given how things have gone for Penske this year.
All things considered, this is basically the equivalent of the Kansas City Chiefs being eliminated from NFL playoff contention by Thanksgiving. Everybody has a bad season, but for Team Penske, 2025 has been uncharacteristically atrocious.
McLaughlin and Newgarden are behind both A.J. Foyt Enterprises drivers, David Malukas and Santino Ferrucci, so while Penske continue to struggle, Foyt's duo have managed to capitalize on the technical partnership. And for what it's worth amid silly season speculation, Malukas and Ferrucci are only seven points behind Power.
Even crazier is the fact that the entire Penske trio ended up being eliminated from championship contention on the same weekend as the likes of Dale Coyne Racing and Jacob Abel, along with several other regular backmarkers and also-rans that never run much higher than around 15th or 16th.
Of course, some would say that everyone not named Palou is already out of title contention, but mathematically speaking, there are indeed still six other drivers in the running with five races remaining on the calendar.
Start a free trial of FuboTV and catch the rest of the IndyCar season live on Fox, starting with this coming Sunday afternoon's race on the streets of Toronto, Ontario. The Ontario Honda Dealers Indy Toronto is set to be shown live beginning at 12:00 p.m. ET.