After his latest scandalous display of track ownership, he might as well rename Laguna Seca (Dry Lake) Lake Palou in honor of his new winner.
In his four runs on the legendary road course located just outside Monterey, Alex Palou has never finished on the podium. He opened with a second-place finish in 2021, ran and hid in 2022 when he put 30.3 seconds between himself and Josef Newgarden while demolishing his rivals on the way to victory, and took third place last year.
His most recent performance at Laguna Palou looked a lot like 2022, and while three cautions over the final 20 laps prevented him from building a ridiculous lead, the two-time champion from Chip Ganassi Racing played with the field and returned home to another demonstrative victory.
This result also brought Palou back to the top of the Drivers’ standings, which he led after the Indianapolis Grand Prix which he won and again after the Indy 500, but the championship clock is ticking for the Spaniard from 27 years old.
With a tidal wave of ovals on the horizon, supreme road racers like Palou, who have yet to score a victory on the oval, are about to run out of opportunities to exercise their strongest muscles. He built a 23-point lead over Will Power, who has podium finishes at Iowa in three of the last four races and has wins at Milwaukee and World Wide Technology Raceway under his belt. Teammate Scott Dixon is 32 points behind and has a threatening oval winning record – he could easily win half of the six oval races – that await the field from July to September.
Sixth-place Pato O’Ward (-77 points) and his Arrow McLaren teammate Alexander Rossi, seventh (-87), are also capable of winning at Iowa, WWTR, Milwaukee and the season finale on the Nashville’s 1.33-mile oval, and could withdraw. Palou will lead if the Ganassi driver does not make great progress during these four events.
On the plus side, Palou then has another road course at Mid-Ohio where, since joining CGR in 2021, he has placed third, second and first. The wild card to recognize is the NTT IndyCar Series’ choice to introduce its new energy recovery systems to Mid-Ohio. So while Palou has been the best driver on the track in recent years, it’s unclear how much reliability issues in IndyCar’s first hybrid powertrain race might affect him or one other drivers registered on the entry list.
If all goes well in Ohio, that should give Palou a chance to shine, but the overriding note to consider leaving Laguna Seca is that Palou can’t build his lead enough before getting to the doubleheader in the Iowa, which falls directly after mid-2017. Ohio. And Iowa can’t get here fast enough for Josef Newgarden.
Wind the clock back to 2022, and in the 11 oval races run by IndyCar, the two-time Indy 500 winner has scored a staggering eight wins – or 73% – from 11 chances. Newgarden’s oval strike rate is what can easily dismantle Palou’s title hopes, provided the second half of his season is smoother than the first.
Looking at where his championship got off to a good start with a fourth place finish at Long Beach, the 2017 and 2019 IndyCar champion had a roller coaster ride with crashes to 16th place at Barber and 17th place at the Indy GP , a huge climb to first place at the Indy 500, then a huge fall to 26th at Detroit, another spike to second place at Road America and an error-filled fall to 19th on Sunday at Lake Palou. During the same period, Palou’s finishing record has only one blemish as he placed third, fifth, first, fifth, 16th, fourth and first.
Newgarden has some ground to make up in the championship, but a very oval second half of the season gives him the best possible opportunity to do so. Michael Levitt/Motorsports Images
Newgarden heads to Mid-Ohio, a track where he has won twice since 2017, sitting ninth in the championship with a significant 104-point deficit to Palou – the equivalent of two race wins – and can begin to make up for it. this gap with a solid race.
And then it’s on to Iowa, where Newgarden has won three of the last four races, and it could be four of four if not for the suspension failure that threw him into the wall while leading the second race in 2022 The series heads to Toronto, where Palou finished second last year with the front wing hanging off the nose of his No. 10 Honda, but Newgarden also has two wins on the Canadian street course, so he can’t. be neglected.
A late August trip to Portland – a road course where Palou has won two of the last three races – is his last chance to exploit a road race advantage. Everywhere else before at WWTR, and the three ovals that followed to close the season with the Milwaukee doubleheader and the big roll of the championship dice at Nashville Speedway, certainly work in favor of Newgarden, Power and Dixon.
As Palou told RACER after the Indy 500: “I have to win an oval race. We were lucky to win two championships without winning on an oval, but we have to win there. Thanks to the change in schedule, the majority of the places where Palou has distinguished himself will be completed well before the end of 2024.
And that’s the gift that awaits IndyCar fans. Just as it’s easy to see how the Newgardens, Powers and Dixons can erase Palou’s championship lead once the ovals start hitting every few weeks, the heavy oval heading into the season also offers to Palou the opportunity to secure his first oval victory – and perhaps more – and prove to himself and his fiercest rivals that he is more than a road and street specialist.
Last year, three of the last nine races were held on ovals, which allowed Palou to clinch the title with one race remaining. This year, six of the last nine races are taking place on ovals, which will not offer the same comfort or the same relative lack of pressure.
Is this the year that Palou takes it to the next level and becomes a complete IndyCar driver, or will the handful of all-discipline monsters chasing him remind him that he still has work to do to reach their lofty status?
Each IndyCar champion is crowned as the best at mastering the five unique circuits they face on schedules constructed with road courses, street courses, short ovals, intermediate ovals and superspeedways, but it’s fair to say that Palou has never been pushed to his limits on the ovals in order to conquer his titles in 2021 and 2023.
That’s about to change, and it should be a fascinating storyline for fans to follow until the checkered flag flies on the field on Sunday, September 15, in Tennessee.