"Hey, That’s Alex Palou!’ champion stops for young fans at Laguna Seca

MONTEREY, Calif. — Alex Palou had one more stop to make before he could close the book on another remarkable INDYCAR season.

It wasn’t on the schedule.

Palou was leaving WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca following the season finale, still dressed in his firesuit and headed to the INDYCAR championship banquet, when he heard three young fans screaming as cars and transporters made their way out of the circuit.

The kids were wearing No. 10 shirts.

Then one of them recognized exactly who was passing by.

“Hey, that’s Alex Palou!”

Palou stopped.

“So I turned around and, yeah, just wanted to say hi to them,” Palou recalled. “I mean, it’s great to see so many kids nowadays in the INDYCAR community that we have. It’s incredible.”

The impromptu meeting, captured in a video posted to Instagram, gave Palou a fitting final interaction with fans before he headed to the banquet celebrating another championship season for Chip Ganassi Racing.

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Palou said he noticed three or four children wearing gear representing his No. 10 car and wanted to spend a few moments with them.

“I’m sure it made them happy,” Palou said. “It made me also very happy to see them and to spend some time with them.”

There was no victory lane ceremony involved, no championship trophy and no television cameras waiting for Palou when he turned around. Just a handful of young race fans excited to see one of INDYCAR’s biggest stars coming their way.

Palou had every reason to keep going. The race weekend had run late, he hadn’t even had time to change out of his firesuit and he still needed to get to the hotel before the championship banquet.

Instead, the No. 10 shirts caught his attention.

The moment was particularly meaningful to Palou because of what the children represented: another generation embracing INDYCAR and its drivers.

For Palou, whose success with Ganassi has made the Spaniard one of the most recognizable drivers in the paddock, seeing children wearing his number and calling his name provided a different measure of what his success has meant.

And for three young fans waiting alongside the road as the INDYCAR paddock emptied out of Laguna Seca, their persistence paid off.

The driver they had been hoping to see heard them.

And he turned around.

“So, yeah,” Palou said, “it was a cool end of a great season.”