‘Let’s Do It Again’: Palou already eyeing more titles after historic fifth championship

WEST ALLIS, Wisc. -- The celebration on Alex Palou’s fifth NTT INDYCAR SERIES title had barely started when the record-setting driver made a vow to boss Chip Ganassi: more championships are coming.

“Nobody wants to do it more again than the driver. He wants to do it again. First thing he said to me when I congratulated him, ‘Let's do it again,’” said Ganassi, who collected his INDYCAR record 18th series championship when Palou clinched Sunday at the Milwaukee Mile.

Palou has been relentless since joining Chip Ganassi Racing in 2021, the year he delivered his first title in the No. 10 DHL Honda. Now he has five championships in six years, setting a record at 29 years old as the youngest driver to win five series titles in the shortest amount of time.

He’s won the last four championships to join Sebastien Bourdais as the only drivers in series history to win four consecutive titles, and Palou trails only A.J. Foyt’s seven championships and Scott Dixon’s six on the all-time list.

Since joining CGR, Palou has won 25 races, the Indianapolis 500, 19 poles and has proven to be unstoppable. He should be used to his success rate by now, but the Spaniard sometimes still finds his achievements hard to believe.

“I never thought I would be, first of all, an INDYCAR driver. Never thought I could make it. Never thought that I would have the chance to be a professional race car driver. That was my dream,” Palou said. “When I had the opportunity to be an INDYCAR driver, that was already a huge achievement for me. I was living the dream. Then Chip gave me that chance to drive for a championship-winning team -- they just won in 2020 with Scott. That was mind-blowing.

“Since then I feel like I've been on this incredible cloud where everything has been so good for me. I don't know how long this is going to last. One year, 10 years, 15, five years. I don't know how long are we going to be able to be up top. But I'm enjoying every single day with this team, with this car.”

Palou, who signed a multi-year contract extension with CGR earlier this season, has set such an incredible winning pace that talk has already begun on whether he can completely rewrite the record books. The magic number in motorsports championships is seven – Michael Schumacher in Formula 1, Foyt in INDYCAR, Richard Petty, Dale Earnhardt and Jimmie Johnson in NASCAR – but Ganassi has not ruled out reaching eight titles with Palou.

“Absolutely. I mean, you'd be crazy not to believe that. I wouldn't want to bet against that, I know that,” Ganassi said. “I don't know what the odds are in Vegas of that, but I wouldn't want to bet against it. It can happen. It can absolutely happen.”

The confidence in what Palou and the No. 10 team can still achieve comes from the consistency the team has shown almost every week. Over two seasons of complete dominance by the CGR team, Palou has not had back-to-back finishes outside the top 10 in 33 races.

He bounced back from a 20th-place finish last week in Washington, D.C., to finish fifth and 10th in Sunday’s doubleheader at Milwaukee. That D.C. finish a week earlier marked only the third time in two years Palou finished 20th or worse and snapped a five-race streak in which he picked up a pair of victories along with three top-five finishes.

By the time Palou got to Milwaukee, winning a fifth championship was only a matter of when. This year is the fourth consecutive year Palou has wrapped up the title before the season finale and he clinched at Milwaukee by leaving with a 100-point lead over Christian Lundgaard headed into this weekend’s closer at Laguna Seca Raceway.

"The guy lives rent free in everyone's head in the paddock," said Pato O’Ward, who swept the two races Sunday at Milwaukee. “He's raised that bar, him and Ganassi. That 10 car has been unbelievable. Must be nice. One day we'll get there."

Ganassi believes what sets Palou apart from the competition is a relentless drive that he’s seen before in past CGR champions Jimmy Vasser, Alex Zanardi, Juan Pablo Montoya, Dario Franchitti and Dixon. Those drivers twice before combined to give CGR four consecutive championships; the third time the organization accomplished the feat, Palou did it alone.

“I see it in these drivers' eyes. They have a desire. They have good vision. They have a drive to succeed. You see it in their eyes all the time. You see it in Alex's, it's a common denominator among all the champions we've had. It's just a certain sparkle,” Ganassi said. “We're in the midst of a generational thing here, a generational driver. Four in a row has been done before, but five out of six hasn't been done before. That's something that's kind of unprecedented. We're in the midst of that right now. It's not over.”