3 Keys To Alex Palou's Dominance As The INDYCAR Driver Chases History

By James Hinchcliffe
Published

In Driver's Eye with James Hinchcliffe, the six-time INDYCAR winner will bring you inside the mind of a racer while breaking down the nuts and bolts of the sport for fans.

When you think of success in INDYCAR in the last half decade, you think of one name: Alex Palou. He joined the series as a relative unknown, was plucked seemingly out of obscurity from racing in Japan by Dale Coyne and has been nearly unstoppable ever since.

His rookie season has some moments that certainly gave you the sense that he had some big potential. But even the most ambitious of predictions wouldn’t have landed on what the future would hold for the now-29-year-old Spaniard. Since joining Chip Ganassi Racing, he has been on the podium more than 50% of the time. He has won 24 races, four titles and an Indianapolis 500.

If he is able to pull off five championships in six seasons, it will be unlike anything we’ve ever seen in the modern era of INDYCAR racing. 

Alex Palou and his daughter Lucía at the Borchetta Bourbon Music City Grand Prix at Nashville Superspeedway. (Photo by Perry Nelson/Lumen via Getty Images)

Dario Franchitti, a legend with a Hall of Fame career, won four titles in five years, but most of that success came in the second half of his career. Where Palou is in his driving days, the sky is the limit and the record books are getting ready for a reprint.

When an athlete is performing at such a high level, people take notice. Especially other athletes. 

Even Tom Brady — one of the greatest athletes of all time — was taken by this level of success, and asked Townsend Bell and me last year what makes this Palou guy so good? 

The simple truth is there is no one thing, but a confluence of traits that make him so devastatingly effective. 

WHAT MAKES ALEX PALOU SO CONSISTENTLY DOMINANT?

An abundance of unique traits and unparalleled factors aligned to make Palou and his Chip Ganassi Racing crew so seemingly unstoppable. But three stand out to me.

First, racing is a team sport, as I’ve discussed in this column. Palou wasn’t winning titles with Dale Coyne Racing, so credit needs to go to CGR for giving Palou the tools he needs to be so dominant. 

That means great race cars, near-faultless strategy calls, mistake-free pit stops, as well as the ability to learn from both the team’s and his teammate’s (namely, six-time champ Scott Dixon) vast experience of how to keep getting better.

(Photo by Michael L. Levitt/Lumen via Getty Images)

Next up is his work ethic. This is something that you hear a lot from standout performers in any given sport. It’s certainly something Brady was accused of in his playing days. You talk to the team, and they can’t say enough about Palou’s relentless quest to improve and perfect. 

The truth is, you can never run a perfect race. Or have a perfect weekend. Even if you win from pole and lead every lap, something, somewhere in the weekend could have been executed better. 

Palou, win or lose, never stops chasing that perfection. 

He spends hours training physically, training mentally, pouring over data and video trying to find any little weakness that he can improve on. He is simply outworking many of his rivals.

Finally — in the sense of this column, because trust me, there are more than three things! — is his temperament. 

Palou is as cool a customer under pressure as anyone I’ve ever seen. Dixon was always known as the Iceman for his unflappable demeanor, but it’s like Palou saw that template, and said, "Hold my beer."

Whether he is cruising to a win out front or in the thick of an on-track battle, his radio communications are always the same: cool, calm and collected. Even when things go wrong — be it a mechanical issue or another driver taking him out — his heart rate never goes up, his approach never changes. He simply operates in his best window at all times. It’s arguably the most impressive thing he does — and the most difficult for others to replicate.

When we, up in the booth, watch him take the lead in a race you weren’t expecting him to, you can’t help but admire what you’re watching. 

We all love the unpredictability of INDYCAR. But I love watching history be made, and right now, we are witnessing sports history.

SOUND LIKE AN INDYCAR EXPERT: SCHUMACHER, F1 AND INDYCAR

Switching disciplines in racing is a big ask. Gone are the days of drivers winning an INDYCAR race one week, being on a Formula 1 podium the next, then hitting a sprint-car race on a Thursday before tackling a 500-mile NASCAR race the following Sunday. 

Each discipline is so specialized now that making the transition from one to another often requires a period of adjustment. And that is what Mick Schumacher is facing in his rookie INDYCAR campaign.

(Photo by Jeffrey Brown/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Yes, F1 and INDYCAR are about as close as you can get when switching series, but even still the differences are massive. The type of car, tires and track are vastly different and require a completely different skill set.

Every one of these tracks is new to Schumacher, and with the way weekends run, there really isn’t a ton of track time. A lot of your learning as a rookie comes during the race itself. 

If he could start the weekends with the knowledge he has by the end of them, it would be a very different result.

Coming off his first top-10 finish of the season at Nashville Superspeedway, you can’t help but think that he would have liked to reach that milestone sooner in the season. That said, apart from team leader Graham Rahal’s string of podiums, strong results have been hard to come by for the Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing squad in general. 

And let’s not forget that highly rated — and recently re-signed to a multi-year deal — Louis Foster didn’t manage to achieve a top-10 finish with RLL in his first season on the big stage.

With news of RLL downsizing from three cars to two, and the belief being it is Schumacher’s No. 47 program that is falling away, the hope is that Mick will be able to land somewhere else for 2027. Then, he could return to each track armed with the knowledge and experience of 2026 and show what his true potential is.

(Photo by Michael L. Levitt/Lumen via Getty Images)

1 FOR THE ROAD

The teams and drivers are enjoying their final off weekend before the final stretch of the season that covers six races in five weeks. 

It will be a marathon stint for the collective paddock and can certainly test the mental resolve of every member of a team. Keeping your cool — and focus — over that run can make or break a season. Momentum is a real thing, but it works both upward and downward. 

A bad start to this stretch can spiral a program out of control. It will be fascinating to see which groups struggle and which excel in the final push of 2026.

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