Just how special has Palou’s 2025 IndyCar championship year been?

Archie O’Reilly
4 hours ago
10 min read

A.J. Foyt. Scott Dixon. Mario Andretti. Sébastien Bourdais. Dario Franchitti.

The only drivers in history with four or more IndyCar championships… until now.

As of 10th August 2025, there is a sixth name on that exclusive list. A driver that, as he moved stateside from Super Formula less than a mere six years ago, was an unknown quantity in the IndyCar world. A little-known Spaniard from the capital of Barcelona.

That 23-year-old debutant from 2020 is now 28 years old. And in that minimal timespan, with an entire season still until he turns 30, he has elevated himself onto IndyCar’s most prestigious list of drivers as the youngest to ever win four championships.

Only two drivers, the legendary Foyt and Dixon, regarded as the greatest in IndyCar history, now stand above Álex Palou with more titles to their name.

He has not yet even logged a century of races in the series and will not do so until Round 2 of the 2026 season. But within only six years, Palou has firmly established himself as a legend of the sport.

He is not only making history, but making history in record time.

This is only Palou’s fifth season with Chip Ganassi Racing (CGR) after debuting with Dale Coyne Racing in IndyCar’s COVID-impacted season. But in that half-a-decade, having taken his maiden Astor Cup crown as a sophomore in his first year with CGR in 2021, Palou has only failed to win the title once - in a 2022 season marred by a contract dispute.

But he has more than made up for that blip with the ensuring three-peat. The perfect apology to his beloved team for the stir caused during that turbulent second season with CGR.

Palou has become the first driver to win three championships in succession since Franchitti did so with CGR between 2009 and 2011. In addition to the Scotsman, only two others have achieved one of IndyCar’s rarest feats over the course of time: Ted Horn between 1946 and 1948, then Bourdais in his record-setting four-season run in CART from 2004 to 2007.

As much as announcing himself in such emphatic fashion in 2021 was quite the feat and his rebound from the toils of the year prior to dominate in 2023 were impressive achievements, Palou’s fourth championship-winning campaign is no doubt the most special yet.

He has outclassed the competition in a manner seldom done before.

At 121 points back heading into Round 15 of the 2025 season at Portland International Raceway, Arrow McLaren’s Pato O’Ward needed to beat Palou by 13 points for the championship to remain mathematically unclinched.

The Mexican superstar was Palou’s only remaining ‘contender’, with the remaining 25 drivers all eliminated from contention after only 14 races. But with a mechanical issue striking O’Ward shortly after pitting for the first time, it was apparent from very early in Portland that it would be Palou’s clinching day, ending any frivolous talk of a ‘fight’.

There has hardly been a hint of doubt that the title would be Palou’s for a little while now. Frankly, that has really been the case ever since he won three of the first four, four of the first five and five or the first six races of the year.

A third-place finish on his crowning day was astonishingly Palou’s word road course result of the season, with a 100 percent podium record through seven races. But even when it became clear he had the job done, he did not take his foot off the gas, even leading to a late off-track excursion when aggressively battling Arrow McLaren’s Christian Lundgaard.

“I could see on one of the screens on the straight that the No.5 was going super slow. Then Barry [Wanser, strategist] told me on the radio,” Palou recalled. “Although I knew at that point probably that meant that we’re going to win the championship, I knew we had a race to win.

“We’re here to win. We’ve said it many times. Although we have that big goal of winning the championship, our priority is always to win races and win every single weekend. We gave everything. Even though I could have been okay to stay third, we wanted to win.”

It was incredible enough when Palou sealed the championship crown before the finale in 2023 - the first time that had been done in over a decade-and-a-half. So to have clinched with two races to spare in 2025 - not done in 23 years - is something extraordinary.

Crowned by a legacy-defining first Indianapolis 500 win in May, this will stand the test of time as one of the best seasons ever. Yet through it all, Palou maintains the same humility and holds a genuine appreciation for what he is achieving.

“I’m so glad that we got [the championship],” Palou admitted. “That was one of the two goals that we had this season and I’m happy that we got it this year again - three years in a row.

“It’s amazing the work that [team owner Chip Ganassi and managing director Mike Hull] do to put an amazing team together that gives us a chance to win every single weekend and fight for every single championship. It’s been amazing.

“This year has been even more than magical with the 500, with so many wins. Honestly, super happy. I still cannot believe that I’m a four-time IndyCar champion. I’m going to enjoy every single second of it.”

Palou has gone from strength to strength and continues to improve year by year, no matter the heights he has already reached. In 2025, he has coupled his exceptional racecraft with field-topping one-lap pace, adding five poles to his existing tally of six and starting inside the top six 13 times in 15 races - his worst qualifying result being ninth.

He has also broken through with his first two oval victories - the first fittingly coming in the Indy 500 before adding to that superspeedway success with a maiden short oval win at Iowa Speedway. His consistency across all types of track has been sublime and any incredibly rare mistakes coming with very little consequence.

Even Palou’s competitors cannot help but marvel at his generational standard.

“Ganassi is certainly performing at a very high level right now,” Will Power, fourth on IndyCar’s all-time wins list, exclaimed after his Portland win. “Palou is probably the most impressive guy I’ve seen come along in a long time… in my career, actually.

“[He is] a complete driver who has qualifying pace but then he’s just so good at walking the tightrope of risk versus reward, race craft, then his race pace. He’s absolutely a full package. Man, he’s going to be a very, very tough guy to beat.”

With two races remaining in this fourth championship year, Palou has been in the top five in 12 of 15 races and only outside the top 10 twice. In Detroit - the round immediately after the Indy 500 - he was still tracking for a comfortable top 10 before being hit out of the race by David Malukas; 12th in Toronto was the only real blip, with Palou’s strategy not working out.

If he notches one more podium to take his tally to 12 for the year, he will level Dixon’s single-season best from 2008 - the only driver this century to reach that total. Aside from Dixon, only three other individual drivers have achieved 12 or more podiums in a single season, with Mario Andretti doing so three times.

The headline from the season, though, is Palou’s eight wins. And he has won races on every type of track in every conceivable way: through all-out control, through strategy, through impeccable management, through patience and pouncing, through decisive overtaking.

He came into the season with 11 victories to his name in a spell that included his first three championships. This year alone, he has not come far from doubling his wins total.

Should he win the final two races, he will level the single-season record of 10 wins - something Palou is aware of and gunning for. But even if he stays on eight, he will remain only the eighth driver ever - and 10th individual case given Mario Andretti achieved eight-plus wins three times - to have a season so prosperous.

Only Andretti (with nine in 1969) and 10-win drivers Foyt (1964) and Al Unser (1970) have eclipsed Palou’s current tally in a single year. Bourdais’ eight wins in 2007 provide the only match for Palou this century.

“When you have a year like we’ve had, you talk to these other drivers that they’ve had one or two wins in their career, I feel so bad,” Ganassi said. “I say to Mike all the time: ‘We’re spoiled.’ I feel so bad when I’m spoiled with Palou and Dixon and Franchitti. It spoils me.”

To put the rarity of Palou’s season into context, he won the championship with two wins and a total of six podiums last season. Power won the 2022 title with only a single win.

No doubt, Palou’s five wins in 2023 - one of only two cases of that since 2011 - marked an all-time great season. But he has taken his level up such a notch in 2025 that, beyond a historic IndyCar or motorsport season, this is one of the all-time great sporting campaigns.

And yet, Palou is not one to fixate on the records.

If he achieves records? Great. But the adoration of his craft is paramount. He relishes the collaboration with his team and the pure art of driving more than anything. With that, the records end up flowing and coming naturally anyway.

“I love the sport,” he explained. “I love working with my team, my mechanics, my engineers… everybody that is involved to go through race weekends and try and be better than everybody else. We keep on trying to improve, whether it’s the car, driving… whatever we can [to] try and just be a little bit better than we were before.

“That’s what drives us. It’s not really the championships and numbers. Obviously that’s a big part and we love that. It’s a reward that you get. But what we love is coming to every single weekend at the track and competing.”

Making Palou’s history-making all the more impressive, he has broken all of this new ground in an era regarded as IndyCar’s most competitive. He has brought an air of inevitability and predictability to a series renowned for its unpredictability - and that counts for a lot.

A points lead of 151 points with two races remaining is nothing short of astounding.

As Palou himself will make sure is the case, the success does not come without a dose of credit for one of the great driver-team combinations between him and his No.10 crew.

There is a valid reason why Palou always thanks his team for making him “look so good” on track. This is a high-quality operation which makes all of the right decisions almost all the time and is consistently flawless on pit lane, stop upon stop.

Then on track, Palou is a driver who executes faultlessly - in a way scarcely seen before - no matter the gameplan placed before him. He is a driver with a remarkably rare mixture of speed, precision and race management.

“My thoughts are basically in football you have to have an elite quarterback, not a quarterback,” Hull analogised. “That’s what we have in Álex; we have an elite athlete who drives a race car. You have to have people on the offensive and defensive line; that’s what we have in the building and that’s what we have in all three pit boxes. That’s what it takes.

“Álex represents all of us. He represents the past, the present and the future of Chip Ganassi Racing. We’re really proud to be part of having a driver like Álex be with us hopefully for a long period of time. Hopefully he never gets tired of what he does.”

Palou’s fourth championship is a 17th for CGR, drawing them level with Penske for the most titles in history. Since they joined the series in 1990, they have eight more titles than any other team.

And through the team’s illustrious history, Palou is up there with the very best they have seen and that Ganassi has had the pleasure of working with.

“I’ve never seen a guy work so quietly and diligently at his craft as this guy,” Ganassi divulged. “I said in the beginning of the year that we’re just scratching the surface of his talent. I still think he’s got more in his gas tank for this season - and he’s got more in his tank for coming seasons.

“You saw his desire in what he spoke about [saying his career would not be a success without winning it] prior to the Indianapolis 500, what the goals were, what the goals were when we left that place. Even though we had the win, he didn’t lose sight of the big picture, for the championship. I couldn’t be more pleased.”

The bigger picture shows why Palou stacks up as one of the greats already. And still possibly only a quarter of the way through his career, where he could end up by the time he retires is an ominous prospect for his rivals.

Through 96 races in his IndyCar career, Palou’s 19 wins account for essentially one victory in every five races (at 19.8 percent of his races). He has 42 podiums (43.8 percent), 55 top fives (at considerably over half of his races at 57.3 percent) and 71 top 10s (74 percent).

He has an average starting position of 7.54 and average finish of 7.27. This is factoring in the fact that his first season was with one of IndyCar’s smallest outfits too.

So taking away his 14 races with Dale Coyne Racing, all 19 wins have come with CGR at a 23.2 percent winning rate in the five-year, 82-race period. His 41 non-Coyne podiums equate to exactly a 50 percent podium rate with CGR, with 54 top fives (65.9 percent) and 68 top 10s (82.9 percent - all bar 14 races in five years).

Of course, his championship-winning rate with CGR stands at an incredible 80 percent. He is forging a career of historically rare greatness - it is no wonder he feels on top of the world.

“It’s the best,” Palou described. “The way I’ve been feeling this year… incredible. Every single weekend it’s been getting better and better. We’ve won so many races. We won the 500; the feeling you get after winning that race, an explosion of amazing feelings. People keep reminding you about that every single day, which makes it feel even more special.

“To win my fourth IndyCar championship and to bring one more to Chip Ganassi Racing, to be able to clinch it early, it feels amazing. It’s the best. It just keeps getting better. It’s not that you can compare this one to 2021 or last year…

“This is by far the happiest and the best I’ve ever felt in my life.”

Dominance of the like has almost never been seen in IndyCar. And this is not just a driver forging his name as a modern great in the series; this is a career already up there with the greats across every era of this sport.

As always in a phase of domination in sport, some are keen to dismiss it as boring. But rather than see it that way, why not appreciate history as it unfolds? Why not let it all sink in before it is too late?

Because this may never happen again in our lifetimes. That is how special this year has been.

Decades down the line, you will be able to revel in having lived through the Álex Palou era. You will be able to tell your children and your grandchildren that you had the honour and the privilege of witnessing a superhuman sportsperson making history in real time.

This is one of motorsport’s greatest stories being written before our very eyes.