WITH SEVEN LAPS to go in the 2026 Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg on March 1, all eyes were on a three-way battle between Kyle Kirkwood, Scott McLaughlin, and Christian Lundgaard. Polesitter McLaughlin led the first 34 laps of IndyCar’s season opener in Florida; Lundgaard, conversely, qualified 12th but gradually fought his way toward the front. On Lap 94 of 100, Kirkwood was ahead of both despite starting 15th.
But braking into Turn 10 of the circuit that famously utilizes St. Petersburg city streets and a runway of Albert Whitted Airport, McLaughlin’s No. 3 slipped past Kirkwood’s No. 27 on the inside. Accelerating on fresher tires but running out of space in a tight Turn 11, Lundgaard’s No. 7 followed, barely sliding between Kirkwood and the wall in a pass announcers declared “bold.” Over the next five laps, Kirkwood faded, but Lundgaard remained in the hunt, staying on McLaughlin’s tail into the straightaways. But to no avail—McLaughlin fended off the challenge to hold the position.
The position of second place.
As the cameras followed the fight for silver, Alex Palou in No. 10, the Spanish-turned-Hoosier driver who has made a home in Zionsville, was a comfortable 14 seconds ahead of McLaughlin and Lundgaard, charging toward his second victory at St. Pete after winning in 2025. It was an exciting moment for Palou fans—but perhaps an anticlimactic follow-up to one of the most anticlimactic seasons in IndyCar history, during which Palou dominated to the point of predictability, winning five of the first six races—including the Indy 500, his first IndyCar career win on an oval. He went on to amass eight wins in the 17-race season and earned his fourth series title in five years. The first-place finish at St. Pete was the 20th of his IndyCar career, taking place exactly one month shy of his 29th birthday.
After leading 59 of 100 laps, Palou wasn’t worried about making compelling television. Nor was he thinking about track records, Phoenix the following week, or even getting back to the Brickyard in May. “At that point, I still had my mind set on winning the race,” says Palou on the phone two days later. “I knew I wasn’t on the best tires. What would happen if there was a yellow? The race is still very open at that point. I was just managing tires, managing my pace, and trying to get to the end on a good form.”
This display of modesty is not only characteristic of Palou. It’s a window into the meticulous racing mindset that has fueled his success. He is always acutely aware of his surroundings—where he is on the track, where his competition is, and, most importantly, how his car is responding. At the same time, he rapidly scrolls through contingencies in his mind, drawing on experience accrued over a brief but eventful career. “He won’t press anything to make it happen. He’ll wait,” says Rick Davis, crew chief of Palou’s No. 10 DHL Honda. “He’s so smart, and his wit is so sharp. He doesn’t make the same mistake twice.”
In fact, as Palou pulled away in St. Pete, he may have been remembering last July’s Honda Indy 200 at Mid-Ohio, when he was comfortably out front, leading Chip Ganassi Racing teammate Scott Dixon by nearly two seconds with four laps to go. Palou appeared to have the race in hand when he lost focus and ran wide into a turn, veering into the grass and forced to slow. Dixon pounced, sliding into a lead he never relinquished. “That little mistake got him offline,” says Davis. “He saved the car, and he was happy for Scott. But he was so mad at himself in private.”
That was not going to happen this time. Palou was careful, methodical as he weaved around lapped traffic in St. Pete. He listened to his crew, his car, and himself. He knew enough to let a couple seconds slip, crossing the finish nearly 12 seconds ahead of second-place McLaughlin, the largest margin of victory since IndyCar’s first Streets of St. Pete event in 2005. “It’s what we wanted, but we didn’t expect it,” says Palou, affably understating his record-breaking win. “But it was great to pick up where we left off last year.”
Understatement is more than a professional approach for Palou—it’s a way of life.
Born in a small town near Barcelona, Palou came from a family that was neither wealthy nor plugged into the European racing world. His father was a casual fan of the sport. One of Palou’s early memories is walking in on his father watching the Indy 500 on TV and being a bit confused. “I was like, ‘What are you watching? They’re just going in circles,’” says Palou. “It was very different than the European racing I was used to.”
For his fifth birthday, Palou’s family pooled their resources to buy him a small, used go-kart. Instead of playing soccer after school like the other kids, young Palou would hop in his machine and drive in circles.
Palou’s path to IndyCar was a winding one. After a successful karting career starting at age 6, during which he won six titles, Palou graduated to Spanish Formula 3 and competed in the Euroformula Open. He moved on to more advanced Formula racing series, including GP3, where he became the first Spaniard to ever win a race; the Japanese Formula 3 series in 2017; and the Super Formula series, also based in Japan, in 2019. He finished third in the latter two championships. It was while he was in Japan that IndyCar caught his eye—a spec series that depended more on the driver’s skill than the intricacies of the machine’s build. “You have drivers in the same kind of cars; you have road courses, street courses, and ovals; and you have the biggest race in motorsport,” he says. “It’s the complete championship.”
Palou didn’t land in Indiana via private jet from some European villa or coastal U.S. mansion. He found a simple home in Zionsville in 2020, where he could be close to his first IndyCar employer, Pleasantville’s Dale Coyne Racing, one of the series’ most blue-collar, budget-conscious teams. Palou weathered a pandemic-plagued rookie year, grabbing his first IndyCar podium at the XPEL Grand Prix at Road America on his way to a 16th-place finish in the championship. But his work ethic turned heads on the paddock, including that of owner Chip Ganassi, who recruited him for the 2021 season. “I’ve never seen a guy work so quietly and diligently at his craft,” Ganassi later told reporters at a press conference in 2025.
Even with the success that quickly followed his jump to Ganassi, Palou has maintained a humble Hoosier attitude. He lives here year-round with his wife, Esther, and their young daughter, Lucia. He’s become a fan of Indiana sports, recognizable at games for IU football, Indianapolis Indians baseball, and Pacers basketball. (He wore Tyrese Haliburton’s No. 0 jersey in the 500 Festival Parade in 2025.) Though he’s gone the familiar celebrity route of having a signature clothing line, he’s stayed away from high fashion, instead focusing on outdoor apparel made with minimal impact on the environment.
His Indiana workaday attitude and steadfast presence in and around Zionsville have made him a hometown hero. But even as the series championships started stacking up, the unassuming Spaniard couldn’t quite break through as a national or global sports figure. He needed to win the big one.
There’s long been a sort of tension between the IndyCar series and its signature event, the Indianapolis 500. To win the Greatest Spectacle in Racing and have their face immortalized on the Borg-Warner Trophy, a driver (and his team) must pour a year’s worth of resources and energy into two weeks in May. They must leverage every second of practice on the one-of-a-kind 2.5-mile rectangular oval, work their way up the pole in qualifying, and on race day, battle 32 other cars for 200 laps around a narrow track, avoid calamity, be nearly perfect, and pray for a bit of luck to be in a position to win when the rubber marbles settle.
Meanwhile, the IndyCar points championship rewards the grinders, the drivers and teams who show up week in, week out, who stay on the podium when their car is good and, more importantly, drag their equipment across the finish when things don’t go their way—and then show up ready to compete at the next event in a matter of days. It’s about more than just winning (in fact, Will Power won the IndyCar Series Astor Cup in 2022 on points, with only one trip to victory lane in the season). They need to consistently find speed on all types of courses. They must govern the open-throttle maniac inside every professional driver to do things like hold on to third because pushing for second might wreck them out of the race, settle for 10th when they can’t quite catch ninth, and complete the race when a crash or malfunction tries to deal them a DNF—Did Not Finish.
What’s more, the effort it takes to prepare for, promote, and try to win the 500 in the middle of a season has the potential to sap the energy from a team, making it more difficult to finish the season on top. This may be why 14 years passed between the last driver who won both the Indy 500 and the series points championship and Palou (despite the fact that winning the 500 was worth twice as many points as any other race between 2014 and 2022).
Dario Franchitti, also with Chip Ganassi Racing, was that last driver—and the young Palou shares a few traits with the legendary Scotsman. “We hadn’t had a driver that communicates as well as he does since Dario,” says Barry Wanser, a Ganassi strategist who has worked with both Franchitti and Palou. “Along comes Alex with the talent and ability to get better and improve. They are both very technical and precise with their car placement. That enables them to level up communication with the engineer. A driver who can truly communicate what he needs with the car—more specific than, ‘I need better brakes,’ or, ‘I’m feeling understeer’—can tell the team what needs to be fixed without upsetting the things that are working on the car.”
Palou exhibited these car whisperer traits in his test for Ganassi at Laguna Seca Raceway when he was just 23 years old. Davis arrived not knowing anything about the young driver except that he had scored a single podium finish in his rookie year with Dale Coyne Racing. But Davis was immediately impressed. As soon as Palou climbed into the cockpit, he was shockingly fast. And for the first half of the practice, all he wanted to do was drive the car. As he got familiar with the machine, he picked up speed with each successive lap.
What struck Davis more than Palou’s refined technique in the car was his genial personality in the paddock. He fit in with the crew right away. “He came into the shop practically floating across the floor, smiling like a kid at Christmas,” says Davis. “He’s been the same way ever since. He’s always wanted to be a race car driver. Every day he wakes up is the best day of his life.”
In his first race for Ganassi, the 2021 season opener at Barber Motorsports Park in Alabama, Palou led 56 of 90 laps to take first over Power and defending series champion Dixon. After a hiccup 17th-place finish in the next race in St. Pete, Palou finished fourth in the Genesys 300 at Texas Motor Speedway and then went on a run of seven podiums in 11 races, including wins at the REV Group Grand Prix at Road America in Wisconsin and the Bit.com Grand Prix of Portland and a runner-up finish at the 500 en route to his first series championship.
The league was on notice: A special young talent had merged with one of the sport’s elite teams to become an instant championship contender. It seemed like nothing could knock Palou off his line—at least nothing on the track.
In July 2022, Chip Ganassi Racing put out a press release reporting the team was picking up Palou’s contract option. The defending IndyCar Series champion would return to the team for the 2023 season. Not exactly earth-shattering news.
But hours later, Palou tweeted that he hadn’t approved Ganassi’s announcement and, in fact, he was leaving the team for “personal reasons.” This was followed by McLaren Racing’s announcement that Palou was joining them in 2023 to drive in IndyCar, as well as test and be a reserve driver for the team’s F1 program.
The public conflict was a major speedbump in a 2022 season that started with the promise of three podiums in the first four races for Palou. But he finished 18th at the GMR Grand Prix at the IMS in May, beginning an uncharacteristic string of nine races in which he only once cracked the top five. “He’s usually very good at compartmentalizing,” says Davis. “But [the contract situation] did weigh him down, and you could see it in his face. It was a mess.”
Here too, Palou seemed to adapt on the track. He ended the 2022 season with his only win, a dominant performance at the Firestone Grand Prix of Monterey at Laguna Seca, on the track where he had first tested for Ganassi. Less than a week later, he posted on social media that he was returning to Ganassi in 2023. Palou’s about-face triggered a legal battle that wasn’t settled until this past February, when a judge ordered him to pay McLaren $12 million for breach of contract. Palou took the blame, saying he’d gotten bad advice and that both Ganassi and McLaren CEO Zak Brown had fulfilled their obligations to him.
Meanwhile, Palou reasserted his authority behind the wheel. After an eighth-place finish in St. Pete to open the 2023 campaign, he netted nine top five finishes in a row, including four wins, totaling five wins in the season and earning his second Astor Cup. The following year, he took the season’s title with only three wins. And in 2025, he put together one of the most powerful seasons in history: eight wins and four second-place finishes in 17 races, winning the championship by almost 200 points over Pato O’Ward. This year, with his legal battles officially behind him, there doesn’t seem to be anything in his way.
In May 2021, Palou drove in his second 500, his first with Ganassi. Early in the second half of the race, a round of pit stops reshuffled the grid, putting Palou in the lead with three-time Borg-Warner champ Hélio Castroneves in second. By Lap 190, Palou and Castroneves were alone out front. While the novice Palou fought to maintain position, desperately trying to work around cars struggling to stay on the lead lap, the veteran Castroneves hung back, using the slower cars to draft and conserve fuel. Finally, with just two laps remaining, Castroneves made his move and overtook Palou to win his fourth Indy 500.
Palou never forgot that lesson.
Last year at the Speedway, it was Palou who was chasing the leader, Marcus Ericsson, late in the race. Ericsson became frustrated by two slower-driving backmarkers. Palou waited—but not too long. On Lap 187, the Spaniard pounced, passing Ericsson on the inside in Turn 1. This time, Palou read the traffic and held the lead for his first Indy 500 win. “In 2021, I didn’t know how to prepare or fight, especially against someone like Hélio,” says Palou. “Last year, I focused on the end of the race and not the beginning. 2021 allowed me to win in 2025.”
