NTT IndyCar Series championship leader Alex Palou has a prime opportunity to place more distance between himself and those who are still within reach of the Spaniard with four races left on the calendar.
The Chip Ganassi Racing driver, who starts third for today’s 110-lap BitNile.com Grand Prix of Portland, has 59 points over his closest championship challenger Colton Herta who starts eighth, 65 points on third-place teammate Scott Dixon who starts ninth, and an advantage of 66 points over fourth-place Will Power, who starts second. But 59 points might not be enough to keep his fiercest rivals at bay.
Heading into three ovals to close the season, Palou has one last chance to use his immense road racing skills to his benefit; Team Penske’s Power — Scott McLaughlin, who sits fifth in the standings with a 73-point deficit and starts 20th — and Josef Newgarden are expected to carve into Palou’s lead once the closing ovals arrive.
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“You don’t want to go out already thinking that you just want to be finishing top fives, and points racing, because that’s when issues come,” Palou told RACER of his strategy for Portland, the Milwaukee doubleheader, and the championship finale at Nashville. “When you start changing the way you drive, the way you race, it’s not natural. And also that goes for strategies. If you start going for, ‘Let’s do a safe strategy and maybe lose only two spots and be P6,’ then you’re back there in the race and you start going farther back.”
Intelligent aggression is the formula Palou plans to use in the No. 10 Honda.
“I still want to race 100 percent and go for wins,” he said. “I think also having a little bit bigger margin allows us to be like, ‘Hey, we can go for it and try and win it,’ but at the same time, I won’t be going crazy into Turn 1 and crashing. I think we’re in a good mindset of going as hard as we can without going crazy.”