Alex Palou is eight points away from clinching his second NTT IndyCar Series championship.
The odds aren’t necessarily in his favor to do so at the August 27 oval race at World Wide Technology Raceway, but for the first time in a long time, IndyCar has a genuine need to prepare the Astor Cup and the $1 million check to crown a champion with two races left to run after WWTR.
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Palou holds a 101-point lead over Chip Ganassi Racing teammate Scott Dixon, who won Saturday’s race on the Indy road course, and has a margin of 105 points over Team Penske’s Josef Newgarden, who was struck by the cartoon anvil on multiple occasions last weekend and finished 25th. Entering Indy with a gap of 84 points to Palou, Newgarden will need to turn his mastery of WWTR into a victory later this month if he’s going to stay in the championship conversation, and the same is true for Dixon.
If Palou places ahead of both rivals at WWTR, it could be a case of game over as all he needs is to achieve a lead of 109 points to become a two-time IndyCar champion. A maximum of 108 are available across the penultimate race in Portland and the finale at Monterey.
And if that happens, he’ll join an illustrious club of modern IndyCar winners who clinched early, led by CGR’s Alex Zanardi, who secured his second consecutive title with four races left in the 1998 CART IndyCar Series championship. Newman/Haas Racing’s Cristiano da Matta locked his CART title down with three races left in 2002, and if Palou can do it at WWTR, he’ll equal Team Penske’s Al Unser Jr whose 1994 CART championship was delivered with two rounds to run.
Barring the arrival of misfortune for Dixon and Newgarden, the more realistic clinch scenario for Palou – who has yet to win on an oval – is on September 3 at Portland International Raceway, the road course where the Spaniard won in 2021 and put the championship all but out of reach for his rivals at Monterey and Long Beach.
Looking to the remaining contenders for the championship, the likes of Penske’s Scott McLaughlin in fourth (144 points behind) and Arrow McLaren’s Pato O’Ward in fifth (151 points back) are mathematically eligible but have no realistic hope of catching Palou. The Spaniard would need to skip the last three races to bring them into the title hunt, leaving Dixon and Newgarden as the only drivers who have a tiny glimmer of hope to unseat Palou and take the championship spoils by September 10 in Laguna Seca.