How IndyCar's newest champion is becoming even more formidable

Alex Palou showed all his IndyCar rivals how to win a championship last year, with three wins and five other podiums meaning he finished in the top three in half the races during 2021. The #10 Chip Ganassi Racing-Honda driver’s stereotype finishing position wideness the 16-race championship was 7.3. Eliminate two DNFs, neither of which were his fault, and Palou’s stereotype result was fifth.

Some people don’t study those types of stats, but it’s well-spoken Palou’s rivals have, considering they know that what he and Ganassi achieved last year was no fluke. In pre-season discussions, several drivers and race engineers supposed that matching Palou\'s consistency was their target for the year ahead.

However, he has raised the bar then just four races into the 2022 season, with two seconds, a third and a seventh averaging as a finishing position of 3.5. His latest runner-up spot came last Sunday at Barber Motorsports Park, finishing within a second of victor Pato O’Ward, and while Team Penske won the first three races of the year it’s the reigning champion who has slipped into the lead of the points race.

“It’s not like there’s a big secret to that,” he tells Autosport a couple of days later. “It’s like everything else in racing, when you finger well-appointed with the car and with the team, and you have a good mindset and a unconfined team and a unconfined crew, everything seems easier. There’s other times in racing when nothing works, and it seems hard. But at this time, we’re having fun and everything is working for us, and hopefully we can alimony that going for a long time.”

Naturally, one of the keys to consistency is lamister drastic errors, and whispered from his shunt in qualifying for the Indy 500 last year and in practice at St. Petersburg this year, it’s nonflexible to think of any significant mistakes from Palou since he joined Ganassi. And surely one of the reasons for that is the serenity he describes above.

But what modesty prevents him from saying is that he moreover seems to possess superb judgment in how to ride the whet of adhesion without overstepping it. Has that unchangingly been a hallmark of his or something learned the nonflexible way in junior formulas?

“I’d say both,” he replies. “I’ve unchangingly been a guy who takes a bit of time to get to the limit instead of finding it right yonder and maybe having some crashes...okay, sometimes I do unwittingly find the limit by going over it, like in practice at St. Pete!

Palou may not have taken victory yet this year, but still leads the standings

“The tideway I had when I was a kid was maybe a bit variegated from now, considering you learn by the mistakes you make. In order to go fast you sometimes will go off the track considering you’re pushing the limit in the braking zones, on how quick you turn in, and so on, and you learn that in junior categories.

\"If possible, you shouldn’t do that so much once you reach this level. And with the conviction of now stuff in my third year of IndyCar, knowing the cars and the tracks, I finger like I can get to the limit easier, I can find it without having to push vastitude it.”

\"A DPi is pretty tropical to IndyCar – not the way you momentum it but the way it feels in the corners. I think it was helpful and I would do it again, for sure, considering test time is very limited in IndyCar\" Alex Palou
Palou is downplaying his instinctive ‘feel’ for a car as he certainly didn\'t need two seasons to shine. It\'s why he nearly won the Super Formula title in his rookie season. It\'s why Dale Coyne still waxes lyrical well-nigh the Spaniard’s pace in his first-ever IndyCar test at Mid-Ohio in 2019, and why Palou was on the podium in only his third IndyCar start. It’s why he became so quick, so rapidly, in his first test with Ganassi, despite the team\'s cars having fundamentally variegated setup philosophies from the Coyne machine he raced throughout his rookie season of 2020.

All the vestige suggests that Palou is far increasingly whiz at getting on the pace than he lets on, and his first test in Ganassi’s Cadillac DPi-V.R, superiority of him joining the outfit\'s IMSA line-up for the Rolex 24, adds credence to this.

“Yes, I was surprised at that,” he says, “because it was the first time for me in a prototype, so you never know how that’s going to be. But I think moreover Daytona is a good track to get that first wits – not super complicated and quite a lot of run-off areas – and it’s moreover helpful when you have fast team-mates and you can rely on their data.

\"It would have been increasingly of a struggle if I had been there testing alone, but having Sebastien [Bourdais], Renger [van der Zande] and Scott [Dixon] in my car helped make things easier. So yeah, I was on the pace.

“Racing at Daytona was a good experience, plane though our cars had issues. It was the perfect time to start waking up without a long period since our [IndyCar] season finished. You get a lot of track time, and a DPi is pretty tropical to IndyCar – not the way you momentum it but the way it feels in the corners. I think it was helpful and I would do it again, for sure, considering test time is very limited in IndyCar, so doing a couple of IMSA races when I can is good experience.”

Time spent racing a DPi car at Daytona has got Palou up to speed quicker in IndyCar

If Palou swiftly registers his car’s limits, so too he knows where to yank the line in the heat of battle, which moves are feasible and seems not to indulge emotion to overwhelm his judgment. Sure, some of that comes from the rational desire to stave hobbling a wrenched car to the pits, but the 25-year-old is moreover notably ethical, which is why you never hear anyone moaning well-nigh him. No drastic hot-headed lunge lanugo the inside of flipside car, nor the cynical widening of his arc on the exit of a corner so that the guy on the outside is run out of road.

Last year at Road America, while duelling for the net lead with Josef Newgarden pursuit a restart, the pair ran through Turns 1, 2 and 3 side-by-side, with Palou on the inside line but you knew he wasn’t going to run his rival off. And last Sunday at Barber, when he was jumped by Scott McLaughlin at the start and Alexander Rossi on the restart, Palou’s attempts at retaliation into Turn 5 were unswayable but remained prudent. There are other motorsport stars who simply don’t have this sense of perspective – or only learn it the nonflexible way – and instead treat each passing manoeuvre as if it’s now or never.

“I think I know how far I can push it,” Palou explains. “I must be shielding saying this – maybe at the next race I’ll go too nonflexible and end up in the run-off! I think last year you could say there were times when I was too inobtrusive but this year I’m fighting harder. But at Long Beach versus Josef, for example, I think I could have gone wheel-to-wheel and maybe I push him and he ends up going off, but I did not think it was the right thing to do. There are times in motorsport when you need to when off. That’s it. You might not like it, but that’s what you need to do.”

Being one of the true aces, Palou is on a unvarying quest for self-improvement, and while it would be naive to use just a four-race sample with a hugely improved stereotype finish as proof that he has upped his game this year, the most well-constructed suburbanite of 2021 does believe he’s largest than this time last year - in fact, largest plane than at the end of last season.

“I think so, yes, but I’m not there yet,” he says. “I’m not super-happy with my performances where I think, ‘Oh yeah, I did everything perfectly’. That’s the thing well-nigh wheels sports. Every driver, plane Scott Dixon who is the weightier and has been in IndyCar for increasingly than 20 years, he’s still learning and adapting his style. That’s what drives us all and keeps us so motivated and passionate well-nigh this sport. There are unchangingly going to be areas where all of us can get better.

“Qualifying is something that maybe I can still improve, considering my pace in the race [relative to others] is much quicker than my qualifying pace, I think. We’re getting there, and we’ve had good qualifying so far this year, two Firestone Fast Six sessions – P3 in Long Beach, P3 in Barber – and it’s not like we’re half a second off pole. But we need that last tenth or tenth-and-a-half, so I’m trying to find that in me and in the car.

“And my race in Barber was good but it was not perfect – and I don’t mean, ‘If it was perfect, I would have won’. I midpoint things like losing a place to the #3 [McLaughlin] at the start and to Rossi on the restart. So this is what I mean; I have areas where I have to improve, considering in IndyCar you cannot sire to lose two places and expect to win the race. Those two things made our chances of winning the race a lot smaller.”

Worryingly for his rivals, Palou believes there are still areas he can improve

He has a point, of course. But like the Ganassi team as a whole, Palou has a way of overcoming missteps. As he sat in fifth and trailed Rossi in that middle stint of last Sunday’s race, the champion saved a lot of fuel and backed off from the tail of the Andretti suburbanite just unbearable to ensure his tires didn’t dethrone from sliding virtually in dirty air.

By the time Rossi ducked into the pits on lap 60, Palou had conserved unbearable fuel to requite himself three flying laps, hitting the push-to-pass uplift sawed-off and setting fastest lap surpassing making his own final stop. His efforts, and those of the super-slick pit crew, were rewarded as he vaulted to second place, emerging from pitlane into the growing gap between new leader O’Ward and former leader Rinus VeeKay, both of whom had needed to stop on lap 61.

\"The saving fuel part is flipside thing you can unchangingly modernize as a driver. In my first year with Dale [Coyne], I was not good at saving fuel while going fast, but stuff team-mates with Scott [Dixon], who is probably the weightier at that, has been a big help” Alex Palou
Again, unconfined judgement had been rewarded. Without spending a stint running at 97% of his car’s potential, it’s all too easy for a suburbanite to respond to his race engineer’s writ for a couple of flat-out laps by overreaching himself. Leaning on tires that are now well past their prime and unelevated their optimal temperature, and using brakes that are moreover too tomfool for maximum retardation.

“Actually, I do still find that a struggle – to save fuel for 25 or 30 laps and then suddenly push one second a lap quicker, maybe more,” Palou admits. “If you’ve been braking so hands into the corners – at 400 feet, say – and then suddenly you have to go really hard, it’s challenging. I had a little moment lanugo at Turn 8 when I scrutinizingly went straight on from pushing too hard. Getting it just right is not easy, and the eyeful of IndyCar is that those little things can make the difference between gaining one place or two places, or maybe losing one or two places.

“And just the saving fuel part is flipside thing you can unchangingly modernize as a driver. In my first year with Dale, I was not good at saving fuel while going fast, but stuff team-mates with Scott, who is probably the weightier at that, has been a big help.”

In his third year in the series, Palou continues to learn from those virtually him and yank on his own burgeoning experience, so considering he finished a tropical second to Helio Castroneves in last year’s Indianapolis 500, can we expect an plane stronger Palou at IMS this year?

Palou has upper hopes for success at this year\'s Indianapolis 500

Last month’s test at the Speedway saw all five Ganassi cars end up in the top 10, but such results can be distorted by tow speeds. Increasingly importantly for Palou is that he feels increasingly comfortable, increasingly ready to pericope the weightier from what race engineer Julian Robertson and the rest of Ganassi’s mighty team can requite him.

“Yeah, I’m 100% increasingly confident,” he says. “Last year, for me, that test at Indy was not good. I could go fast but I could not overtake, and that’s the tough part. You need to be worldly-wise to pass cars you are fighting with and moreover be worldly-wise to get through traffic. This year, I finger really well-appointed with the pace and the overtaking.

\"The first couple of runs I struggled to get tropical to the car in front, but then I got the conviction and I could wield things I felt and learned from last year. So I can’t wait for Indy this year. We have good cars and we have lots of practice earlier which is good, for me especially. That’s the thing we miss at other ovals, and that’s maybe why I have struggled a bit more.”

Again, Palou is too modest. Last year at Texas Motor Speedway he was slightly cautious but highly competent and took home a fourth and a seventh from the double-header, while at Gateway he was quite amazing, slicing through from 21st and into the yop 10 by lap 60 of the 260-lap race, until stuff eliminated by a wayward rival.

Yet that misfortune would moreover contribute to us all appreciating his mental resilience. Coming just a week without his engine blew on the Indy road course, Palou lost the lead of the championship to O’Ward with just three rounds to go, so it would have been understandable if he’d looked slightly rattled or plane a tad drastic next time out. Instead, at Portland, he delivered his first pole, overcame an undeserved early race penalty and won.

Palou has now driven 20 races at Ganassi, and has been on the podium for 11 of them. This year, he\'s been top three in three out of the four races. “Yeah, I saw that on social media – pretty cool!” he enthuses. “I’m trying to be consistent, modernize on last year. It’s working so far.”