- Alex Palou won his fifth NTT IndyCar Series championship in 2026, a record-tying fourth title in a row for Chip Ganassi Racing’s Spanish star.
- Still in his firesuit and late for his own championship banquet at Laguna Seca, Palou stopped to greet three young fans who spotted him in the parking lot.
- The gesture capped a weekend that also crowned a new generation of IndyCar talent, from rookie standout Dennis Hauger to 18-year-old Indy NXT champion Nikita Johnson.
A Champion Who Still Stops for Three Kids in Matching T-Shirts
Alex Palou had just climbed out of his car for the final time in 2026. He was still wearing his firesuit, the Monterey sun dropping behind the hills at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca, and he had somewhere to be. A championship banquet was waiting. There was no detour planned, no photo opportunity on the schedule, nothing written down anywhere that said the newly crowned five-time IndyCar champion needed to stop walking.
Then he heard it. Three kids, each wearing a No. 10 shirt, spotted him crossing the paddock. One of them said it loud enough for him to hear: “Hey, that’s Alex Palou!”
He turned around.
“So I turned around and, yeah, just wanted to say hi to them,” Palou said afterward. “I mean, it’s great to see so many kids nowadays in the INDYCAR community that we have. It’s incredible.”
There was no trophy in his hands at that moment, no victory lane, no television camera trailing him. Someone caught the exchange on a phone and posted it online, and it traveled the way small, genuine moments do among racing fans who have grown used to watching Palou dominate from a distance. For a few seconds, the sport’s most dominant winner was just a guy in a sweaty firesuit, happy that three kids cared enough to shout his name.
“I’m sure it made them happy,” Palou said. “It made me also very happy to see them and to spend some time with them.”
He had a banquet to reach. He went anyway, and when he described the whole day later, the sentence he chose was almost offhand. “So, yeah,” he said, “it was a cool end of a great season.”
Five Titles and a Record Tied
Calling it a great season undersells what Palou actually did. He left Monterey with the Astor Challenge Cup for the fifth time in his career, tying a record for consecutive championships that had stood for years. Scott McLaughlin won the race itself at Laguna Seca, but the only number that mattered by Sunday night belonged to Palou, who had locked up the title with room to spare.
The celebration moved to The Inn at Spanish Bay in Pebble Beach, where host Lindsay Czarniak presided over a ceremony that doubled as a snapshot of where the sport stands heading into its next chapter. Palou shared the stage with the rest of the top five in the final standings: Kyle Kirkwood of Andretti Global, Christian Lundgaard and Pato O’Ward of Arrow McLaren, and David Malukas of Team Penske. Chip Ganassi Racing picked up a record 18th championship season as a team owner, a number that places Palou’s success inside a larger legacy rather than a solo act.
One name mattered as much to the people inside the Ganassi garage as Palou’s own. Ricky Davis, the mechanic who has spent years wrenching on Palou’s car, received the Pennzoil Chief Mechanic Award. Drivers get the microphone and the trophy. The people who build the car that lets them chase it rarely get either, which made the recognition land harder in a room full of people who already knew what Davis meant to the operation.
From Super Formula in Japan to the Top of American Open Wheel Racing
None of this was supposed to be the easy path. Palou spent 2019 racing in Japan, competing in Super GT and Super Formula for Team GOH, a world away from the ovals and street circuits that define IndyCar. He has described that detour as fulfilling, not frustrating, but he also made clear he wanted something else. His agent, Roger Yasakawa, had raced in the United States himself and understood exactly what Palou was asking for when he pushed to come to America.
“It was both of them. It was Team GOH. It was Roger,” Palou has said of the people who engineered his move. “He had raced here and knew how everything was and he was able to get me a ride with Dale Coyne Racing, and that is how we started.”
That first American season came with Dale Coyne Racing in 2020, a smaller team where Palou learned the fundamentals that larger, better-funded outfits take for granted. Oval racing. Fuel conservation. The unglamorous routines that separate drivers who survive a season from drivers who win championships. He has pointed to one teammate in particular as the turning point in his education: Scott Dixon, the six-time champion whose influence on Palou’s approach to racing is still visible in how he manages a season now.
By 2021, in his first full season with Chip Ganassi Racing, Palou had his first title. A messy contract situation with McLaren followed that threatened to derail his career entirely, the kind of dispute that ends up defining a driver for all the wrong reasons. Palou and Ganassi worked through it. “I wouldn’t say it was one moment that made me change my mind,” Palou said of staying put. “We won the championship together in 2021.” Ganassi, for his part, has never pretended the relationship was complicated from his side. “Alex knew he had my support long before that statement came out,” he said.
A Season That Confirmed What the Paddock Already Suspected
The four consecutive championships that followed turned Palou from a promising story into the defining driver of his generation in American open wheel racing. Every season invites the same question from rivals and reporters alike: is this the year someone finally catches him? Kirkwood pushed hard. Lundgaard, fresh off a career-best campaign, pushed harder. O’Ward, who has spent years positioning himself as Palou’s most persistent challenger, came up short again. Malukas, representing a resurgent Team Penske lineup, rounded out a top five that reads like a list of the next generation’s best hopes, all of them still chasing the same man.
What separates Palou from a driver who is merely fast is the consistency that the record books now confirm. Four straight titles is not a product of one brilliant car or one lucky season. It requires a team that rebuilds itself every winter without losing continuity, a driver who adapts his style to new regulations and new tracks without losing his edge, and a working relationship between driver and crew that survives the inevitable bad weekends every championship campaign includes. Palou has had all three, and the mechanics and engineers who have stayed with him through it, Davis chief among them, are as responsible for the streak as the driver who gets his name called at the podium.
The Next Generation Arrives Alongside Him
The same weekend that crowned Palou also introduced two names IndyCar fans will be hearing for years. Dennis Hauger, driving for Dale Coyne Racing, was named the series’ 2026 Rookie of the Year after already winning the Indy NXT title in 2025, the traditional proving ground for IndyCar’s future stars. His path mirrors what the series has tried to build: a development pipeline that actually produces drivers ready to compete immediately rather than simply occupy a seat.
Eighteen-year-old Nikita Johnson, racing for Cape Motorsports Powered by ECR, became the youngest champion in Indy NXT history, a record that puts her squarely in the conversation about who follows Palou’s generation into IndyCar’s top series. Honda and Honda Racing Corporation USA were also honored for the manufacturers’ championship, a reminder that behind every driver’s trophy sits a much larger operation of engineers and strategists who rarely get the spotlight Davis received that night in Pebble Beach.
What Comes Next
IndyCar does not wait long to turn the page. The 2027 season opens on Sunday, March 7, in St. Petersburg, Florida, and Palou will arrive there as the five-time defending champion, the record-tying four-in-a-row winner, and, if the parking lot moment at Laguna Seca is any indication, still the driver who stops walking when three kids in matching shirts shout his name. Dominance and approachability rarely travel together in professional sports. For now, in Palou’s case, they do.
The challengers will be back, sharper and better funded than ever, with Lundgaard and O’Ward both still hunting the one thing Palou has that they do not. Whether anyone finally closes the gap in 2027 is next year’s story. What happened at Laguna Seca this fall was simpler than any of that: a driver who had just won everything there was to win, choosing to turn around anyway.
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