“I wouldn’t be here today without him,” Alex Palou said of Scott Dixon in July, days after word broke that his six-time champion teammate is leaving Chip Ganassi Racing for Arrow McLaren in 2027. Palou spoke about Dixon in the past tense of gratitude even though the two men are still teammates, still sharing a shop, still racing each other on Sundays. It captured the strange shape of this IndyCar season: the student is closing in on the records of the very teacher who is packing up and leaving.
Palou enters the final six races of 2026 with an 83-point lead over David Malukas, a cushion worth more than a full race weekend given the 54 points on offer at each event. A fifth championship in six seasons would put him alone in third place on IndyCar’s all-time list, behind only A.J. Foyt’s seven titles and Dixon’s six. It would also make him the second driver in series history to win four consecutive championships, joining Sebastien Bourdais.
Getting There Faster Than Anyone Before Him
What separates Palou from the legends he is chasing is not just the count. It is the clock. Foyt was 32 when he won his fifth title in 1967. Dixon was 38 when he claimed his fifth in 2018, adding a sixth two years later. Palou turns 29 this year. If he closes out 2026 the way the standings suggest, he will have reached a milestone that took two of the sport’s greatest drivers most of a decade longer to reach.
The numbers behind that pace are almost absurd. Palou has 49 top-five finishes in his last 63 starts, a 77.8 percent success rate. He recorded nine top-five finishes in 12 starts this season, 14 of 17 in 2025, and 13 in both 2023 and 2024. On permanent road courses from the start of 2023 onward, he has produced 12 victories, three runner-up finishes, two thirds and 23 top-five results in 24 starts. Malukas remains winless in 73 career starts. Kyle Kirkwood, third in the standings, has been outscored by Palou on the street circuits that make up his own greatest strength, even though five of Kirkwood’s six career victories have come on that exact type of layout, including the inaugural race in Arlington, Texas back in March. Palou finished second at Arlington behind him and still walked away with a better points average across the category for the year, a 1.25 mark built on wins at St. Petersburg, Long Beach and Detroit. He has outscored Kirkwood by 41 points on street courses alone this season, erasing the one advantage a challenger might have used to close the gap.
A Teammate Who Never Built a Wall
Palou’s account of what Dixon has meant to his career goes well beyond diplomatic praise. “When I had the opportunity to be teammates with Scott, it was the best thing that could have ever happened to me,” Palou said. “First, you have no pressure because you’re going against the best. You can learn as much as you can. I can listen to everything he says about the car. I can copy the car that he has. I can see how he builds the team around and I can ask him any question I want.”
He described what could easily have gone the other way inside a team built around one dominant veteran and a rising Spaniard hungry for his own results. “It could be suddenly a big wall in between and not sharing anything, but he’s been the complete opposite,” Palou said. “I know I would probably not have any championships, or more than one championship without him in the team, so it’s incredible.” Dixon’s move to Arrow McLaren closes that specific chapter, even as the two remain rivals on track through the rest of this season and into whatever comes after it.
Portland and the Roads Still Ahead
The timing of Palou’s test day advantage could not line up better with his history at the track hosting it. Chip Ganassi Racing used its INDYCAR-mandated extra test day at Portland International Raceway this week, a session earned by teams that also compete in Indy NXT. Ganassi had not tested on a road course all year, running its allotted days on ovals instead. “We haven’t had a test on a road course since I don’t know when, we haven’t had any this year,” Palou said. “It’s going to be huge for us to get a test there.”
Portland has already shaped two of Palou’s championships. He clinched the Astor Cup there in 2023 with two races still remaining, and did it again last season with three left on the schedule. He owns two victories and has led 106 laps in five career starts on the 1.964-mile circuit. If the title race somehow stretches all the way to the September finale at Laguna Seca, the history there favors him just as heavily: a three-time winner with a 1.6 average finish and no result worse than third in five career starts.
Malukas holds one meaningful path back into contention. He leads the series in oval points, finished second at the Indianapolis 500, won the pole at Phoenix and finished third there, and has started second in two of his three career Milwaukee Mile appearances. The Milwaukee doubleheader represents his best remaining chance to close ground on ovals, the one category where Palou has looked human this season. Even there, the caution flag belongs to history: Palou finished second at Milwaukee a year ago before winning the most recent short-oval race at Nashville, a victory he later admitted came with more nerves than the result suggested. “I was not confident at all,” Palou said of holding off Josef Newgarden’s Team Penske Chevrolet over the closing laps, a margin that came down to less than a second at the checkered flag. He led the final 95 laps of the 225-lap race, and afterward turned his attention away from the championship math entirely, crediting Spain’s win in soccer’s World Cup the day before as the better story of the weekend. “That’s a pretty cool weekend for Spain,” he said. “It’s impressive what they did yesterday in the World Cup, and I’m happy to top it off today on Monday.” It was a small moment, but a telling one, a driver on the verge of history who still sounded more interested in talking about something other than himself.
Closing a Chapter While Opening Another
There is a version of this story that plays out as pure dominance, a champion cruising through a soft schedule toward an inevitable trophy. That is not quite what is happening at Ganassi this year. Dixon’s own final act at the team he has called home for 25 years is unfolding in parallel with Palou’s push, and the two threads keep crossing in public. Dixon has raced this season with the same commitment he has shown across 25 years at the team, refusing to treat his own farewell as a distraction from the championship fight playing out one garage stall over. That restraint is, in its own way, one more piece of the mentorship Palou keeps crediting. Palou is chasing history alongside a teammate who helped build the foundation for it and who will not be in the garage to see whether it happens again next season. Dixon leaves for Arrow McLaren with his own six titles intact and his own legacy secure, handing off not just a seat but a standard that Palou has spent five seasons trying to match and is now on pace to pass.
Six races remain. Portland opens the stretch, followed by the Milwaukee doubleheader, Markham, and a closing schedule that plays almost entirely to Palou’s strengths, including a possible return to Laguna Seca where his career average finish sits below two full positions. Barring a collapse that has no precedent in his recent form, the only real questions left are how early he clinches and by how much he separates himself from a field that has spent all season racing for second. For Dixon, watching that history get written from the next garage over, there will be a strange symmetry to it: the record he set at 38 quietly matched by the driver he spent years teaching how to build a championship car around himself, in the same shop, on the same team, in the final season they will ever share.
Sources:
- https://www.indycar.com/news/2026/07/07-27-palou
- https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/alex-palou-sad-see-scott-220326488.html
- https://www.motorsport.com/indycar/news/alex-palou-was-not-confident-at-all-in-outlasting-late-pressure-to-win-nashville/10840624/
- https://www.usnews.com/news/sports/articles/2026-08-02/alex-palou-alexander-rossi-provide-rave-reviews-after-1st-weekend-of-testing-the-new-indycars
