Editor’s note: This piece was posted Saturday, prior to Alex Palou winning the 2026 INDYCAR season opener at St. Pete.
St. Petersburg, Fla. — Alex Palou thinks he could follow his eight-win 2025 with an eight-win 2026.
Kind of.
“Yes, it’s possible,” Palou told me Thursday prior to the INDYCAR opener this weekend in St. Petersburg. “It’s very hard, very low chances. But it’s possible.
“It’s possible to win 17 races. I’m not going to do it, but it would be possible.”
Alex Palou is looking to follow up his eight-win 2025 campaign in 2026.
The Chip Ganassi Racing driver seeks his fifth INDYCAR title, and his fourth consecutive crown, when the season kicks off Sunday (Noon ET, FOX). The race kicks off what was initially a 17-race season, but an 18th race was recently added with the announcement of an August event in Washington, D.C.
The 2025 season might have been a unicorn. Palou had earned only 11 wins in the four years when he won three titles before his dominant 2025, where Palou won eight races, led 778 laps and clinched the championship with two events remaining.
Palou says repeating that type of season is not something he could expect.
“Although I want to win eight again, I think it’s not realistic,” he said.
Other drivers are not so sure.
“It’s maybe possible with Alex, but I think a lot of us — probably the whole field — are hoping that’s not true this year,” Palou teammate and six-time series champion Scott Dixon told me. “You’ve just got to beat him. And I think there’s a lot of combos this year that may have the chance, but we’ll have to wait and see.”
Dixon makes it sound so simple.
“It is simple,” Dixon said. “It’s just another race each run you get to.”
Will the DHL No. 10 car find itself on the championship podium once again?
That is the way drivers look at it. They won’t concede one race and yet they know the odds.
“This is racing,” two-time series champion Josef Newgarden said after practice Friday in a news conference. “Anything is possible. It’s not unfathomable to see what he did.
“He’s excellent. His team is excellent. They could have a terrible year this year, and you would think, ‘Wow, that’s a crazy contrast,’ or he could do it all over again no doubt. Or you find someone new that has some crazy year. I think you’ve got to have an open mind in these championships. Sometimes people get on runs, too.”
That is what everyone who describes the season for Palou last year, that he got on a run and got hot and the team made the most even off the bad days.
“When you’ve had a run like he had in 2025, the target just becomes that much bigger,” FOX play-by-play announcer Will Buxton told me. “But from everybody that we’ve spoken to in this preseason, they’re all very, very aware that the target doesn’t remain constant.
“The target rises every single year because Alex improves himself. He looks within himself and finds ways that he can improve,. Alex won’t be looking for eight wins this season. He’s going to be looking for nine, 10, 11, more. And so that’s the objective. That’s the goal that everyone’s got to aim for — it isn’t the Alex Palou of 2025, but what can Alex Palou be in 2026?”
Palou believes that it would take a great set of circumstances to match his 2025.
“I feel our 2025 season, it was just one of those seasons where everything came together,” Palou said. “My car was the fastest. My pit stops were amazing. The strategies that the team gave me were the best — and instead of finishing third, I would finish first.”
Alex Palou’s legendary 2025 season included his first Indy 500 victory.
With the addition of two street courses for six on the year, that could play into the favor of other teams as Andretti Global driver Kyle Kirkwood won two of the four last year. Palou won one (St. Petersburg).
Kirkwood indicated that a driver must feel that a season such as Palou’s is what will be needed to win the title.
“We’ve just got to maximize every single weekend to have a chance of beating him in the championship or beating anybody in the championship,” Kirkwood told me and other reporters Friday morning. “Because he’s set the standard now, and that’s the new standard for anybody that’s going to try and win the championship. … The new standard is win a lot of races and always finish up front to win the championship.
“It’s not three or four wins gets you a championship win anymore.”
Palou seemed to genuinely wonder if he could have the success and win another championship.
“I’m excited to just get started, see where we are, see what all the work that we’ve done [has produced],” Palou said. “Like, is it good enough? Is it not good enough? Did we improve in the areas we wanted? And see where our competitors are as well.”
Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR and INDYCAR for FOX Sports. He has spent decades covering motorsports, including over 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass.
https://www.foxsports.com/stories/motor/alex-palou-indycar-champion-2026