How rain couldn't dampen Palou's parade to fifth IndyCar title

If you attended the inaugural CART race at the defunct Rockingham Motor Speedway in 2001, you’ll understand the frustration of waiting out IndyCar rain delays at an oval track. Wet weather threw a spanner into this year’s IndyCar double-header weekend at the Milwaukee Mile, which as a result crammed nearly two full races and a season’s worth of storylines into a single Sunday afternoon.

Where to begin? The first of two scheduled 250-lap features at one of IndyCar racing’s most historic venues was halted after 90 laps when showers rolled into the region Saturday afternoon with Pato O’Ward at the front of the field. Attempts to resume action were foiled by further precipitation and the decision was taken to restart the race Sunday at 8am local time to be run to complete distance or to finish at 9:25am, prior to a Noon start for Race 2. That set up 410 laps of Sunday action, more than double Milwaukee’s long-time 200-lap race distance.

The sound of rain slashing against the windows on Sunday at dawn signalled another schedule change, this time to run Race 2 at Noon as planned prior to completing the suspended Race 1 around three hours later. The weather held out, and O’Ward stepped up to the occasion to become the first driver to win two IndyCar races in a single day since Rick Mears topped the field in a pair of scheduled 125-milers at Atlanta Motor Speedway in 1981.

Meanwhile, fifth- and 10th-place finishes this year’s twin 250s at Milwaukee were enough for Alex Palou to clinch his fourth consecutive and fifth overall IndyCar Series title. Needless to say, the accomplishment lifts the Spaniard into the discourse over the greatest IndyCar drivers of all time, even though he is still just 29 years old. Only A. J. Foyt with seven and Scott Dixon with six have won more IndyCar titles.

Kyle Kirkwood’s slim championship hopes slammed the wall Friday evening in practice when he tangled and crashed with Christian Rasmussen, reflected in 20th and 23rd-place qualifying positions for the races. But Andretti Global had a couple hours to tune his car between qualifying and the start of Race 1, and Kirkwood quickly worked forward to a legitimate seventh place before the race was stopped for moisture after 90 laps were completed. O’Ward briefly lost the lead to Felix Rosenqvist before regaining the top spot to lead at the stoppage.

As luck would have it, O’Ward was fighting at the front immediately in Race 2, which flagged off on time Sunday at Noon. This time, he lost the lead just prior the first round of pitstops to Josef Newgarden in an entertaining race that as many as seven drivers looked like they had a shot at the win.

It is rare you win two races in a day and you are not the main story - but that is what happened to O'Ward

Photo by: Penske Entertainment

Newgarden battled tyre degradation and ultimately crashed. Palou and the Ganassi team lost the handle on the #10 Honda and the champion-elect faded to fifth at the flag. Scott McLaughlin led a bunch of laps and finished second. Christian Lundgaard earned his first podium finish at an oval, but it could have been more without a slow final pitstop. Kirkwood worked his way up to third from the back of the grid but ended up sixth.

O’Ward’s strongest challenge in the resumption of Race 1 came from Will Power, who led a long string of laps only to incur a late pitlane speeding violation that dropped him out of contention. In search of his first win, Team Penske’s David Malukas then challenged, but O’Ward decisively took the lead in the race’s final restart and drove away through traffic to score his third win of the season.

It was Lundgaard who may have emerged as the weekend’s biggest winner. Reportedly signed to Chip Ganassi Racing’s #9 car to replace Scott Dixon, Lundgaard addressed his CV weakness by posting career-best oval finishes of sixth and third at Milwaukee to regain second place in the IndyCar standings. He’s two points up on Kirkwood and four up on O’Ward in what will be the most interesting subplot of IndyCar’s season-ending weekend at Laguna Seca.

“I owe everything to this team and we’re having more and more fun each day. It’s been an absolute joy of a year. The last two years have been magical for us” Alex Palou

Palou needed to have a 108-point lead at the end of the weekend’s first race to clinch the championship, and he fell short by 11. But there was little doubt he would be up by the requisite 54-point margin by the end of the second race, and so it proved. His conservative run to 10th place offset a 15th place effort from a fading Kirkwood, in what was confusingly called Race 1, to seal the deal on a fifth IndyCar title.

So once again, the spotlight shines on Palou, who has demonstrated an unmatched mastery of a specific era of IndyCar racing. While the well-oiled Chip Ganassi Racing machine deserves plenty of credit, five championships in the last six years is pretty heady stuff. And the one year they didn’t grab the trophy was the year Palou was embroiled in a legal battle between Ganassi and the McLaren organisation over his contract.

“It feels like we started yesterday,” Palou said. “I owe everything to this team and we’re having more and more fun each day. It’s been an absolute joy of a year. The last two years have been magical for us.”

Chip Ganassi Racing drivers have now won 18 IndyCar championships since 1996, including six by Scott Dixon between 2003 and ’20. Palou is racking up the titles at an unprecedented rate.

“We’re in the midst of a generational thing here, a generational driver,” said Ganassi. “Four in a row has been done before, but five out of six hasn’t been done before. That’s something that's kind of unprecedented. We’re in the midst of that right now, and it’s not over.”