Palou still unstoppable as Nashville win edges him closer to fifth IndyCar title

Alex Palou’s official margin of victory in IndyCar’s rain-delayed 300-miler at Nashville Superspeedway was 0.8731 seconds. But the key to his fifth win of the 2026 season could be measured in a third of that brief timespan.

Palou was committed to making a routine pitstop on lap 123 of 225 in a race that was originally supposed to run for 300 tours, or 400 miles. Almost simultaneously, Scott Dixon slammed into the back of Alexander Rossi in Turn 3 when Rossi appeared to miss the entry to the pit slowdown lane.

Running fifth (one spot below where he qualified), Palou made it into the pits 0.3s before they closed, a lucky break that elevated him into the lead when frontrunners Scott McLaughlin, pole starter Kyle Kirkwood, Rinus Veekay, and Josef Newgarden made their own planned stops under caution.

The reigning champion was in command the rest of the way, turning his fastest lap with six to go to take an uncontested win over Newgarden, with David Malukas claiming third after starting from the back due to a heavy practice crash that briefly hospitalised the American with a bruised knee.

McLaughlin and Kirkwood were adversely affected by another caution for rookie Dennis Hauger’s crash, but while McLaughlin was able to rally from 11th to fourth, Kirkwood could not advance beyond 10th and fell to third in the standings, 87 points adrift of Palou and four behind second-placed Malukas.

So here IndyCar is once again: two-thirds in and Palou is well on course for another title, his fifth in six years. The Spaniard has won 24 races since the start of 2021 with Newgarden (14) and Will Power (seven) up next, with the latter’s crown in 2022 being the last for somebody other than Palou.

It seems as though nothing will stop Palou from clinching his fifth IndyCar title after winning in Nashville over the weekend

Photo by: Perry Nelson / Lumen via Getty Images

“This is one of those tracks that we’ve been struggling in the past,” Palou said. “I know last year we were second, but we kind of got very lucky with a yellow there. Today it helped us again. I’m not going to say that the yellow didn’t help us, but we were already right there. I knew we had a good car. I was struggling a little bit at the beginning, but at the end I was so comfortable, especially once we got into the lead.”

IndyCar’s 26 June race at Road America used a FIFA World Cup lead-in to pull a TV audience of 1.8 million, well above the usual figure outside the Indianapolis 500. Fox hoped for an even bigger bump by scheduling the Nashville race for Sunday evening directly after the World Cup finale, but the plan backfired when the game and celebrations ran extremely long.

When the network transferred to IndyCar coverage nearly two hours late, the track was awash and a postponement to Monday was soon announced. Had the race been run Saturday night or Sunday afternoon, everyone would have been well on their way home prior to the start of the football.  

“They’re not making it easy. I know it’s going to be a tough fight until the end, especially being so many back-to-back races. But we’re ready for it" Alex Palou

Monday’s race was reduced from 300 to 225 laps due to high heat and humidity. But day or night, long or short, hot or cool, wet or dry, road course or oval, nobody seems to have an answer for Palou and his Ganassi Racing Honda in this era of IndyCar racing.

Though the championship leader tried to play down his advantage.

“It’s very close this year,” he said. “You can see on the time charts after 10 minutes in practice, the 27 (Kirkwood), the 12 (Malukas), the 7 (Christian Lundgaard) - they’re normally up there.

“They’re not making it easy. I know it’s going to be a tough fight until the end, especially being so many back-to-back races. But we’re ready for it. I’m very happy we got a win here at a place that probably we didn’t expect coming into it. Yeah, it’s great. But although we have a good cushion, we need to keep making it bigger and keep it to the end.” 

Palou celebrating the FIFA World Cup triumph of his native Spain

Photo by: Perry Nelson / Lumen via Getty Images

Palou’s competition has six races in the span of five weeks to mount a charge. It’s an even mix of two road courses (Portland and the Laguna Seca finale, where Palou has won three times and never finished lower than third), the Markham and Washington DC street courses - both new - and an oval doubleheader at the Milwaukee Mile.

Kirkwood closed to within 55 points of Palou after claiming pole at Nashville, but the American was unable to move forward like McLaughlin in the final 30 laps after the unfortunate luck with the final caution at Nashville. That allowed Malukas to leapfrog him in the standings; the first-year Penske driver is still in search of his first IndyCar win, but hadn’t done much wrong this year prior to the jarring practice crash that arguably cost him his best shot at victory to date.

“It was a good one for us,” said Malukas. “I had to come through the field twice at a track where it’s very tough to pass. Last to third to recover from my mistake, an incredible effort thanks to the support I had.”

The outlier at Nashville was Lundgaard, who qualified 19th and finished 16th. With Pato O’Ward its top finisher in seventh, Nashville was clearly not a good weekend for Arrow McLaren. But it was particularly rough for Lundgaard to lay an egg, with his lacklustre oval performances under heavy scrutiny as he looks for a new home in 2027. Lundgaard has scored only seven top-ten finishes in 28 oval starts, topped by a sixth last year at Milwaukee.

Chip Ganassi often cites Palou’s rapid embrace and adaptation to oval racing - especially the Indianapolis Motor Speedway - as what caught his attention back in 2020. Ganassi Racing is the logical landing spot for Lundgaard, but he’s going to need to produce some attention-grabbing drives on 29 and 30 August at Milwaukee to make it a reality.  

Time is running out for rivals to launch a challenge on Palou

Photo by: Perry Nelson / Lumen via Getty Images