The 2024 season for the IndyCar Series is nearing its end, with either Chip Ganassi Racing's Alex Palou or Team Penske's Will Power crowned champion when the checkered flag falls after 206 laps at Nashville Superspeedway on Sunday.
Palou, the defending and two-time series champion, holds a 33-point advantage over Power (525-492), with bragging rights on the line for a third title for both competitors. Additionally, Scott McLaughlin, Power’s teammate, remains mathematically eligible at 50 points back (475) of Palou, but will be officially eliminated when the Spaniard takes the green flag at the 1.33-mile oval.
There are several variables going into the weekend, including the fact that only one time over the past 11 seasons has the points leader going into the finale has lost the championship – and that came under the era when double points were on offer during the 2015 season, with Scott Dixon overcoming a 47-point deficit at Sonoma to win the race and the title on a tiebreaker to dethrone Juan Pablo Montoya.
There are a maximum of 54 points possible in a race, with 50 for a win, one for claiming the pole, one for leading a lap and two for leading the most laps.
If Palou finishes ninth or better on Sunday, he will hoist the Astor Cup Trophy for the second consecutive season and become the first back-to-back champion since Dario Franchitti ignited a three-peat from 2009-11. A result of 12th would also clinch the title for Palou, even if Power won the race but failed to earn the pole or lead the most laps. If it came down to a tiebreaker, Palou would be on the wrong end having only earned two wins this year to Power’s three. Palou’s victory at The Thermal Club would be excluded under the scenario due to it being a non-points exhibition event.
Another staggering part of this is that Palou is only 27 years old and closing out this campaign atop the standings would mark his third overall title in just five seasons competing in North America’s premier open-wheel championship.
For Power, any hopes of finishing a come-from-behind title run will have to happen with, at minimum, a podium result in Nashville. However, the performance by Team Penske on ovals this year certainly leaves plenty of reasons for optimism. Five of the six oval events have been won by Team Penske, with Power claiming one (Iowa, Race 2), McLaughlin with two (Iowa, Race 1; Milwaukee, Race 2) and Josef Newgarden also with two (Indianapolis 500; Gateway). It has been an admirable fight back by Power, who was docked 10 points at the start of the season due to Team Penske’s push-to-pass scandal that also saw Newgarden and McLaughlin stripped of their first- and third-place results and disqualified.
Meanwhile, Palou is continuing to search for his maiden oval victory. However, he does boast an impressive nine top fives and 16 top 10s in his last 20 starts on the track discipline, which dates back to when he joined Chip Ganassi Racing in 2021.
Some of the unknowns that make it increasingly unpredictable come with IndyCar ending its season on an oval for the first time since 2014, when Fontana was still on the calendar. With the event moving from a downtown street circuit to nearby Lebanon, Tennessee, the Nashville Superspeedway – the only concrete oval on the schedule – returns to the calendar for the first time since 2008.
Whether drivers and teams throw caution to the wind remains to be seen, obviously, but there wasn’t a series-wide test with the full field in the buildup, only a couple of tests with a select few to try out different aerodynamic and tire configurations. And off of that, the series, in partnership with Firestone, introduced another twist to the upcoming race by bringing on softer alternate tires to pair with the standard primaries. While this is a normal practice on road and street circuits, this will mark only the second time the series and its tire supplier have brought an additional rubber compound to be used on an oval, with last year’s race at Gateway the only previous occasion which was won by six-time series champion Scott Dixon, Palou’s teammate.
And then there's the hybrid power unit's reliability.
Palou’s path to a third title was almost derailed after a battery issue — unrelated to the hybrid — left him stalled on the pace laps of the second race at The Milwaukee Mile. He returned, albeit several laps down, and battled through an attrition-marked race that also included a costly spin by Power. Those kinds of issues have plagued Chip Ganassi Racing’s machines since the introduction of the hybrid in early July. Dixon fell victim to a hybrid mishap right out of the gate, prematurely ending his title aspirations before taking the green flag at Mid-Ohio. Linus Lundqivst, Palou’s rookie teammate, also had a hybrid failure during practice at Gateway last month.
Palou and Power are both deserving, but only one will further their legacy when history unfolds on Sunday.
