You wouldn’t bet against Alex Palou sealing a hat-trick of IndyCar Series championships in September, but Saturday’s first race at Iowa’s double-header gave a ray of hope to his rivals – especially that day’s race winner, Scott McLaughlin.
Remember that McLaughlin was last in points after Long Beach, where he suffered a gearbox failure. That compounded his disqualification from third place in the St Petersburg opener, after he, along with team-mate Josef Newgarden, were caught using push-to-pass illegally.
Going into round three he was already 74 off the points lead, and 62 off Palou.
Team Penske’s Kiwi gained 40 on points leader Palou last weekend, scoring a first-ever win on an oval. But just as he did last year after a poor result in race one, Palou rebounded on Sunday – beating McLaughlin to second, who’d started on pole but got caught out by the timing of a caution.
“This weekend was just exactly what we needed,” declared an upbeat McLaughlin. “I feel like we built some really nice momentum. Hopefully we can keep carrying this for the rest of the year.
“This bloke [Palou] doesn't make many mistakes. When he does, you have to capitalise.”
He is now 57 behind Palou with six races remaining. Intriguingly, four of those are on ovals - putting pressure on Chip Ganassi Racing’s lead driver to deliver on his favoured street and road courses at Toronto and Portland.
Palou has yet to win an IndyCar race on an oval. This is due to a number of factors, including Newgarden’s stunning run of form on those high-speed tracks in the past two seasons.
While many believe McLaughlin is Palou’s chief threat, based on his recent momentum, there’s another three drivers ahead of him in points all with valid claims: Will Power, Pato O’Ward and Scott Dixon.
His nearest challenger Power has won this title twice for Penske and gained 13 points on Palou last weekend to get to 35 off of him. The Australian admits his mind is fully focused this year, after his wife Liz’s major health scare in 2023.
“My head wasn't in the game,” he said. “I was even considering if I should be racing at all because my wife was sick. It was just a throw-away year.
“I'm back to the form of '22, and I'm fighting for the championship. Yeah, got a great group on the car. I feel like we have a great chance here. Going to keep digging.”
Arrow McLaren’s O’Ward gained the second-most amount of points on Palou at Iowa (18) but remains 52 back after a vanilla Sunday result put him back behind Power, having leapfrogged him on Saturday.
“It feels really good to kind of get back into my normal form,” said the Mexican. “After the 500 [in which he finished a close second to Newgarden] I just felt like it was a consecutive results of just very frustrating weekends.
“We kept getting caught up on issues that we weren't even a part of.”
And, of course, you’d also be crazy to rule out Dixon, whose pair of fourth places “were kind of all we had this weekend”, but the six-time champion has already won twice this year. If he rips the kind of end to the season he produced last year, don’t count him out – even after his galling hybrid failure at Mid-Ohio.
In fact, all of the top five drivers have each won a brace of rounds this year. So this year’s title race feels up for grabs a lot more than last season’s – but if anyone is going to beat Palou, they’re going to need to build some big momentum, like McLaughlin is riding now.
“I come into some tracks now... Toronto, Gateway,” analysed McLaughlin. “Portland I've won before.
“I feel really strong for the end of the season. A couple ovals more as well. It's anyone's game.”
| Drivers' Championship points | ||
| 1 | Alex Palou | 379 |
| 2 | Will Power | 344 |
| 3 | Patricio O'Ward | 327 |
| 4 | Scott Dixon | 322 |
| 5 | Scott McLaughlin | 314 |
