The Alex Palou Show rolls on this weekend with the Ontario Honda Dealers Indy Toronto.
The Indianapolis 500 presented by Gainbridge champion who has amassed seven wins in the past 12 NTT INDYCAR SERIES races is closing in the most elite of records. If he can win three times in the final five races – it’s not out of the question given his past successes at these tracks – he will tie the all-time mark of 10 season wins posted by A.J. Foyt and Al Unser. Foyt set the mark 61 years ago, and Unser matched it six years later.
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With a victory last weekend at Iowa Speedway, Palou pushed his career total to 18 race wins, tying Ryan Hunter-Reay for 27th place on the sport’s list. Only Scott Dixon (59), Will Power (44) and Josef Newgarden (31) have more race wins among current full-time drivers. Remember, Palou is only 28 years old and figures to race for many more years, likely with Chip Ganassi’s organization, which is second in the sport’s history with 16 season championships (Team Penske has won 17).
The three-time series champion hasn’t won a race at Exhibition Place, site of Sunday’s 90-lap race (noon ET, FOX, FOX Sports app, INDYCAR Radio Network), but he has finished sixth, second and fourth the past three years, so he should again be confident in his chances to score win No. 8. Andretti Global’s Kyle Kirkwood (three wins), Dixon (one) and Arrow McLaren’s Pato O’Ward (one) are the only other drivers to win races this season.
Palou is one of the many storylines for this weekend’s event, although there’s no debating he is No. 1 at the moment.
Another Remarkable Season
Palou is the only driver in the past 19 years to have secured this series’ championship in advance of the final race of the season, and that was in 2023.
But here is an amazing point of comparison between this season and that one: After the same number of races – 12 – Palou’s lead this year is nearly a full race larger.
Palou will take a 129-point advantage over O’Ward into Sunday’s race. Two years ago, Chip Ganassi Racing’s driver led Team Penske’s Newgarden by 80 points. Palou won one more race down the stretch – at Portland International Raceway – to finish with a 78-point margin.
Remember, 54 points is the maximum any driver can gain on another driver in a given race, which makes Palou’s current lead the equivalent of 2.38 races. The advantage is even larger if Palou participates in every race to score the minimum number of points (five).
Five races remain, and Palou has previously won races at two of them: WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca (in 2022 and 2024) and at Portland (in 2021 and 2023).
Palou hasn’t qualified all that well in Toronto – his three-race average is 18.3 — but he has finished races in the sixth, second and fourth positions, respectively.
He’s not Michael, But He’s Close
Historically, Toronto’s street circuit has been Michael Andretti’s track (seven wins). But Dixon also has a strong record at Exhibition Place.
The six-time series champion has won four races – a doubleheader sweep in 2013 plus single wins in 2018 and 2022 – with two other second-place finishes and a third-place finish last year to go with a pair of poles. Yes, he has been mighty good on what is now an 11-turn, 1.786-mile course.
Dixon also is having a strong second half of the season, which isn’t surprising since he has done that year after year. Thirty-four of his 59 race wins have come in the second half of seasons. The Chip Ganassi Racing driver is riding a streak of five consecutive top-10 finishes, with a win at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course and a second-place finish (to Palou) in last weekend’s second race at Iowa Speedway to climb to third in the standings.
Dixon almost certainly won’t win a record-tying seventh series championship this season as he trails Palou by 173 points, but he figures to contend for any of the remaining five races. He has won races at Laguna Seca (in 2023), The Milwaukee Mile (2009) and Nashville Superspeedway (2006, 2007 and 2008).
Kirkwood Ready to Rebound
It is reasonable to expect a strong response from Andretti Global’s Kyle Kirkwood, who all measures had a simply awful weekend at Iowa Speedway with a pair of accidents and a drop in the standings.
Kirkwood has been the king of this year’s street races, winning the past two – the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach and the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix presented by Lear — in convincing fashion. Last year in Toronto, he followed his teammate throughout the race and to the checkered flag, and there was the notion that if Herta had been a non-Andretti driver that Kirkwood would have applied more pressure.
Is that suggesting Kirkwood allowed Herta to win last year’s Toronto race? No, but it is fair to assume he gave his teammate every chance to complete what he had earned and reward Andretti Global with a 1-2 finish since Long Beach 2023 (that was Kirkwood and Romain Grosjean). It was the ultimate example of what a good teammate should do.
Bottom line: Kirkwood excels on these types of tracks and should be smarting from what happened at Iowa.
Herta in Search of More
Herta is in need of a breakthrough, particularly as it relates to the summer stretch. He has finished 13th or lower in four of the past five races and is coming off an Iowa weekend where both results were in that category, the second race ending with late wall contact.
The season as a whole hasn’t been Herta’s best, especially on the heels of finishing second in the championship a year ago. He has had only one pole and one podium finish, both coming in Detroit when he finished third. Remarkably, he has only led 15 laps in the 12 races.
Toronto might just be the place where Herta’s season gets a kickstart. He led 81 of the 85 laps from the pole last year, leading Andretti Global’s 1-2 finish. Clearly, street circuits suit the organization, and if it can have a good weekend the rest of the season shapes up nicely for the second-generation driver. He is a two-time Laguna Seca winner, finished fourth last year at Portland, and he won last year’s Nashville race.