If there was any doubt about Alex Palou on Sunday at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca, he erased it early in and throughout the Java House Grand Prix of Monterey.
Get used to it, folks. Palou not only has set the standard for this sport; he is the standard.
Palou would have led all 95 laps from the pole if there wasn’t that pesky business of needing to stop for fuel. Nolan Siegel had pitted much earlier in the race, on Lap 12, and that’s why his Arrow McLaren machine was a few paces ahead of Palou for 11 laps.
After that? Well, it was all Palou. Again.
The driver of Chip Ganassi Racing’s No. 10 DHL Honda has now won three of the past four races on the Monterey Peninsula, and he finished third last year. Palou has competed there five times. His average finish is a ridiculous 1.6. And, he has won the past two poles.
Palou gapped fellow front-row starter Pato O’Ward so quickly Sunday that it might have seemed the Arrow McLaren driver had an issue. He did, of course. His name is Alex Palou.
The Spaniard now has eight wins in 14 races this season, and guess what: His second-best track is next on the schedule. Palou has won two of the past four races at Portland International Raceway, site of the BITNILE.com Grand Prix of Portland on Sunday, Aug. 10 at 3 p.m. ET (FOX, FOX Sports app, INDYCAR Radio Network). He finished second to Team Penske’s Will Power there a year ago. He might have another absurd average finish at that track had he not finished 12th there in 2022.
By now, Palou’s third consecutive series championship and fourth in five years is virtually a foregone conclusion. We can save that analyzation for another day, but his lead is 121 points with only 162 points available the rest of the way. He should officially be handed the Astor Challenge Cup on Sunday, Aug. 31 at Nashville Superspeedway.
While everything at Laguna Seca featured Palou, there were other shining drives. Arrow McLaren’s Christian Lundgaard drove from seventh to finish second. That’s now five podium finishes for the Danish driver who had only three in his first three full seasons.
Lundgaard and Colton Herta of Andretti Global w/ Curb-Agajanian had a spirited battle, and Lundgaard used a mid-race shoulder to uproot Herta for the position mid-race. Herta continued his family’s run of Laguna Seca success, but Palou’s dominance makes it seem like forever ago that a Herta was the talk of this track.
O’Ward finished fourth, but he never seemed in the game. Yet, that added to his career year, already the ninth top-five finish which includes two wins. Barring unforeseen circumstances, the Mexican will finish a career-best second in the standings.
(It should be noted that O’Ward trails Palou by 121 points, but he leads Chip Ganassi Racing’s Scott Dixon by 77 points, so it’s unlikely he moves out of the second position.)
Dixon gained 14 positions in Sunday’s race to finish fifth, and that enabled him to overtake Andretti Global’s Kyle Kirkwood for third in the standings. Assuming Dixon holds the position, he will finish in the top three in points for the 16th time in his Hall-of-Fame career.
Kirkwood, meanwhile, had a July to forget. There were five races, and he posted an average finish of 14.8. Sunday, he finished 16th with a drive-through penalty for contact with Dale Coyne Racing’s Rinus VeeKay. He has lost 120 points to Palou this month.
PREMA Racing’s Callum Ilott had another strong weekend at Laguna Seca. The only front-row qualifying effort of his career in this series came in 2022. In 2023, he tied his career-best finish by coming home fifth. Sunday, he drove from 24th to finish sixth.
One more performance to single out: Ed Carpenter Racing’s Christian Rasmussen finished ninth, his third top-10 result in the past four races. This has been a breakout season for the second-year driver who won the INDY NXT by Firestone championship in 2023.
Beyond that it was all Palou as it has been all season. He is poised to go wire to wire in this historic season.