Alex Palou On Brink Of Title With Win No. 8: ‘It’s Never Over Until It’s Over’

MONTEREY, Calif. — Alex Palou didn’t have the right strategy last week at Toronto, but he had the best strategy Sunday at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca.

The strategy? Just win, baby.

OK, it wasn’t that simple. 

He did have the strategy he needed to dominate in leading 84 of the 95 laps to capture his eighth victory of the season. That’s the most for an INDYCAR driver since 2007, when Sebastien Bourdais won eight races.

The Chip Ganassi Racing driver extended his points lead to 121 over Pato O’Ward, who finished fourth, with three races remaining.

“It’s never over until it’s over,” Palou said. “I think I proved that [with a mistake] at Mid-Ohio, and we’ve seen that in the past as well.

“Honestly, I would not trade our points for anybody. I would not trade our position, and I would not ask for anything more or anything less. But it’s not done until it’s done. We still need to win it. We still need to keep our heads down and try and win more races.”

Palou doesn’t need to win more races, though. He just needs to average a 16th-place finish over the final three. He would clinch the title with a 108-point lead following the next race in two weeks at Portland International Raceway, a road course where Palou has two career victories. 

The final two races come on the ovals at Milwaukee and Nashville.

If Palou wins at Portland or finishes second and earns a bonus point for the pole or leading a lap, he would clinch the title no matter what O’Ward does in that race. O’Ward is the only driver who mathematically has a chance at the title.

“It’s a tall task, but still mathematically possible,” O’Ward said. “Is it likely? Probably not, but we’re going to keep on pushing. … We never really got worse than fifth this month. So five races in the top five and two of those being wins. That’s pretty awesome.

“Portland’s also been very difficult for us. So it’s another track, kind of like this one, where hopefully we’ll have a good qualifying and then just try and have a good race on from there.”

O’Ward matched his best finish at Laguna. In any other season, the Arrow McLaren driver would be considered to be having a solid year.

“We’re second in the championship, but we’ve been the best of the rest,” O’Ward said. “The 10 car [of Palou] has had a pretty unbelievable season.” 

Palou has won the last two championships and three of the last four. But this season, he has reached another level.

“Even if he makes a mistake, the team makes a mistake, they make it up somehow, which I feel like we’re all kind of struggling to do in a sense,” said O’Ward teammate Christian Lundgaard, who finished second on Sunday. “They’re there every single time. You have to give them kudos for being that competitive every time, and they’ve raised the bar.

“I thought I had a tremendously good start to the season, and I was still way behind the 10 car [of Palou] in the championship after five races, and I had three podiums. The only difference is he won four out of those.”

Now he has eight of those. The record is 10 by A.J. Foyt in 1964 and Al Unser in 1970.

Palou thinks 10 is possible and doesn’t mind talking about it, compared to talking about whether the championship is over.

“It seems that it’s a lot of work to make it, but I don’t mind hearing that [possibility],” Palou said. “Whenever you hear that you are in a chance of making something that’s so historical and so tough to do, it motivates us.”

There might have been some motivation after a 12th-place finish at Toronto, where the team’s strategy when it came to when to put on the hard and soft tires ended up biting them. That was thanks to more cautions than they had predicted.

Palou had no issues Sunday in leading the final 59 laps, including holding off the field on two restarts in the final 15 laps at one of his favorite tracks, one where he now has three career victories.

“Probably the amount of laps I did on the simulator here when I was a kid helps,” Palou said. “It was my favorite track when I was a kid.

“I think it’s one of the most iconic — if not the most iconic — road course that we have.”

While Palou made it look easy, O’Ward, in finishing fourth, embraced the struggle.

“I was trying to get the absolute maximum out of the car. Every point counts. And just capitalizing on people’s mistakes,” O’Ward said. “I had a lot faster guys behind me.

“Our best hope in terms of pace was going to be a top 10, but we salvaged the fourth. I felt very, very weak out there. I just couldn’t get performance out of it.”

And Palou got maximum performance, just as he has done several times this year.

“It’s crazy performance,” O’Ward said. “He’s performing at the highest level that anyone can ask him to do. He’s really been the class of the field so far this year and has been the past few years.”

Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR and INDYCAR for FOX Sports. He has spent decades covering motorsports, including over 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass.