Alex Palou's future is a major question mark, but his present is something spectacular. Palou has won four of the last five IndyCar races, putting him in arguably the best form in the world. His only challenger is Max Verstappen, the presumptive Formula 1 world champion that has yet to face a serious competitor in a comparable car at any point this season.
Palou was already an IndyCar champion by the end of his second year, but he only had four career wins just two months ago. Over the past five races, that number has doubled to eight. He has won each road course or street circuit race in an IndyCar since the calendar turned to May, and his lone disappointment was a miraculous recovery to fourth in an Indianapolis 500 he started from pole. His worst finish this season is an eighth at St. Petersburg, the season opener; in what has otherwise been the most competitive top-level racing series in the world, Palou has not finished worse than fifth in the eight races since.
His race-winning drives have been patient, then dominant. Yesterday, he took the lead from Colton Herta on an overcut during the day's first stop; he built an eight second lead over Herta on the following stint and never looked back. At Road America, he waited patiently as the day's dominant leader (also Herta) burned too much fuel over the course of the race and stopped too early on the final stop. When he had to slow to make the finish, Palou pulled a four second lead on second-place Josef Newgarden.
He also beat a hard-charging reigning champion Will Power at Detroit and waited out a disappointing collapse from second-year driver Christian Lundgaard at the Indianapolis infield road course. As a steady set of hands with serious speed in reserve, Palou has been both the most consistent and the fastest driver in the series for two months.
His lead of 110 championship points on teammate Scott Dixon is more than a driver can earn in two races; add in that the 20th-place driver still gets 10 points in IndyCar's scoring system and Palou's lead is in practical terms closer to three races worth of points. That would be the biggest championship-winning margin since 2016, a margin artificially inflated to 137 when champion Simon Pagenaud won what used to be a final race awarding double points as Will Power finished 20th.
Years after that double points finale was expunged, a driver securing a championship before the finale is still a rarity in IndyCar. If he keeps up this form for another handful of races, Palou is currently on pace to wrap up the title three races and one full month early. His second title still needs to be secured, but the season he has put together would dwarf his 2021 achievement as a second-year driver.
Palou's management team has often signaled that he is interested in F1, but he is currently set to hit free agency in IndyCar at the end of the season whether those teams come calling or not. Any team with an opening in Europe should be calling, and any team in the U.S. who has the funding to do so should be making their highest possible bid.
Palou is showing a level of success on road courses IndyCar has not seen in years, all at 26, all as someone available to Formula 1 teams right now. Teams like AlphaTauri and Williams disappointed in their young second drivers could all potentially make a fairly obvious choice, while teams further up the grid have the option to make a bold move that could set their program up well for the next decade.
That is a question for the rest of the Summer, though. For now, focus on what Alex Palou is doing on the track: winning at a spectacular rate by driving as he always has.
