Alex Palou secures 4th IndyCar title in last 5 seasons

Alex Palou has completed his fourth Indycar championship in the past five seasons on Sunday at the Portland International Raceway when the title candidate Pato O’Ward lost power at the start of the race.

O’Ward left the post and was the only mathematically eligible driver to beat Palou for the championship. Palou entered Sunday with a comfortable 121-point lead on O’Ward in the ranking and as long as he left Portland by 108 points, he won the championship during the first race for a consecutive weekend to close the season.

The Astor Cup became its 22 laps in the race on the Portland Road course when O’Ward had an electronic problem on its McLaren Chevrolet arrow and had to stop at the unforeseen stand. He returned to the nine laps track of the leaders.

Palou finished third, O’Ward finished 25th and Palou cemented the title with two remaining races in the Indycar season and an insurmountable advance of 151 points.

Palou was fiery in the closing part of the race and sometimes ran unnecessarily aggressive – even going out with four remaining laps and Christian Lundgaard slide for position.

“We are here to win. This is why we are here. We have said it several times. When we come here, although we have this great goal of winning the championship, our priority is always to win races and win every weekend,” said Palou. “Even if it could have been ok to stay third, we wanted to win.”

Palou won his four championships for Chip Ganassi Racing and fled with him, his third consecutive, storming the door with a victory in the first two races of the year to give rhythm to Ganassi to win his 17th Indycar title in 30 years. The 17 championships equalize Penske Racing.

Twelve of Ganassi Indycar titles have taken place in the past 17 years, starting with the brilliant 2008 SCOTT Dixon season during which he organized a race similar to that that Palou had this year. Dixon in 2008 won six races, including Indianapolis 500, six posts and the first of its six championships.

Ganassi has several times before the dressed drivers to put themselves in unnecessary positions, but this time had no qualms with Palou Racing for a race victory rather than sitting and heading for the title.

“It depends on the situation, the driver. As Alex said, we are entering this race with this team of 10 cars, each race, we want to win the race, ok? This is how we got to this point,” said Ganassi. “We haven’t changed anything today. You can’t play God.”

But Ganassi admitted that Palou had caused a brief fear with his determination to run hard in the last laps.

“When he was fighting for the second or third, I agreed,” said Ganassi. “I was able to say that my heart jumped a beat when he left there, but other than that, I was everything for that.”

Only AJ Foyt (seven) and Dixon (six) have more championships than Palou, who has broken this season by winning oval to finally show that he is the complete package. It was clearly years ago, and he was involved in a violation of $ 30 million in contractual civil trials with Arrow McLaren for not having honored an agreement to join this team.

Rather, he remained faithful to Ganassi and this year, Palou won five of the first six races, including Indianapolis 500 who had escaped him in five previous tests. This victory at the Brickyard cemented the Spanish path to another championship and he has been untouchable since.

Palou went to Portland with a top of eight victories, five posts, 11 top five in 14 races, 563 laps led and an average finish of 1.2. He padded this issue on Sunday.

Palou joined Dario Franchitti, Sébastien Bourdais and Ted Horn as the only pilots in the history of the series to win three consecutive titles. But, with two other races this season, Palou has a chance to link Indycar’s record for victories in a season established at 10 by Foyt in 1964 and Al User in 1970.

He lost his chance to beat the most victories in a season record on Sunday when Will Power won in Portland. It was the first victory of the season for the Penske fleet, which was in crisis all year round and only obtained its first victory on the 15th of the 17 races.