WEST ALLIS, Wis (AP) — Alex Palou won his record-tying fourth consecutive IndyCar season championship with a 10th-place finish Sunday night in the resumption of a rain-delayed race at the Milwaukee Mile.
The 29-year-old from Barcelona, Spain, added to yet another dominating year for himself and Chip Ganassi Racing.
“I’m just so proud of this team. Today was a really bad race for us,” Palou said. “We were suffering all the time. I was just like, ‘Just keep focus. Keep on going.’ Anyways, it was great, man. Great to have another championship.”
Palou’s four consecutive championships match the record set by Sebastien Bourdais from 2004-07. He also is the youngest driver in series history with five titles. He trails A.J. Foyt (seven) and Scott Dixon (six).
It’s also a record-setting 18th title won by a Ganassi driver, one more than Team Penske.
Palou finished fifth in Sunday's regularly scheduled race. In 17 races this season, he has six wins, 12 top-five finishes and 14 top-10 results.
IndyCar completed 90 of the scheduled 250 laps at the 1.015-mile oval on Saturday before the race was postponed because of rain and wet track conditions. The IndyCar season finale is next weekend at Laguna Seca in California.
Palou was coming off a 2025 season in which he won eight races, including his first and only Indy 500 title.
Most impressive has been his consistency. Over the past two seasons, he hasn't had back-to-back finishes outside the top 10 in 33 races. He was 20th in the Freedom 250 Grand Prix in Washington, D.C. last weekend, only the third time in two years he ended up 20th or worse.
The championship caps a year that began with a London’s High Court ordering Palou to pay McLaren Racing more than $12 million in a breach of contract suit the team filed when the Spaniard backed out of two different deals with the racing team.
Palou has instead stuck with Ganassi, the team he joined in 2021 after spending his rookie IndyCar season with Dale Coyle Racing. In May, Palou signed a multiyear contract extension with Ganassi to continue their relationship beyond the previous deal that ran through the end of 2027.
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