Alex Palou poised to tie Sébastien Bourdais as the second driver to reach a fourth IndyCar championship by age 28.
He also will tie Mario Andretti and Dario Franchitti for third on all-time title list, behind A.J. Foyt and Scott Dixon
Christian Lundgaard calls it ‘super-frustrating’ that no matter what happens on race day, Palou always comes out on top.
NTT IndyCar Series driver Christian Lundgaard summed up the frustration of performing well... but not as well as Alex Palou.
Lundgaard, who drives for Arrow McLaren, was pretty proud of his first five races, when he scored three podium finishes.
Palou, who’s on the verge of clinching his fourth championship in five seasons for Ganassi Racing and third straight as the series visits the Pacific Northwest this weekend at Oregon’s Portland International Raceway, won four of those events.
So Lundgaard wasn’t alone when he said, “What's very interesting with the 10 car (Palou’s DHL Honda for Chip Ganassi Racing) is even though they're having bad weekends, they still come out ahead, right? That's what's super-frustrating for all of us. Even if he makes a mistake, the team makes a mistake, they make it up somehow. They're there every single time. You have to give them kudos for being that competitive every time, and they've raised the bar.”
To hear Palou tell it, though, he said he isn’t sure “how to explain how I feel about that. I feel like somebody has took me from my place and then just put me here and it's like, ‘What is going on?’ I don't know if that makes sense, but I just don't feel or I cannot really comprehend everything that's happening—not only this year, but if I look back at ever since I started in IndyCar, my dream was just to be a professional race car driver, and I never thought about records or anything like that.
“It's amazing to be there. I cannot really comprehend. I owe everything to my team and everybody that is behind me. It's not that I'm not conscious about what's going on. It's just that I cannot really believe it, and I'm just riding the wave and enjoying every single second of it and having fun,” he said.
Palou said his rivals aren’t treating him poorly: “I have not seen that they treat me different or they don't talk to me or that they are grumpy or anything. Obviously, I know they don't like it. I know that nobody is happy about it, only us, only the 10 car and CGR. But it is what it is. It's competition. We are just trying to do the best we can.”
IndyCar Championships By the Numbers
A.J. Foyt tops the IndyCar championship list with seven (1960, ’61, ’63, ’64, ’67, 1975, 1996), and Palou teammate Scott Dixon is next with six (2003, ’08, ’13, ’15, ’18, ’20).
When Palou clinches his fourth title, he’ll match Mario Andretti, Sébastien Bourdais, and Dario Franchitti.
• The 28-year-old Palou will have claimed his fourth crown faster than any of the drivers with four or more, except Bourdais, who also was 28 in 2007, when he completed his stretch of four consecutive championships in Champ Car for Newman-Haas Racing.
• Foyt was 29 when he got to No. 4 (and 61 when he recorded his last).
• Dixon earned his fourth title at age 35 and his most recent at 40.
• In 2011, Franchitti got to No. 4 as a 38-year-old.
• Andretti was 44 in 1984, the last time he powered to the championship.
Palou’s achievement will mark 14 IndyCar titles for the Ganassi organization among Paulo, Dixon, and Franchitti alone and an 18th overall. That includes a four-year dominance from 1996-1998, with Jimmy Vasser, Alex Zanardi, and Juan Pablo Montoya.
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