LEXINGTON, OH — Alex Palou made mention this past week that he doesn’t feel like he’s doing anything differently now than he was at the beginning of the season. It’s just that he’s having better fortunes compared to everyone else’s costly mistakes.

Palou’s dominance is shining a magnifying glass on his competitor’s’ misfortunes.

The 26-year-old is on a string of races to where he’s started 3rd, 1st, 1st, 3rd and 4th and finished 1st, 4th, 1st, 1st and 1st. He’s led 220 of the 520 laps (42.3%) in the process. Mid-Ohio was his 8th straight top five finish on the season and 9th top 10 in as many races run this year.

He’s scored 24 top five finishes in the last 42 races.

With knowing that and know their capabilities, it’s forcing others to step over the line of aggression in trying to catch him.

Pato O’Ward knew that Palou was fast in practice. The points leader was second in both sessions leading into qualifying. O’Ward was trying to extract everything out of his car on Saturday. He stepped over the line and made a rare mistake. He’d spin. As a result, O’Ward qualified 25th in the 27 car field.

Josef Newgarden pushed the limits but only got to 15th place in qualifying.

O’Ward and his team went off strategy on a three stopper. It didn’t work. Newgarden didn’t have the pace.

Marcus Ericsson started ninth and knew he had to go for it on the opening lap. He too made a rare mistake when he ran over Felix Rosenqvist and got airborne. It was Ericsson’s first DNF all season.

That’s 2-3-4 in points entering the day.

Kyle Kirkwood spun in Turn 4 while battling Palou for third.

Colton Herta sped on pit road. Graham Rahal had two slow pit stops. A day, scratch that, a weekend full of mistakes, allowed the one who doesn’t make them to shine.

“Yeah, obviously everyone needs to beat Palou, but I don’t think — that’s going to be a very tough challenge to beat him in a championship this year. He is so on point in every respect, in every respect,” said third place finisher on Sunday, Will Power.

“He is not missing a thing, which is very difficult in this series to be extremely fast, which there are a lot of guys that are, but then being able to do all the disciplines as well plus the intricacies of fuel save, tire conservation, in-and-out laps, the qualifying.

“Just from a strategy standpoint as well, which I know it’s the first time he won a championship. That group on that car is very smart. Like, they’re putting it all together. Yeah, it’s an absolute team effort, but he is also nailing it.

“It’s bloody hard to have that all nailed, and he is doing it.”

Dixon agreed.

“Yeah, it does make it tough,” he said. “As Will commented, and it’s not just Alex, but Julian, the whole 10 car group are just doing a phenomenal job. Even with Barry as well.

“It’s never a single person. The effort is big I think on all the cars in Chip Ganassi right now, but they’re firing on all cylinders.

“The qualifying is solid, the race pace is solid, strategy is solid. It’s just a really good all-around package right now.

“It’s never always one thing, but having quick paces is something that is huge obviously with how tight the competition is now, but even today we didn’t qualify on the front. We were fourth and sixth, but he was still able to overcome the three possibly quicker cars in qualifying.

“Some others may have had some problems on pit road or just whatever it was. He has done a hell of a job to cover all bases.”

“Yeah, it’s going to be tough to beat.”

Palou opened up an even larger lead now in entering 74 points up to leaving 110 ahead. For a driver that said that it’s far too early to points race and that he feels the target on his back is no different now than it was if he had a 10 point advantage, has a two-race gap with eight races remaining.

“It’s kind of out of our control,” said Newgarden. “They’ve had a good run up to this point, right? They’ve not had a bad race. I think that’s to be expected.”

O’Ward was more blunt about it.

“I think we all need to be better if we want to catch the 10 car,” O’Ward lambasted.

Next up is Toronto to where he was sixth as a rookie there a year ago but has finished fifth and first respectively in his last two street races run on the season.

While Iowa and Gateway could pose problems, you still have the Indy Road course (he won the last time out), Portland (he won in 2021) and Laguna Seca (he won last year) left too.

This has become his championship to lose.

In saying that, Palou knows that this championship is still far from over too. He feels like his results are more of a byproduct of maximizing their races to where others aren’t.

“At the same time I just think that everything is working really good for us now,” he continued. “I feel like we were as strong as we are now at the beginning of the season, but we had some ups and downs during the races. Long Beach was a clear example where we were running in the top four, got caught up on an accident, dropped back to 15th and still finished P5.

“Our performance is there. It’s just we’re able to get the results and get clean weekends, which is not real easy to do very often in INDYCAR.

“I feel like we have momentum. Momentum in motorsports matters a lot for driver confidence, team confidence, mechanic confidence. Everybody want to get the win, just like you are asking for more and more. It just gets better and better.

“Hopefully we can, as I said, keep the wave big or even bigger. Hopefully we can continue having some success.”

Palou, even with such a large lead, well he’s not points racing yet. Newgarden nearly overcame a 125 point deficit just three years ago to take the title away from Scott Dixon. Palou knows in this series, anyone can get just as hot as he has.

“If it was another series, maybe yeah, you could try and just finish where you need to finish. In INDYCAR you really can’t,” he notes.

He said that he did points race at the end of the 2021 season, but that was due to trying to secure his championship. He drove under the limit in doing so. This time, it’s far too early to be doing that and he feels like he should try and score more points to get an even bigger gap.

The thing is, podiums are no longer going to cut it. O’Ward has squandered finishes of 2nd, 2nd, 4th, 2nd, 3rd and 8th respectively when he’s finished on the lead lap. It’s those finishes of 17th (Long Beach), 24th (Indy 500) and 26th (Detroit) as to why he’s where he’s at today.

Same for Newgarden. He’s won twice (Texas, Indy 500). He’s finished second once (Road America). It’s 17th in St. Pete. It’s 15th in Barber. It’s 10th in Detroit. It’s 12th here. That’s why podiums no longer cut it.

The only real way to catch Palou now is if he makes some uncharacteristically bad mistakes and I use that in plural since he has such a big cushion.

So far? Palou hasn’t really had that many races that didn’t go well.

What’s even scarier for the field is, he’s just getting started.

“I would say I have more confidence with the car,” says Palou as to why he’s clicking so well now. “I know a little bit more what I need from the car. The same for the team. They know what I need. They know what works for me, what doesn’t.

“In 2021 we were just guessing and trying stuff. Sometimes works, sometimes it didn’t. ’22 we understood a little bit more. This year I just have more confidence with myself, with the car, obviously with the team.

“So yeah, it’s tough to say. I don’t think it’s one thing. I would say it’s a little bit of a lot of things that are helping us be more consistent.”

That’s led to a wave of confidence out of Palou. He feels better now than at any point of his entire racing career thus far.

“I would say it’s getting bigger,” Palou said of this momentum.

“Our performance is there.”