The 2023 NTT INDYCAR SERIES championship was pretty much won around this time last year. It’s when Arrow McLaren Racing, Alex Palou and Chip Ganassi Racing felt like they could work together to get through 2023. McLaren and Palou were tired of spending money fighting a losing battle. Ganassi was hellbent on not allowing a driver of Palou’s caliber get away that easily. He fought to keep him.

Now, 12 months later, they’re champions again for the 2nd time in 3 years.

With a relationship patched back together and the two (Ganassi, Palou) working out their differences, the mended fences pairing got back to their winning ways. Coming into Laguna Seca last year, Palou knew his future in 2023 was going to be right back where he was then in the 10 seat.

With the cloud away from him, he went out and stomped the field by 30-seconds en route to the season ending victory.

Ganassi had always maintained that he was going to give Palou the best cars to drive but there’s no denying the fact with a legal battle and Honda and Ganassi having to turn off Palou’s access to some data points, results were going to lag.

It’s why he started 2022 off with 3 podiums in 4 starts. Then word came out that Palou was looking to leave. Drama set in. Over the next 12 races, Palou had just 2 podiums. But, even with the legal battles, Palou was delivering top 10’s in 8 of the 12 starts too. Imagine what he could do with full access and a happy live again.

Enter Monterey. Everything was starting to cool and Palou dominated.

With a better relationship, Palou carried that over to 2023. 8th in St. Pete led to 3rd in Texas. That led to 5th in Long Beach and again in Barber. He sat 3rd in points coming into the Month of May.

That’s where this championship was won.

He led 52 of 85 laps in his GMR Grand Prix win. 8 days later, he won the pole for the 107th Running of the Indianapolis 500. A race that he was hit on pit road by Rinus VeeKay, he still rebounded to finish fourth.

Palou went from 9 points down entering May to 20 points up leaving it. No one would seriously threaten again.

Palou would win the next three rounds (Detroit, Road America, Mid-Ohio) to open up an insurmountable 110-point lead over second place (Scott Dixon) leaving the annual Fourth of July weekend stop on the rural Ohio road course.

He’d surely slip up right? No one had clinched the championship early since Sebastien Bourdais in Champ Car in 2007 or Dan Wheldon in the IRL in 2005. In this era of INDYCAR, could Palou really do the unthinkable?

He came into Portland 74 points up on Dixon. That’s the largest margin since 2008. The average margin with two races-to-go is 24.3. Last year it was 3. The year prior with Palou over Pato O’Ward was 25.

Now, it’s 74. It’s unprecedented and Palou never wavered one bit giving Ganassi their 15th championship and 3rd in the last 4 years by scoring his 5th win of the season in Sunday’s BITNILE.com Grand Prix of Portland.

“Yeah, I mean, I always say that he’s my obviously biggest fear,” Palou said of Dixon. “I think he’s one of the best INDYCAR drivers, if not the best, that we ever had.

“Not only that, but he also has the best team around, which is the same as I have. So it’s tough because we couldn’t really hide anything or we couldn’t really — I mean, like in the 10 car we couldn’t really have an advantage on him because we were sharing everything. He knew what was going on.

“So obviously he pushed a lot the last couple of weeks, couple of months; but I’m glad that we were able to seal it and especially with a win.”

However, I still maintain that you have to go back to this time last year for those mended fences. Since Monterey, Palou has finished in the top 8 in literally every single race (17 races). His average finish is an astounding 3.58.

6 wins, one runner-up finish, three 3rd place runs gives him 10 podiums (58.8%). He’s had 13 top five finishes (76.4%). He’s untouchable.

Only 15 times now has someone won the title under the age of 27 years old. Palou has done it twice (24 years, 5 months, 25 days in 2021).

Some may say he never had bad luck. I get his front wing assembly hanging on by a sticker at Toronto looks the part. However, I mean lest we forget that he was hit by Rinus VeeKay on a Lap 94 pit stop at Indy? Palou was pinned against the inside wall at pit exit. He’d drop from a potential win to outside the top 20. In less than 100 laps, Palou went from the back of the field to finishing fourth.

That’s no small feat.

What about going from the top four in Long Beach, to being caught up in a crash and dropping back to 15th? What about his practice crash in Road America on qualifying morning? They had to rebuild his car for crying out loud. He’d go from a crash with little on track time to a win in a little over 24-hour span.

Wouldn’t those classify as a mishap?

What about just missing it in Toronto qualifying? What about qualifying 7th and 12th respectively at Iowa?

Why don’t we count those?

They’ve had their fair share of bad moments, it’s just mystified by his race craft.

“As Chip calls it, you’re either a Sunday driver or your not. I think with Alex we have a Sunday driver,” Dario Franchitti said a few years ago of Palou.

Since Dario Franchitti retired at the end of the 2013 season, Ganassi struggled to find any balance to this team. Dixon had won three championships and 17 races in the seven year span between 2014 and 2020. He also scored 45 podiums in that time frame too.

By comparison, the No. 10 car had 115 starts between three drivers in that same span. They had two wins, 17 podiums, 30 top fives and 64 top 10’s. The points finishes?

7th, 8th, 7th, 10th, 13th, 6th and 11th respectively.

Dixon’s?

3rd, 1st, 6th, 3rd, 1st, 3rd and 1st respectively himself. He was no worse than sixth with the 10 car being 6th or worst in all seven years.

That’s a stark comparison from what it was when it was Dixon and Dan Wheldon as teammates between 2006 and 2008 and then Dixon and Dario Franchitti from 2009 through 2013.

The 10 car in that span had 19 wins, 52 podiums, 75 top fives and 97 top 10’s in 133 races. The points finishes were second, fourth, fourth, first, first, first, seventh and 10th respectively.

Since Palou has been in that 10 car, his ride has outperformed Dixon in fact. In 49 starts in this span, Palou has 9 wins and 22 podiums. Dixon has 5 wins and 14 podiums.

Palou’s average finish with Ganassi is 6.52.

Dixon’s average finish in this same span is 6.72.

“Unfortunately for one reason or another, we haven’t found that right combination for a few years,” Ganassi said of the 10 car in 2021. “You have to work just as hard. Sometimes you’re probably working harder than the guys on the 10 car and the 8 and the 48. They have to work harder sometimes than the champion.

“It’s as big as it gets. Just to see this young man come along, it’s been a few dry years in the 10 car. I go back to think of Dario and Dan Wheldon in the 10, all the successes they had.”

That’s why Ganassi valued Palou as much as he does and why he didn’t waver on wanting to keep him around. As a result, they’ll stay together for more years to come.