Àlex Palou officially clinched the 2026 NTT IndyCar Series championship on a doubleheader weekend in Milwaukee that turned into an unusual partial doubleheader on Sunday.
The 29-year-old Spaniard qualified well for both races, but served an engine penalty in the first, which got underway on Saturday.
Rain, however, caused a red flag at the 90-lap mark, and the rest of the race was postponed to Sunday morning.
Come Sunday morning, the track was still too wet, which led to an unusual schedule for the day: Race 2 would get underway at noon local time, finish, and then Race 1 would resume in the late afternoon.
Palou started on pole for Race 2 — which was now kind of Race 1.5 — and came home in fifth, with Arrow McLaren’s Pato O’Ward winning the race.
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No biggie, because Palou just needed to have a championship lead of more than 54 points when the checkered flag fell on Race 1 (which, again, ended after Race 2; weird, I know), to clinch the title with one race left on the schedule.
Palou played it safe for the remaining 160 laps, keeping his nose clean and getting his yellow No. 10 Chip Ganassi Racing Honda back in one piece.
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He did it, coming home tenth in a race that Pato O’Ward won, meaning he pulled off the rare feat of winning two races in one day.
But the big story was that Palou had built a big enough points buffer to claim his fifth career title in six years, and his fourth straight.
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It’s an unbelievable run of form for Palou, who is now third on the all-time list for career championships behind AJ Foyt with seven, and his CGR teammate for one more weekend, Scott Dixon, with six.
Don’t think for a second that Palou will take it easy in the season finale now that he has the title locked up. The season ends at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca, one of his best tracks.
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That race will get underway Sept. 6 at 2:30 p.m. ET on FOX.
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