All it took was one moment for Alex Palou to seize complete control of IndyCar’s Grand Prix of Portland. Palou started on the front row next to pole sitter Felix Rosenqvist, who led the first 31 laps of the race while Palou fell to third behind Marcus Ericsson.
But as Rosenqvist pitted after 31 laps, Palou’s No. 10 Chip Ganassi Racing Honda stayed on the 12-turn, 1.964-mile Portland International Raceway road course for one more lap to make up some time. That decision allowed Palou to exit pit lane ahead of Rosenqvist’s No. 60 Meyer Shank Racing Honda, as Palou led 60 of the 110 laps to win the race by over four seconds.
“He just drove better, to be honest,” said Rosenqvist, who finished second. “Not a lot quicker, but he was a little bit quicker, especially on the blacks. That first stint, he outsmarted us, did one lap longer.”
Palou has won his second race in a row, sixth of the season and third of his career in Portland. With five races left in the year, this victory puts Palou firmly in a position to win his fourth consecutive IndyCar championship and fifth in six years.
It seemed almost unfathomable that Palou could replicate his remarkable 2025 season, which saw him win eight races and finish 196 points ahead of Pato O’Ward, who was second in the championship. For most of this year, it appeared Palou – who clinched last year’s championship in Portland before the final two races of the year – would be in a battle with David Malukas and Kyle Kirkwood until the end.
Two races ago, Palou’s championship lead was down to 56 points (a win is worth 50 points). At that point, he told IndyStar, “Last year was magical. It was something else, something that I don’t think I’ll ever get to experience again myself.” But after winning at Nashville Superspeedway on July 20 and doing so again on Sunday, Palou leads Kirkwood by 110 points, which is more than the 99-point gap he had over O’Ward through 13 races in 2025.
“I don’t know what to say,” Palou said after the race. “I really meant when I said that, that last year was very magical and it was very tough to repeat. Yeah, maybe we can even improve it. We’ll try. We’ll give our best.”
As Palou went through his version of a rough stretch in June and July (two fifth-place finishes and a 17th-place finish), it seemed like there’d be a chance for someone to stop his four-peat quest. Now, another championship feels inevitable.
“It would take an immense amount of misfortune by them to close out this championship and actually fight for it at the end,” Kirkwood told Fox Sports. “And that’s just to fight for it, right? They’re doing everything right. That guy hasn’t had bad luck, and they’ve done everything perfect for four or five years now. So hats off to them; they’re doing a hell of a job. They’re making our lives hell.”
Every great driver has fallen victim to Palou’s excellence throughout the 2020s. This is the second time Rosenqvist has held the second podium spot behind Palou this year. It happened to Kirkwood on May 31 in Detroit. While Malukas hasn’t finished second to Palou in 2026, he was second to the champ in the 2025 Indianapolis 500. Beating Palou is a tall task, and even those who manage to do it occasionally don’t make it a habit.
“I did my best today to make it interesting for the championship,” said Rosenqvist, who’s sixth in the standings. “I mean, he’s just really good. Kind of been a topic of the season, right? We all get our shot to beat him. I had probably two, three this year. Yeah, he’s just really tough to beat. He’s got it figured out. I probably wouldn’t put my money on anyone else.”
Palou is in an elite car with an excellent crew around him, which certainly goes a long way. But what he’s done to win 14 races over the last two seasons (with more potentially on the way) has cemented the 29-year-old as an all-timer in IndyCar. At the end of the day, someone has to execute in the cockpit, and Palou did so flawlessly on Sunday.
“Having Alex and his talent, there’s nothing that replaces that,” said Barry Wanser, Palou’s strategist for the No. 10 car. “No matter how good the car is, you need the driver to be able to extract that performance out of the car.”
Palou often hesitates to bathe in the praise thrown his way, but even he realizes that what he’s doing isn’t normal. The Spaniard thinks about how special this run is “every day.”
“I just don’t give it for granted,” he said. “I think nobody in the team does. It’s not like once a year that you think about it. It’s like every single day when we talk about it. … At some point it’s going to end. This cannot go forever. I think that we’re doing a great job of understanding how lucky we are.”
Palou needs two wins in the final five races to match his mark of eight in 2025, which was tied for the fourth most in IndyCar history. The next two races are on brand new street courses in Markham, Ontario, and Washington, D.C., where Palou could be the favorite in both races. After a doubleheader on the Milwaukee Mile short oval (where Palou placed second last year), the season ends at Laguna Seca in a race he has won three of the last four years.
Whether Palou gets to eight (or more) wins again is yet to be seen, but he has hushed all talk of parity returning to IndyCar in 2026. Sunday served as another reminder that the champ is still the champ, and no one else is particularly close.
Zion Brown is IndyStar’s motorsports reporter. Follow him at @z10nbr0wn. Get IndyStar’s motor sports coverage sent directly to your inbox with our Motor Sports newsletter. Subscribe to the YouTube channel IndyStar TV: IndyCar for a behind-the-scenes look at IndyCar and expert analysis.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Alex Palou closing in on IndyCar four-peat: ‘Making our lives hell’
Reporting by Zion Brown, Indianapolis Star / Indianapolis Star
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By Zion Brown, Indianapolis Star | USA TODAY Network
