Alex Palou of Chip Ganassi Racing has some tremendous memories of Portland Int’l Raceway as the popular Spaniard returns to the Pacific Northwest.
When Palou arrived at the BitNile Grand Prix of Portland in 2023, he was in firm control of the NTT IndyCar Series Championship. The only other driver eligible for the title was teammate and six-time IndyCar Series champion Scott Dixon, but he was 74 points behind with two races remaining.
When it comes to style points, Palou is a master of the moment.
He clinched the 2023 NTT IndyCar Series Championship as a true racer – by winning the race at Portland.
It was an exclamation point to an outstanding season.
“Absolutely,” Palou said afterwards. “I thought we had an amazing mid-season. I wanted to continue the form and show what we were capable and the amazing year we were having. I really didn’t think it would be easy, and it wasn’t easy, it was super hard.
“I’m super happy to finish at Portland and clinch the championship with a win.
“We can do some more stuff at Laguna Seca next week.”
The popular Spaniard could have played it safe by sticking to Dixon’s gearbox and staying out of trouble. The maximum points available in each IndyCar Series race is 54 so the numbers were already in Palou’s favor.
Forget about racing for points or playing it safe. Palou displayed the ultimate racer’s mentality by going for the win.
In fact, that’s what he told his boss, Chip Ganassi, just before the road racing contest at Portland International Raceway.
“Just before the race I said to Alex, ‘Hey, let’s go wrap this thing up today,’” Chip Ganassi recalled after he claimed his 15th IndyCar Series National Championship. “He said, ‘For sure. We’re going to wrap it up with a win.’
“I said, ‘Oh, OK.”
“That was pretty big, I thought.”
Palou backed up his promise to the boss with his series-high fifth victory of the season. He entered the race tied with Team Penske’s Josef Newgarden with four wins apiece, all of Newgarden’s on an oval including the 107th Indianapolis 500 on May 28, 2023.
It was important to Palou to get the most wins in the season to go along with his championship.
“It’s super hard to get wins in IndyCar,” Palou said. “I can’t believe we got five wins this year. It’s amazing. I know we have been really consistent throughout the year, but I didn’t want to win a championship through consistency like I did in 2021. I wanted to show we were capable of winning races – not 1 or 2, but five and that is a phenomenal number.”
One year later, Palou returns to Portland and is once again in command of NTT IndyCar Series championship.
Instead of a 74-point lead as he enjoyed in 2023, Palou has a 59-point Andretti Global’s Colton Herta.
The BitNile Grand Prix of Portland is the final road or street course race of the 2024 IndyCar season and will play a pivotal role in determining the championship. The final three races of the season will be on short ovals, beginning with the Labor Day Weekend Hy-Vee Milwaukee Miles 250.
The season will conclude on September 15 with a return to the 1.33-mile Nashville Superspeedway in the Big Machine Music City Grand Prix.
Palou can help his cause for a third career IndyCar Series championship by hitting the road at Portland before a dizzying final three races on the ovals.
“It’s going to be tough,” Palou admitted. “It’s always tough to repeat such a special and magical season like what we had with five wins. It’s crazy.
“It’s going to be tough to repeat or to be close to that. But we’ve done it once, so yeah, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to do it twice.”
Palou returns to Portland with two wins this season. He had four at this point in 2023.
Another major change to the IndyCar dynamic is the introduction of the Hybrid engine, which went into competition for the first time at the July 2 Honda Indy 200 at Mid-Ohio.
Honda Racing Corporation USA designed and manufactured the Energy Storage System while its counterparts at Ilmor Engineering and General Motors developed the Motor Generator Unit of the Hybrid. It weighs 100 pounds and is placed in the bellhousing of the Indy cars.
The hybrid is a quickly charged and rapidly deployed system that brings an element of electrification to the IndyCar Internal Combustion Engine for the first time in IndyCar history.
Entering Portland, this will be the sixth race for the Hybrid Engine as teams are determining how best to use the additional charge and increase in horsepower that that unit provides.
“We’re a lot busier now than we were before,” Palou said. “You need to deploy — like every time you deploy, you can deploy it 10 times if you want, you can deploy one big one. So, every time you need to hit the buttons, the paddles, whatever systems the drivers have.
“The engineers have the ability to focus on what is really important. There’s stuff that is more important than others, but having that said, it’s always going to be a talking point for — I think for you guys on media, for TV, and for us as drivers because it keeps on changing.
“There’s always a way to try and improve it and try and make it suit better for the car or for the driver.”
There is another key difference for Palou in 2024 than his second championship season in 2023.
One year ago, his worst finish was an eighth place in the season opener at St. Petersburg and the first race of the Iowa Speedway doubleheader.
Palou used consistency and the most wins of any driver in the series to win the 2023 title.
By contrast in 2024, Palou’s worst finishes are a 16th at Detroit in June and a 23rd in the first race of the Hy-Vee IndyCar Race Weekend at Iowa Speedway when he crashed.
Less than 18 hours later, Palou finished second – his best-ever finish on a short oval.
By rallying so quickly, and mastering short oval racing, that could help the popular driver when he arrives at Milwaukee and concludes the season at Nashville.
If he is successful in winning the 2024 IndyCar Series championship, it will be his third since 2021 and the first back-to-back champion since Dario Franchitti of Chip Ganassi Racing won three-straight from 2009-2011.
“I think it’s more of a shock if we see a champion repeating than if we don’t see him repeating,” Palou said. “I think that the opportunity I have in front of me, it’s great.
“The team is the same. The key people in my car are the same. The colors are different. But that gives us also another opportunity to try and give them some wins and some excitement on track.
“I don’t really feel the pressure of trying to defend a title because every time we step on the track, we need to win. Even if you are a champ or you’re not, you need to win.
“The good thing is we know we can be champions, that we can win after a season, so we just need to repeat and try and work a little bit harder than what we did last year.”
The next challenge for Palou comes this weekend in the BitNile Grand Prix of Portland.