Given the manner of Alex Palou’s victory on Saturday at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, with a perfectly prepared car and masterful strategy from his Chip Ganassi Racing crew, one would never have imagined driver and team were so fiercely at odds with each other less than a year ago.
Let alone embroiled in a civil lawsuit together throughout their 2022 summer of discontent.
“We’re not going to stop here,” 2021 champion Palou said after his crushing victory in last weekend’s Indianapolis Grand Prix. “We’re going to try and keep the championship lead until the end of the championship, and hopefully get the second one.
“It just fills everybody with energy, all the crew, all the engineers, myself – for the big race.”
Palou won by almost 17 seconds on Saturday, thwarting the challenge of super sophomore Christian Lundgaard while keeping the McLaren fleet of Pato O’Ward, Alexander Rossi and Felix Rosenqvist well out of reach. Leading 52 out of 85 laps, it was still only his second most impressive win of the last eight months.
He ended 2022 with an even more striking victory at Laguna Seca Raceway – he led 67 out of 95 laps and won by an astronomical 30.3 seconds, a record for the current IndyCar series throughout its 27-year history. It was his first win since his championship triumph the year before, during which he claimed a trio of victories and came within half a second of winning the Indianapolis 500 – all in his first season as a Ganassi driver.
But Ganassi’s hopes of extending Palou’s stay at the team suffered a blow in July last year after they announced his one-year contract extension. Palou publicly denied his team’s announcement on social media, and McLaren claimed they had bagged the Ganassi driver’s service for 2023.
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Chip Ganassi Racing never backed down from its claim that Palou was their man for 2023, even as the extraordinary situation unfolded of the team bringing a lawsuit against its active driver. Social media buzzed with claims Palou would be fired from the team – rumours that turned out to be nonsense. Nonetheless the feeling persisted that Palou would be shown the door the minute the 2022 IndyCar season ended.
But in the post-race celebrations after his win at Laguna Seca, it seemed Palou and Chip Ganassi had settled their differences. That view was justified when, three days later, Ganassi and Palou reached an agreement that would keep him in the stable for 2023, while also under contract with McLaren to continue as a Formula 1 test driver, a role he performed during opening practice of last year’s United States Grand Prix.
Palou’s pursuit of the F1 dream appeared to be the wedge that drove him and Ganassi apart. The 26-year-old isn’t discontent with IndyCar, where a long and fruitful career beckons, but would have been consumed with regret if he never tried to see what opportunities were available for him to break into F1.
His outlook is somewhat bleak: Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri are already set at McLaren F1 Team. The driving talent does not appear to be responsible for the team’s recent decline in performance.
That might drive Norris to look elsewhere when his current McLaren deal ends in 2025. But would Palou – who will be nearing 30 by then and has left the traditional F1 feeder ladder 56323232long ago – really be the primary target to succeed him?
Ganassi’s lawsuit against Palou is a thing of the past, but there’s a poorly-kept secret too great to ignore in the background. Palou’s current deal with Ganassi ends after the 2023 season, and barring a dramatic turn of events, he is widely expected to join McLaren’s ever-growing IndyCar operation for 2024.
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That’s something Palou refused to acknowledge in his post-race press conference. Asked if McLaren’s trio of top-five finishers had him thinking ahead to his plans for 2024, the victor shrugged, laughed, and said: “Absolutely not. It’s too early. It’s May, c’mon.” But 12 months ago Rossi was similarly cagey when answering questions about his own long-term future – before he left Andretti to join McLaren.
Many have asked and will continue to ask a fair question of Palou – why leave Ganassi, a proven, perennial powerhouse organisation, to mortgage your long-term IndyCar career with a rising but less-proven McLaren outfit with a strong roster of talent? That question will be asked many times if Palou continues to run well with his current employers.
“Honestly, last year we were really good to start,” Palou recalls of last season – countering the narrative that he’d been struggling while in legal proceedings against his current team. “We had three podiums in the first four, which was pretty impressive.” Many of those were close runner-up finishes to the likes of Scott McLaughlin.
It’s a testament to how well Alex Palou drove through the adversity – even if that adversity was somewhat of his own creation – that he was still fighting for wins and had an outside shot at the title while being sued by his current team. And now, free of that self-made distraction, he’s leading the IndyCar points table with a chance at his second championship in three years.
If Palou was to jump ship, where might he go? Palou had been what Ganassi was searching for nearly eight years: A suitable replacement for the four-time series champion and three-time Indy 500 winner Dario Franchitti. But it soon became clear that Palou was also in line to be the successor to the great Scott Dixon, Ganassi’s longest-tenured and most successful open-wheel racer.
When Dixon’s reign as team ace comes to an end, who will lead Ganassi into an IndyCar future without Alex Palou?
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Marcus Ericsson is the most obvious choice. Ericsson’s career-changing Indianapolis 500 victory last year coupled with three seasons of consistent results across every discipline of racing that IndyCar tackles has undone his reputation as a Formula 1 “never-was.” That he brings hefty financial consideration with him only makes him an even more attractive prospect.
But that combination is also attractive to other teams throughout the IndyCar paddock, and Ericsson is also in the last year of his current deal with Ganassi. There’s a chance he Ericsson could leave in parallel with Palou.
In-house, Marcus Armstrong brings with him a strong pedigree. The Formula 2 graduate has been solid on road and street courses in his rookie season, and Ganassi is one of the best-equipped teams to give even an oval novice the confidence to succeed right away if he were to run a full season.
Indy Nxt driver Kyffin Simpson was signed to a Ganassi development driver contract last season. Between open-wheelers and sports cars, Simpson has shown flashes of genuine brilliance beyond his 18 years. He is also well-funded, backed by his homeland of the Cayman Islands. But he’s yet to find any sort of consistent success in IndyCar’s top developmental series.
Ganassi has also evaluated fellow Ferrari Driver Academy alumnus Robert Shwartzman and Formula E title challenger Nick Cassidy in tests earlier this year, both highly rated in their respective fields. Cassidy, like Palou, spent time racing in Japan – and to boot, he’s an avid enthusiast of open-wheel oval racing and his street racing acumen in Formula E has improved with every race.
There’s also a wide range of young drivers in other teams who might covet a move to Ganassi. Callum Ilott’s services would be highly sought after if he hits free agency. Rinus VeeKay has hit his ceiling with his current team and Lundgaard put in an eye-catching turn last weekend. David Malukas could follow the path Palou took from Coyne to Ganassi after several impressive performances. There may even be a chance of a reunion with Felix Rosenqvist, long painted as the “lame duck” at McLaren who would be pushed out when they acquire Palou – unless they expand to a fourth full-season entry.
All of these scenarios are fascinating. They could also be rendered moot if the unexpected happens and Ganassi is somehow able to retain Palou’s services as an IndyCar driver. Whether it’s the best idea for him or not, Palou is set to change places at the end of 2023 – with the promise of building an IndyCar powerhouse and the slim hope of an F1 seat his apparent motivation.
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