Turn off the lights, the party's almost over (but don't go home just yet)

It’s slightly premature to begin singing "Turn out the lights, the party’s over," but start warming your vocal cords because Alex Palou’s championship lead is close to insurmountable.

With five races left to run, an advantage of 129 points over Arrow McLaren’s Pato O’Ward and a maximum of 270 points available to earn, Palou has knocked 20 drivers out of title contention starting with Will Power in eighth place (271 points back).

Palou’s done this at a remarkably accelerated rate – after 12 of 17 races are complete – which is something we haven’t seen in a generation. In fact, it was his Chip Ganassi Racing predecessor and all-time great Alex Zanardi who was the most recent driver to starch the opposition at this point in the championship; with five races left in the 1998 CART IndyCar season, only three drivers had a mathematical chance to catch Zanardi. Six are left with a chance in 2025, but that number is deceiving.

After O’Ward and his 129-point gap, third-place Scott Dixon is an impossible 173 down to his teammate Palou, which has effectively turned the battle for IndyCar’s crown into a two-driver contest by the middle of July.

It’s five to go and only one driver has an imposingly slim chance of preventing Palou from locking down his fourth championship in five years. The only conceivable way for life and intrigue to be injected into the title conversation is for O’Ward to go on the attack and deliver the best five races of his career.

His life won’t be made easy; O’Ward needs to secure maximum points at each race – a peak haul of 54 points – while not only finishing ahead of Palou, but defeating the street course specialists at Andretti Global in Toronto this weekend. Colton Herta and Kyle Kirkwood have earned three of the last four wins on temporary circuits.

It’s beating Palou and his Chip Ganassi Racing teammate Scott Dixon, winners of the last two races at Laguna Seca, coming up next weekend, and Palou and Team Penske’s Will Power at Portland, winners of the two most recent stops in Oregon, when the racing resumes in August.

O’Ward is more than capable of cutting into Palou’s big lead, and if the Ganassi driver is stricken with misfortune at Toronto, the 129-point advantage can certainly shrink. But the only way the championship lead comes into focus is through huge success for the Arrow McLaren driver and bigger adversity for his main rival.

It happened at Detroit where Palou’s No. 10 Honda was hit from behind and launched into the wall while running seventh to O’Ward’s ninth. It was Palou’s only failure to finish this season and he placed a dreadful 25th in the event. O’Ward was seventh at the checkered flag, and despite the terrible day for Palou, he only lost 22 points from his championship lead.

Simply put, a Palou crash on the opening lap and last-place finish at Toronto would do wonders to reinvigorate O’Ward’s chances, but if his No. 5 Chevy crossed the finish line third or fourth or worse, it would be an opportunity lost and a move to Monterey with four races and only 216 points left to capture.

O'Ward still has a shot, but starting this weekend in Toronto he'll have to be inch-perfect the rest of the year. Joe Skibinski/IMS Photo

Brutal luck for Palou, coupled with giant results for O’Ward that carve 30 or more points from that 129-point chasm, and a title fight could be possible as the season moves to the Milwaukee Mile. Once again, it won’t be easy. O’Ward won the first race in last year’s Milwaukee Mile doubleheader, Penske’s Scott McLaughlin won the second and the finale at Nashville Speedway was taken by Herta. Sadly, the two ovals where O’Ward stands the best chances of out-performing Palou are also the last two races on the calendar.

In a perfect world, Milwaukee and Nashville would be up next to boost O’Wards chances, but if Palou maintains his strong road and street course form, the closing ovals might be meaningless in the bigger championship picture.

There’s also the fact that Palou has won seven times this year and is a threat to claim more victories at each of the five remaining events. According to racing statistician Scott Richards, Palou joins Tony Bettenhausen from 1951 and Al Unser Jr. from 1994 with seven wins from the first 12 races, and only trails AJ Foyt’s peerless 1964 season where he won 10 of the opening 12.

All it takes is for Palou to secure one more win in 2025 to become only the fourth IndyCar driver in the last 55 years to reach eight victories in a single season; Michael Andretti in 1991, Al Unser Jr. in 1994, and Sebastien Bourdais in 2007 are the most recent, and they all trail Al Unser Sr. as the last driver to claim 10, which came during his 1970 championship run.

Palou also has this year’s best finishing record at 92 percent, and making matters worse, 10 of those 12 finishes have been inside the top five where the largest servings of points are available. He doesn’t need to win another race, but with how the season has gone for the 28-year-old from Spain, it would be a surprise if it didn’t happen.

Throw the Andrettis, Penskes, Meyer Shanks and other teams with formidable drivers into the finishing order mix, and yes, it’s time to start reaching for that light switch because unless Palou decides to announce his retirement with immediate effect, the party – at least for this season – is almost over. This is the point when some fans might decide to tune out, provided they haven’t already lost interest with the lopsided outcomes Palou has been producing since March. But for those who are inspired by dynastic runs and want to see how far this formerly unheralded driver can go in IndyCar’s history books, there’s plenty to follow until the curtain comes down on August 31 in Nashville.

Like Unser Jr. in 1994 and Zanardi in 1998, these kinds of seasons and crushing displays of dominance are rarities in IndyCar. Whether 2025 is remembered as the year Palou imposed his will on the field and joined some legendary names in the process, or it goes down as the wildest reversal of fortunes with a total collapse and O’Ward – IndyCar’s most popular driver – becoming a first-time champion, there’s no way this season will be forgotten.