One hundred starts and a bunch of wild stats for Palou

When Alex Palou crossed the finish line at the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg on Sunday, the Chip Ganassi Racing driver added to a remarkable streak, dialed up the percentages on some amazing statistics, and began preparations to make his 100th IndyCar start during the Good Ranchers 250 at Phoenix Raceway.

After joining the series in the COVID-shortened 14-race 2020 season with a co-entry fielded by Kazumichi Goh and Dale Coyne Racing, Palou’s gone on to make 99 starts, 85 of them since he moved to Ganassi's outfit in 2021. Palou has won 20 of those 99 races (a 20.2-percent win rate), and from 2021 when he joined Ganassi and captured his first victory on his debut for the team in the No. 10 Honda, his 20 victories from those 85 starts take the percentage up to 23.5, which means he lands in victory lane nearly once out of every four races for Ganassi.

The vast majority of those 20 triumphs have come from road courses, where Palou has won 15 times, and three are from street courses. The other two are from ovals, including last year’s Indianapolis 500, where lifelong road racer Palou added the superspeedway achievement and a short oval win to his arsenal.

His greatest IndyCar accomplishment thus far is winning four championships in six years, which ties him for third on the all-time list. He’s also managed to master most of the tracks he’s visited, taking victories at 11 of the 15 regular stops on the 2026 calendar. Of the repeat venues, only Long Beach, Gateway (World Wide Technology Raceway), Nashville and Milwaukee remain to be conquered by the Spaniard.

Last Sunday’s win at St. Petersburg brought Palou closer to another record, as the triumph over Team Penske’s Scott McLaughlin extended the duration of his unbroken championship lead – including the offseasons – to 616 days.

616 days with the No. 10 as No. 1. David Jensen/Getty Images

Palou and the No. 10 Honda team took control of the championship at Laguna Seca on June 23, 2024 and have yet to relinquish it, holding the lead for the remainder of that championship-winning season. He went on to take the opening race of 2025 and owned first in the standings all season long while clinching the title. Graduating to 2026, Palou maintained his uninterrupted lead with the win last weekend.

The streak is the second longest in IndyCar history after Sebastien Bourdais' 637-day Champ Car run, which started at Toronto on July 10, 2005 and ran through the 2007 Las Vegas season opener on April 8 of that year. Palou has passed A.J. Foyt for the position, whose 608-day mark from Trenton on July 28, 1963 to the Phoenix season opener on March 27, 1965, stood until the checkered flag waved at St. Petersburg.

Sunday's victory also increased another mind-boggling stat: Palou has led the championship for 1,210 combined days since he joined Ganassi, and the tally continues to increase.

At the start of Saturday’s race, Palou’s championship-leading streak will reach 622 days and push the overall figure up to 1,216. If he can leave Phoenix with the lead and hold onto it through next weekend’s race in Arlington, Palou will take the consecutive-days-led record from Bourdais on March 23, the Monday of race week for Barber Motorsports Park.

Catching Foyt on the all-time list is the harder – if not impossible – task, thanks to Super Tex’s 2,302 total days spent leading IndyCar championships. As the great statistician Scott Richards noted, “Palou would have to remain the points leader continuously until February 25, 2029, to tie this. At this rate, though, I can't help but wonder just a tiny bit if that's not that unrealistic!”

Among the other Palou stats from his six seasons and one race in IndyCar, he’d led the championship following 55 of his 99 races, which ranks fifth behind Foyt (81), Mario Andretti (69), Scott Dixon (63) and Will Power (58). And with the start to his seventh season, Richards says Palou has become the “first driver to lead the points after at least one race in six consecutive seasons. He was previously tied at five with Foyt (1960-64) and Mario Andretti (1984-88).”

Lastly, and in another Bourdais-led category, Palou became the first driver to win 20 races before 100 career starts since the Frenchman did it at Milwaukee in June 2006 in only his 50th start, which is the all-time record for the fastest to reach 20 victories and will likely never be broken.

So what does IndyCar’s reigning Stat King think about the numbers he’s amassed?

“I don't even know how to form a proper answer,” Palou said. “Like, honestly, I have no idea. I'm aware that we've been leading for a long time. But when you put it into numbers, and when you combine it, it's incredible. I'm just that 5-year-old kid that started go-karts, and I'm just so lucky. Like I love it. I'm enjoying every single day because I've always wanted to be in this position, always, always. I've always dreamed about being in the position I am today, of being able to show up to [a] racetrack and have a great team behind me that would allow me to just focus on driving, and that's it, nothing else. And I'm in this position now. I'm just a very happy person, like, I don't know what to say, it's great. I couldn't be happier.”