Palou and Kirkwood enjoying closer IndyCar title fight

Alex Palou is back to a familiar place of leading the IndyCar Series championship, but the Spaniard isn’t running away with the title like he was doing at this stage of the season one year ago.

After five races in 2025, the driver of the No. 10 Chip Ganassi Racing Honda held an imposing 97-point lead over Andretti Global’s Kyle Kirkwood in the No. 27 Honda. At a maximum payout of 54 points in any event, Palou had nearly two full races worth of a lead over Kirkwood and he went on to win the Indianapolis 500 and stack eight total victories together to clinch his fourth championship in five seasons.

Thanks to Kirkwood and a reinvigorated Andretti team, Palou has faced constant opposition from the American who arrives for the Friday-Saturday Sonsio Grand Prix on the Indianapolis road course trailing the Ganassi driver by a modest 17 points. Behind Kirkwood, it’s David Malukas in the No. 12 Team Penske Chevy, who’s 63 points down to Palou, and then it’s Arrow McLaren’s Pato O’Ward with a 69-point gap to the championship leader in the No. 5 Chevy and teammate Christian Lundgaard in the No. 7 Chevy, who needs 74 points to draw level with Palou.

With the reigning champ included, only three title winners can be found inside the top 10. Penske’s Josef Newgarden is sixth and Palou’s Ganassi teammate Scott Dixon in eighth, but directly behind him, Palou’s closest pursuers all represent IndyCar’s next-generation of talent who are posing a real threat on approach to the Indy GP and the Indy 500.

“Yeah, I enjoy it,” Palou told RACER. “But it’s like a yes and a no. Obviously, you never want anybody to challenge or to be up there with you. You want to have everything by yourself. Like, that’s every racing driver’s dream. But I feel like Kyle and David, who are the closest to me, they're both tremendous drivers with tremendous teams, and they’re making things really tough on me.”

Having slashed the year-to-year deficit by 80 points entering Indy, and broken through to lead the championship after winning at Arlington and again after the Barber race before Palou retook first place following his victory at Long Beach, Kirkwood is on a new mission to erase the 17-point gap.

“It’s good, it’s better for us, it’s exciting for us, but it’s more pressure, if I’m being honest” Kirkwood said. “Because people tend to just be like, ‘Well, it's Palou, it's the 10 car with Ganassi, and the rest of the championship is racing for second.’ Which sucks to say that, but it's been true the past couple of years. And it doesn't feel that way this year. It feels like we actually have a fighting chance.

“We’ve been good at all the road and street races and did well on the one short oval we’ve had. Last year, though, at the Indy GP, we struggled as an entire team, so we’ll want to get that cleaned up a bit. But we’ve got to be as damn near as perfect as we can be on the 27 car to really keep this thing going, and still have a chance. It starts every weekend. So it's a lot of pressure on us, for sure, but it's a good thing, right? It feels a lot better than the last year. It's a good type of pressure.”

Despite being the target everyone is aiming for, Palou says he’s able to step back and appreciate the diverse array of talents who aspire to take his IndyCar crown.

“I feel like the beauty at the moment where we are is that you still have Scott Dixon and Will Power going strong, but at the same time, you have me, you have Malukas, you have Kirkwood, and the other guys pushing really hard. I feel it's super fun to see that. And I don't think it normally happens where you see two generations like this going with the veterans and the new guys—the newer guys,” he added.

“And then you have the in-between guys, which is probably Marcus Ericsson, Newgarden, and (Scott) McLaughlin, maybe me as well. I don’t know where I really fit. Like, I haven’t been here a short time, but I have been here for a little while already. But there’s multiple generations fighting together at the same time, which I feel is super cool.”