Detroit victory moves Palou into top 20 on IndyCar's all-time win list

Alex Palou has entered IndyCar’s top 20 list for all-time wins.

With his victory on Sunday at the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix, the four-time IndyCar Series champion moved his career tally to 23 wins, breaking a tie he held at 22 with 1989 CART champion Emerson Fittipaldi and two-time AAA champion Tony Bettenhausen.

Next on the list for Palou is joining three-time CART champion Bobby Rahal and three-time AAA champion Ted Horn at 24 wins. Legends like Gordon Johncock (25 wins), Roger Ward (26), Johnny Rutherford (27) and Rick Mears in 14th (29) are also on the horizon for the 29-year-old. AJ Foyt owns the all-time record of 67 wins.

Palou's arrival inside the top 20 comes on the approach to the halfway point of his seventh IndyCar season. The Spaniard joined IndyCar in 2020 after competing in the Japanese Super Formula and Super GT series, and went winless as a rookie with Dale Coyne Racing.

Signed by Ganassi to replace Felix Rosenqvist, who left CGR to accept an offer from Arrow McLaren, Palou took over the No. 10 Honda and scored his first victory on debut with the team in 2021. All of his trips to victory lane have come while driving the No. 10 CGR Honda.

Palou earned three wins in 2021 and captured his first championship, won a single race in 2022 as Will Power cinched the title, responded to the down year with five wins in 2023 and his second championship, and added two more wins in 2024 while claiming back-to-back titles.

Palou’s 2025 season was one for the ages with eight victories from 17 races, including his first Indianapolis 500 triumph, and a runaway championship win that was sealed with two events left to run.

So far in 2026, Palou has won four out of the eight races held and holds a commanding lead in the Drivers’ standings; 10 are left to complete before the checkered flag waves over the season.

For those who want anyone but Palou to win, he and the Ganassi team have faced increased competition from their closest rivals as Andretti Global, Arrow McLaren, Meyer Shank Racing, and Team Penske have won one race apiece races across the eight opening events. After eight races in 2025, only Ganassi and Andretti had won.

Using the same eight-race comparison point from Palou’s breakaway 2025 championship output, he’d earned 335 points and led second-place Pato O’Ward by 73 points and third-place Kyle Kirkwood by 75. Christian Lundgaard in fourth was 114 points back from the championship leader.

After eight races in 2026, Palou has earned a nearly identical 327 points and second-place Kirkwood is 62 points down, which is 11 points closer than O’Ward’s gap last year. David Malukas in third is 79 points shy of Palou, which is six more than Kirkwood from 2025, and Lundgaard, in fourth again at the same stage, is 13 points up at a deficit of 101.

Altogether, Palou heads to World Wide Technology Raceway (WWTR) for the ninth race of the season, which takes place Sunday night, and is within seven points of the advantage he built and managed last summer on the way to becoming a four-time champion.

WWTR also serves as the track where Kirkwood earned his first oval win and returns as the defending race winner; finishing ahead of Palou, who also took his first oval win last year, will be important for Kirkwood and Malukas and any other title contender before the series shifts to two road courses in Road America and Mid-Ohio where Palou left with a win and a second-place finish in 2025.

If a different champion is going to be crowned, WWTR is the place to make a play for the title. Of the six returning tracks to run after WWTR (excluding new visits to Markham and Washington DC), Palou has won at four and placed second at the other two.

There’s no guaranteeing he’ll enjoy the same good fortune at any or all of the events that are left to complete, but WWTR, where Palou has yet to finish better than fourth, is the perfect place to try and slice into that 62-point lead.

To close, racing statistician Scott Richards found the following items while researching Palou’s arrival inside the top 20:

• Alex Palou's 23 wins came in just 106 starts. Of the 19 drivers ahead of Palou on the all-time wins list, only four of those drivers reached 23 wins in fewer starts: Sebastien Bourdais (60), Ted Horn (62), AJ Foyt (82) and Mario Andretti (90)
• At 29 years and 1 month, Palou is the second-youngest driver to reach 23 wins behind only Bourdais (27 years, 8 months when he won at Mexico City in 2006)
• Palou's 23 wins ranks second-most for Chip Ganassi Racing, behind only Scott Dixon (58).  
• Palou earned his 23 wins in just 92 starts with Ganassi (25% winning rate)
• In Dixon's first 92 starts with Ganassi between 2002-2007, he amassed just 9 wins (9.8 percent win rate) and it took 140 starts to earn his 23rd win with the team (Edmonton - July 2010)
• Palou's 25 percent win rate with Ganassi ranks third in team history behind Alex Zanardi (29.4 percent - 15 wins in 51 starts) and Juan Pablo Montoya (28.2 percent - 11 wins in 39 starts).  However, Palou is in his sixth season with the team compared to Zanardi's three and Montoya's two.