Last chances looming for IndyCar title hopefuls

It was the one place to strike. Of all the races left on the schedule for Alex Palou’s rivals to make a serious push and deny his quest to win four titles in a row, Nashville Speedway was the venue to get the process under way.

To his credit, IndyCar’s current king of road racing has become a formidable contender on ovals with the 2025 Indianapolis 500 and second Iowa race from 2025 bearing his name as the winner, but Nashville was the perfect place for local product Josef Newgarden, IndyCar’s oval king, to reel in Palou. The series’ other oval aces like Pato O’Ward and Marcus Ericsson also had prime opportunities to shorten their championship deficits to the Chip Ganassi Racing driver, but Palou rose to the challenge, beat Newgarden in a straight fight, and captured his fifth win of the season.

The victory also helped the four-time champ to stop a three-race slide, extend his lead in the drivers’ standings from 56 points to 83, and saw Kyle Kirkwood – Palou’s most consistent challenger this year – endure an unrewarding race in Nashville that dropped him from second to third in the championship behind David Malukas.

Put it all together, and Team Penske’s Malukas (-83) and Andretti Global’s Kirkwood (-87) are perilously close to being 100 points shy of Palou – out of realistic title contention – in the final charge to determine IndyCar’s next champion. And that’s a bad place to be as the series heads to Portland International Raceway this weekend where Palou has won twice and stood on the podium four times in the last five visits. He and the Ganassi team also tested at Portland last week, which can only help in their efforts to claim five crowns over a span of six seasons.

After Portland, the series motors to two new street courses with Markham and Washington, D.C., and while it’s impossible to say who’ll win those events, we can look back to how the season’s gone so far and note that Palou has won three out of the four street races to date. Kirkwood won the one Palou didn’t get (Arlington), but the Spaniard still managed to place second…

Malukas and Kirkwood have both been consistently in the mix at the front, but we're fast reaching the point where that will no longer be enough. Michael Levitt/Lumen via Getty Images

Leaving Washington, it’s off to Milwaukee where a doubleheader on The Mile serves as the penultimate weekend for the championship; Palou nearly won there last year before taking second behind Christian Rasmussen. The season concludes at Laguna Seca where Palou is the reigning winner and has been on the podium for five straight years.

Using history as a guide, Nashville was tailor made to pull Palou closer to his rivals, but he used the 1.33-mile oval to send a new message about his ability to win anywhere at any time. And that leaves Malukas and Kirkwood in the unenviable position of needing adversity to envelop Palou’s No. 10 Honda to improve their odds of catching and passing him in the standings before the championship concludes on Sept. 6. Whether it’s drivetrain problems, electrical issues, blown tires, or race-altering contact, Palou’s pursuers can only hope for a barrage of cartoon anvils to hit the No. 10 car and slow the Spaniard’s attempt to join A.J. Foyt and Scott Dixon as the only drivers in IndyCar history with five or more titles.

Adversity would certainly help their causes, and as we’ve seen this year, the Ganassi team is human and can make strategy calls that hinder Palou or lose positions during pit stops that don’t go according to plan. Where last year’s championship run was nearly perfect, its follow-up effort has faced more than a few self-induced hiccups, and that’s where Malukas and Kirkwood can find glimmers of possibility for the No. 10 car to fall into their clutches.

But time is running out. Nashville was among the last races where serious headway could have been made and that didn’t work out in their favor. Portland has been a stronghold for Palou and Ganassi as a whole with Dixon as well, but all it takes is one mistake to cut that 83-point margin over Malukas in half and reignite the fight to overtake Palou.

After Malukas and Kirkwood, the odds grow as Arrow McLaren’s duo of Christian Lundgaard (-104) and O’Ward (-121) in fourth and fifth are a long way back from the championship leader. With a maximum of 54 points available to earn at each race, Lundgaard is almost two full events down to Palou with six to go, and O’Ward’s in worse condition. Newgarden, in sixth (-147), is almost three race’s worth of maximum points behind Palou.

Like O’Ward, Newgarden and the rest of the drivers in his wake will need to set their sights on winning the 2027 championship because there’s almost no reasonable path to bridge the gap over the next 30ish days.

The OnlyBulls Grand Prix of Portland on Sunday is going to be a pivotal affair in how the title will be settled. The last thing Malukas, Kirkwood and Lundgaard – the season’s best road course performer – need is for Palou to qualify and finish well, and for those who want to see anyone other than the Ganassi driver succeed, there’s 110 laps of opportunity for the title challengers to exploit in Portland.

Get it done now, or there might not be anything more than second place to fight for in the final standings.