It wasn’t supposed to be this easy. IndyCar’s USP is the high number of potential race winners in its pack for such a high-level open-wheel racing series. But Alex Palou defied this logic in 2023, making his second title appear routine on track with five victories. Off the track, however, it was an altogether more complicated story.
Palou only remained with Chip Ganassi Racing this season following a courtroom mediation after the veteran team owner sued his own driver in the middle of last summer. Back then, the Catalan wanted out, lured by the potential of a Formula 1 opportunity with McLaren. In a sense, he had his cake and ate it, getting multiple runs in McLaren’s TPC (testing previous cars) programme and an FP1 outing at the United States Grand Prix. And he got to stay with IndyCar’s best team of the moment, adding a 15th title to Ganassi’s glittering trophy cabinet.
While some in the team undoubtedly gave him the cold shoulder, keen to keep their secrets in-house, it’s worth noting that Ganassi himself never let the legal dispute get between their personal relationship. Undoubtedly, the turmoil affected Palou’s form in 2022 – CGR’s main strength is its togetherness, and he became its black sheep – but when it came to deciding his future, and the McLaren U-turn in August that shocked the world once more, the fact that Ganassi remained civil and upfront with him clearly paid off. And several more million dollars likely helped too.
Continuity is also what makes CGR tick, with a management backbone featuring faces who have been around since its first era of glory in the 1990s, the Jimmy Vasser and Alex Zanardi days. For example, Palou’s strategist Barry Wanser was Zanardi’s ‘gearbox guy’ and, along with Chip, managing director Mike Hull, race engineer Julian Robertson and crew chief Ricky Davis, Palou’s #10 team not only has the feel of the spiritual successor to Zanardi or Juan Pablo Montoya or Dario Franchitti… it essentially is that same team of remarkable people.
This was reflected in the outpouring of emotion towards Wanser, who missed Palou’s title moment at Portland (the champion Facetimed him from Victory Lane) as he recovered in hospital from cancer surgery. You wonder whether that emotive connection, and Palou’s revelation that he and wife Esther are expecting their first child, might have swayed him away from chasing that F1 dream. Or perhaps he’s been offered something else in that direction… Time will tell, or maybe he will one day in the book he keeps promising to write!
That Palou plugged in and won at his first attempt with these guys in 2021 was impressive enough. Franchitti, the team’s driver advisor, says that even in his first season with the team he was “already at that point where he knows what he wants, he’s very precise”, while the team’s 30-year veteran Hull says Palou’s mental strength reminds him of Dan Wheldon at his peak. High praise indeed.
Source: Autosport