Champion Palou has 'never felt better'

Like fine wine, Alex Palou gets better and better every year. Champion for the third consecutive season, the Catalan driver achieved this this time with two races remaining in the season, thus improving on his 2023 performance, when he was crowned champion at the same Portland circuit, but which at the time hosted the penultimate round of the championship. As he celebrates a fourth success, which comes with a victory at the Indianapolis 500 last May, the Spanish driver doesn't seem ready to come down from his little cloud…

“I’ve never felt better. How I’ve felt since the beginning of the year is incredible. Every weekend it’s gotten better and better. We’ve won so many races. We won the Indy 500. The feeling you get after winning that race is an explosion of incredible sensations. People remind you of that every day when you wake up, which makes it even more special. Today, winning my fourth title in IndyCar, bringing one more to Chip Ganassi Racing, and being able to get it so quickly, it's an incredible feeling. You can't compare this championship to 2021 or the last two years. This is by far the happiest I've ever felt in my life."

The love of racing

If he constantly rewrites the IndyCar history books, notably by joining Sébastien Bourdais, Dario Franchitti and Mario Andretti as four-time champions, Palou insists that it is not these numbers that keep him so motivated.

The man who also owns a Eurocup-3 team praises his passion for motorsport in general, and for driving an IndyCar in particular. A passion he shares with all the members of his team, who for many years now have formed a very close-knit clan looking after the Dallara-Honda bearing the number 10: “I love this sport. I love working with my team, my mechanics, my engineers, everyone involved in the race weekend after weekend and trying to be better than the others. We’re always trying to improve, whether it’s the car, the driving, anything we can do, to try to be a little bit better than we were before.

That's what motivates us. It's not really the championships and the numbers. Obviously, it's a great source of pride and we like that. It's a kind of reward. But what we like is coming to the circuit every weekend and competing, hopefully, at the best level possible."

Where can the Catalan stop now? Chip Ganassi, his boss since the 2021 season, believes that we haven't seen anything yet... “I’ve never seen a man work as calmly and diligently as he does. I said at the beginning of the year that we were only just scratching the surface of his talent. I still believe he still has energy to spare for this season and will have even more for the seasons to come. You saw his desire to win the Indy 500, what the goals were when we left this place. Even though we won, he didn’t lose sight of the overall goal, the championship. I couldn’t be more pleased. I obviously want to thank Álex and everyone who works for us.”

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