As Indycar's dominant driver faces a fork in the road, is his next move as obvious as everyone seems to think it is? Maybe not...
Yet another week passes, and yet another Honda-affiliated European driver cruises to a seemingly inevitable victory on a classic North American track where despite the illusion of competition, his rivals know his victory was always inevitable. After extending his margin as both the winningest driver of the year and the championship leader, it seems his chances of yet another championship are nearly a lock given he has a lead of well over 60 points. I wouldn’t blame you for thinking this is Max Verstappen, and while Verstappen satisfies all these criteria, I’m actually referring to Alex Palou. The Spanish driver of the No. 10 Chip Ganassi Racing Honda is doing in Indycar what Verstappen and Red Bull are doing in F1; dominating in a way not seen for years.
There is one key difference between Verstappen and Palou, however. Verstappen currently holds the longest contract of any current F1 driver, having committed to Red Bull through 2028 after winning the 2021 championship. By contrast, Palou is set to become an unrestricted free agent in September of this year after his deal with CGR comes to an end, allowing him to theoretically go wherever he wants (since surely any team would want him). It would seem, based on the surprisingly public contract dispute of last year between Palou, CGR, and McLaren, that it’s a foregone conclusion that Palou will end up driving for Zak Brown’s team next year. But should he?
Why he should go to McLaren
There are two things that McLaren can offer Indycar drivers (and especially Palou) that pretty much no other teams can offer at this time: a very sizable pay increase, and the direct connection to F1 that many drivers, no matter how much they say, really desire.
When it comes to salary, CGR tied down Palou, a then more-or-less unproven (in Indycar at least) sophomore for relatively cheap. Since then, Palou has won the championship and had the opportunity to win all three Indy 500s he’s completed with the team, making him one of the top drivers on the grid. However, it seems like it will be difficult (realistically almost impossible) for CGR to be able to afford to pay both Palou and 2022 Indy 500 winner Marcus Ericsson (also in a contract year, and currently P2 in the standings) the salaries that a champion and an Indy 500 winner deserve without serious roadblocks.
The F1 allure is more straightforward; McLaren are the only racing organization involved in both F1 and Indycar, and Palou has already done F1 testing (and even a free practice session) with McLaren. So if F1 is Palou’s ultimate aim, then the team that can get him closest is, objectively, McLaren.
Why he should stay at CGR
The simple fact is that if Palou wants to compete for wins and championships on the regular in Indycar, there is no better place than CGR or Team Penske, although Penske already has all of its drivers under contract for the foreseeable future so that just leaves CGR. The simple fact is that without Scott Dixon crashing at Long Beach, the team could very easily be first, second, and third in the standings right now. They have the Indianapolis Motor Speedway figured out in a way that no other team seems to right now, so if he wants to win the 500 CGR is probably the best chance. There’s no other team operating at CGR’s level consistently enough to mount a real title challenge right now.
This includes McLaren, which already has three race-winning drivers under contract this year, and has only just expanded to three teams. So it would seem unlikely (although with Zak Brown’s penchant for landing sponsors, not impossible) that the team could expand to four cars so soon. That means it would have to axe one of its current drivers, none of which seem to really deserve it at the moment. Likewise, the McLaren car has been known to be quite difficult to extract maximum pace from without overdriving it (i.e., if you’re not Pato O’Ward or Felix Rosenqvist), which is absolutely not Palou’s style. In a series dominated by drivers who tend to like (or at least run best with) cars that are tail-happy and on a knife-edge, Palou likes a very neutral car, one that doesn’t look particularly quick or isn’t flashy but is super smooth and consistent. It just doesn’t seem like a great fit with the McLaren ethos, even if it’s not nearly as unbalanced as it used to be.
With regards to the F1 connection, the door (at McLaren at least) seems to be fairly closed. When Palou was first flirting with McLaren, Daniel Ricciardo was floundering in the second MCL36, so it was clear that there was going to be an opening sooner or later. But since then, Palou has been “forced,” if you can put it that way, into seeing out his contract at Ganassi, while Oscar Piastri swooped in to undermine his fellow Aussie after F1’s own mid-season contract circus.
Realistically, the only way Palou could hope to get into one of the Woking outfit’s cars was if either Piastri failed to improve on his predecessor, or if Lando Norris left. At present, Piastri is much closer to Norris than Ricciardo was last year, so it looks like it would have to be an unscheduled Norris exit that would open the door. While this is possible given the team’s chronic underperformance over the last 24 months, it’s unlikely he could go anywhere up the grid unless Red Bull get put under real pressure and axe Perez, which there is no need to do at the moment. So the F1 appeal, while there, is hardly realistic if you take an high-level view of the situation.
What else could he do?
Well, it depends. If F1 is really Palou’s goal, there is a solid argument that he would be just as better off, if not more so, by staying at Ganassi for another 1-2 years and racking up another championship or two. If he does it in the same way that he’s on track to do it this year, it will be pretty hard for teams on either side of the pond to ignore, and it very well could be more than McLaren chasing his signature in the F1 paddock. However, this would be pretty high risk given the last full-time Indycar-to-F1 driver was Sebastian Bourdais in 2008, and the last successful one was arguably Jacques Villeneuve over 25 years ago.
What should he do?
If he really wants to win championships, at any cost, he should stay at CGR in Indycar. It’s going so well right now and realistically even if he can get paid more elsewhere, I doubt that extra money would fill the void left by finishing P5 in the championship, or wherever else. Now of course there’s every chance that McLaren takes another step forward next year, and that CGR slips back, but with Indycar not making any notable rule changes (as of time of writing) for next year, the odds of the competitive picture remaining pretty stable are very high.
Is that what he will do?
Frankly, no. I think he’ll go to McLaren as he tried to last year, and race alongside O’Ward, Rossi, and maybe even Rosenqvist. In his place, Ganassi will put Marcus Armstrong in the No. 10 car, stepping back to a three-car team unless Kyffin Simpson (CGR development driver) steps into the No. 11 next year. Why? Because of Ericsson and Palou, surely Ericsson will be cheaper, and Marcus Armstrong likely brings some extra backing that Palou realistically does not. Simply put, it makes the most business sense.