Alex Palou now has three separate opportunities to seal the 2025 IndyCar championship title in what has been a historic season.
Following his latest success, as Laguna Seca, Palou is up to eight wins for the season - which ties even any of Sebastien Bourdais' ridiculous Champ Car title-winning years, and is two short of equalling the record set by AJ Foyt and then Al Unser Sr.
Palou is all but certain to win a fourth title in six seasons now - which would come before he has made 100 starts in the series - and he would be the first since his Ganassi team mentor Dario Franchitti to win the title and Indianapolis 500 in the same season, which Franchitti remarkably managed twice, most recently in 2010.
How can Palou win title at next race?
Pato O'Ward needs to outscore Palou by 14 points at the next race in Portland to remain in the championship hunt mathematically. The remaining 25 full-time drivers have all been eliminated from contention already!
The current gap is 121 points, with 162 available in total.
To stop O'Ward prolonging the fight, a second place plus any of the bonus points IndyCar offers would guarantee Palou the title regardless of what O'Ward does. Or, finish second, and hope O'Ward drops the bonus point for pole.
IndyCar bonus points
Pole: 1 point
Leading a lap: 1 point
Leading most laps: 2 points
Short of that, it will depend how high up O'Ward can finish. But Palou can afford to give up 13 points and still secure the title.
It's also worth remembering that Palou will get five points for just starting the last three races, because IndyCar's rules award that number of points even if you crash or retire on the first lap.
IndyCar points
1st: 50
2nd: 40
3rd: 35
4th: 32
5th-10th: decreases by 2 for each position, from 30 to 20
11th-24th: decreases by 1 for each position, from 19 to 6
25th or lower: 5
So that means Palou's current score of 590 would, just by starting those last three races, be boosted to 605, making O'Ward's deficit to overturn 136 points in total as things stand, and assuming Palou starts those races.
So outscoring Palou by 14 points would mathematically keep it alive but would also not really be enough, as long as Palou starts the remaining races.
The form at the remaining tracks
The other outstanding factor is that, while O'Ward was fourth at Portland in 2022 and 2023, last year he was 15th amid a struggle for pace at McLaren that O'Ward labelled "unacceptable".
Meanwhile, Palou won this race in his 2021 and 2023 title-winning seasons and finished second last year. So, basically: good luck, Pato!
Looking away from Portland and further ahead, O'Ward is likely to be better at the following races at Milwaukee - where he won last year - and Nashville.
But Palou only needs a total of 42 points across the last three races to guarantee the title - the equivalent of an average finish of 16th per race - and that's without any bonus points.
As you can see, this is less 'uphill struggle' for O'Ward, and more 'climbing Everest with scuba gear on'.
Why is Palou so good at Laguna Seca?
Palou delivered an absolute masterclass for his third win at Laguna Seca last weekend, and only a succession of cautions stopped it being another trademark enormous winning margin at this circuit.
It's only natural to look for reasons why Palou is so good at this track but even he, by his own admission, doesn't know.
"I have no idea," he said, but it should be noted that this is likely more his typical modesty.
"I love it so much, every single lap. Even the inlaps, the outlaps, I love every single lap I do around here with any car. I normally tend to love other tracks that we go to, but this is the most fun I have.
"There's been different track conditions, as we know. Like in 2021 and '22 I think we had the old pavement, and although it was the same track, it was a completely different technique that you needed.
"Then with the high grip that we had after the repave was another one.
"Today [Sunday] was a different one as well. It was changing a lot. The lines that you had to do were a little bit different in some areas, like Turn 2, 3, 11 a little bit.
"I don't know. Probably the amount of laps I did on the simulator here when I was a kid helps. It was my favourite track when I was a kid.
"I think it's one of the most iconic, if not the most iconic, road course that we have."
Bringing up the change of surface is really important as Palou has won on the old and new asphalt, which both create different types of racing, at Laguna Seca.
The old surface was akin to a cheese grater, while this year the track has started to evolve and develop as a balance between that and the slicker surface when it was first poured.
It's most likely that, regardless of surface, the track layout suits Palou's style.
There's not a lot of long straights and there's plenty of slow- and medium-speed corners. Palou is so precise in his approach and with how he sets up the car that you rarely see his rear end step out.
He's tidy through entry to corner exit. This style helps to get the power down cleanly and make the most of the straights the circuit actually does have.
Being precise, avoiding the gravel and not having the car move around a lot also gives Palou great tyre feel, and soft or hard on Sunday Palou was incredible on both tyre compounds.
Fundamentally, that combination of his style and the track layout really suits Palou and his approach.
