While Alex Palou's record of winning all but one race in IndyCar this year took a blow when he was taken out in Detroit, the 'other Palou' on the IndyCar ladder still has his incredible run of form intact.
Dennis Hauger - the 22-year-old Norwegian formerly of Red Bull's Formula 1 junior programme - has won four of the first five Indy NXT races and added three poles at tracks he has never been to or even seen before in some cases. Most people have decided that the Andretti Global driver has already done enough to confirm an IndyCar seat next year.
That makes sense, given this is the best start to an IndyCar second-tier feeder-series season since Alex Lloyd's run in 2007, just under 18 years ago. And think of the names that have come through since then, like Josef Newgarden, Pato O'Ward, Colton Herta and Kyle Kirkwood - who arguably has the best junior single-seater resume in North American racing history. None had a run like Hauger’s.
What does Hauger make of people already declaring him a 2026 IndyCar driver then?
"I don't really care until I see a contract," he laughs during an interview with The Race.
"It's been a good start and I'm happy that I'm getting the attention too, and obviously my goal is to go up to IndyCar.
“I knew before heading into this season I had one shot and one year in Indy NXT to try and get the results to mark myself as a worthy driver to the IndyCar series and so far I think we're doing the job."
Hauger was the successor to Oscar Piastri as FIA Formula 3 champion with Prema Racing in 2021, and followed that up with 10th, 11th and 8th in F2 with the latter two seasons spent with MP Motorsport.
It's no surprise after the more recent finishes that F1 wasn't on the cards, but there were a lot of options and it's clear where Hauger's focus lies from the decisions he took.
"It's never straightforward," he says of his decision to choose Indy NXT, to uproot his life to come to America, and to at least pause any dreams of F1.
"We had options here and there, even back in F2, and we were looking at long-distance racing, Formula E, different things. Outside F1, I was looking like what's the best series to be in for the future and where could I see myself and and the goal there was clearly IndyCar.
"We were looking at IndyCar, but we don't have that kind of budget and honestly, we're fighting to keep this budget for this year in Indy NXT as well.
"So it's hard work off track, but when I got the opportunity to go to Indy NXT with Andretti it was an opportunity I couldn't miss.
“If you win this championship you get prize money and you get an opportunity to go to IndyCar. So I feel like that's a really cool part of the series."
It feels eerily similar to 2022 and Linus Lundqvist - who wasn't sure he'd have the budget to complete the season but won the title. Hauger is still nine races away from achieving that, with a strong team-mate in reigning USF Pro 2000 champion Lochie Hughes just one of the drivers behind him who could cause him serious issues.
Going back to the Palou comparison, many believed - including himself - that he'd need to win an Indianapolis 500 to be considered among the greats. He achieved that last month in what was his first win on an oval.
Hauger has a somewhat similar achievement to do if he wants to be Indy NXT champion and a future IndyCar driver: to even race on an oval!
His first one is coming up this weekend at Gateway.
He tested at Nashville's oval earlier in the season and was, you guessed it, fastest of anyone, but Gateway isn't flat like Nashville and racing on an oval with other cars at speed is far different to driving around it in practice. Hauger knows that.
"You feel like a superhero when you're driving in those speeds around an oval," he adds.
"It's a weird and cool feeling.
"I think qualifying shouldn't be too bad. But we go to a track now where we have to lift and I haven't experienced that before. I think I'll be fine for qualifying mode. But again, the race will be just so different.
“So I'm just looking at loads of videos and onboards and stuff like that, just get my head wrapped around it as much as I can."
Given his results so far, it's easy to forget he's never raced an oval, hadn't driven most of the tracks we've been on, and is in his first season of driving an Indy NXT car.
Yes, he's 22 years old and has experience from championships at the elite level of what most people would call the top level of junior single-seaters. But that doesn't mean how he has performed in 2025 in Indy NXT should be expected and certainly isn't the norm.
He's been asked a lot about F2 being good preparation for Indy NXT but that's not always the case. The F2 car is similar to an IndyCar, whereas the Indy NXT car is similar to a rally car! You couldn't drive an F2 car on the ragged edge and sideways because it would destroy the Pirellis for starters.
"Detroit, I saved tyres too much at one point, and I just messed up my balance a bit because of that," says Hauger, who says he's still learning how to drive and push this car in the limits it really works in. F2 was a blessing and a curse for his preparation, but every weekend he's fighting through it.
"It [the car] moves around, and I love that when you're on the oversteery side and you have to wrestle it a little bit, and this car really allows you to just push through the limits a bit like that.
"And also just the tyres are so different, very different compounds, and it's a sort of tyre that makes you push more throughout the race and a different qualifying sequence.
"Literally every single thing this year is different than what I've done before, which I think a lot of people take lightly just because I come from F2, but there's still a lot of new things for me this year with the car and the tyres, of course, but the tracks every time I go to a track this year, it's a completely new track, everyone else knows them. So it's a lot of different factors this year."
Looking at the results, you'd think it more likely a good IndyCar driver had dropped back into Indy NXT for a year rather than believing what you see here had been achieved by a rookie driver so new to everything.
The championship isn't anywhere near won and those toasting '2026 IndyCar driver Dennis Hauger' are doing so way too soon. On driving talent alone, yes he's good enough, but when a budget is as tight as his is, these things are never guaranteed.
His first oval race this weekend will be a big marker of how ready he is for that next step. If he keeps performing at the level he has consistently, there literally will be no way he won't be on that top-level grid next year.
It's been nothing short of remarkable.
