2026 IndyCar Season in Review: Alex Palou's Fifth Title and the Closest Indy 500 Ever

The Happy Hour Racing Monday IndyCar Recap normally breaks down the race that just ran. The 2026 season is done, so this week we look back at all 18 of them.

The Short Version

The 2026 IndyCar season ended on September 6 at Laguna Seca, and there is no race this week. Alex Palou won his fifth championship in six years, and he clinched it at Milwaukee with a race still left to run. Eight different drivers won along the way, Felix Rosenqvist took the Indianapolis 500 by 0.0233 seconds in the closest finish the race has ever had, and Honda beat Chevrolet for the manufacturer title. Here is the whole year in one place.

Palou Won It Early, and He Won It Big

Palou opened the year by winning at St. Petersburg and closed the points race in August. In between he won six races, took eight poles, and finished in the top five twelve times in eighteen starts. He led at least one lap in twelve races. The final margin over Kyle Kirkwood was 86 points.

The run of poles is the part that stands out. Palou qualified first at the Indianapolis road course, the Indy 500, Detroit, Gateway and Road America, five in a row, which put him in a group of only five drivers in series history to do that. He also got docked five points at the Indy 500 for a front wing height infringement, which tells you how little it mattered by then.

The bigger picture is the record book. This is Palou's fifth title, after 2021, 2023, 2024 and 2025, and his fourth in a row. Only A.J. Foyt with seven and his own Chip Ganassi teammate Scott Dixon with six have more. He got from his first title to his fifth in six seasons, which is faster than anyone has ever done it, and at 29 he is the youngest five-time champion the series has had.

Mr. Perfect. Five-time. Greatness. The Astor Challenge Cup is yours again, @AlexPalou

— NTT INDYCAR SERIES (@IndyCar) September 6, 2026

The 110th Indy 500 Was the Best Race of the Year

Palou started the Indianapolis 500 from pole and the race got away from everybody. Rain forced a red flag around halfway. When it went back green the field split into two strategies, with David Malukas and Palou pitting late to run full power while Rosenqvist and Pato O'Ward tried to save fuel to the end. A crash on lap 192 brought another red flag, and a caution on lap 197 set up a one-lap shootout.

Malukas led into turn one. Rosenqvist slingshotted past him coming off turn four and won by 0.0233 seconds. That is the closest finish in the 110-year history of the race. Scott McLaughlin was third, O'Ward fourth, and Marcus Armstrong fifth.

The Chase That Never Quite Landed

Four drivers took real swings at Palou and none of them could string it together. Kirkwood won at Arlington and at the one-off Freedom 250 in Washington, D.C., and finished second in the standings on 545 points. Christian Lundgaard won the Indianapolis road course and came from last to first at Road America, and ended up third on 535. O'Ward scored 522 and three wins, all of them late. Malukas took 514 points and six podiums without ever winning a race, which is a hard way to spend a season.

O'Ward's Milwaukee weekend was the wildest stretch of the year. Rain scrambled the doubleheader so badly that the second race finished before the first one did, and O'Ward won both of them on the same day. Nobody had done that in IndyCar since Rick Mears in 1981. Palou finished tenth in the race that ended last and locked up the championship right there.

The Season by the Numbers

Eight different drivers won across eighteen rounds: Palou with six, O'Ward with three, Kirkwood, Lundgaard and Josef Newgarden with two each, and Rosenqvist, Marcus Ericsson and McLaughlin with one apiece. Honda finished the manufacturer championship on 1,571 points to Chevrolet's 1,216. You can see every race and the full final order on the IndyCar Series schedule and standings.

Who Is Hot, Who Is Not

Hot: McLaughlin. He won the finale at Laguna Seca from pole and took poles at St. Petersburg and Milwaukee, so he goes into the winter with real speed even though he finished sixth. Ericsson ended a long drought by winning at Markham for Andretti. And Dennis Hauger took Rookie of the Year by 15 points over Mick Schumacher after crashing out on the opening lap of the finale, which is about as tense as a rookie title gets.

Not: Scott Dixon had one podium all year and finished twelfth. Will Power took five podiums but no wins and ended up eleventh. Malukas led laps, took poles and sat second in the standings at points, and still has zero career IndyCar wins.

What Happens Next

IndyCar has already put out phase one of the 2027 calendar. The season opens at St. Petersburg on March 7, then Phoenix on March 13 and Arlington on March 21, with Barber on April 4 and Long Beach on April 18. The 111th Indianapolis 500 is set for Sunday, May 30, and Detroit follows on June 6. The rest of the dates are coming in phase two.

First Sunday of the offseason.

— Arrow McLaren IndyCar Team (@ArrowMcLaren) September 13, 2026

The Bottom Line

Palou did not win 2026 by being lucky. He won it by qualifying first eight times, finishing top five in two thirds of the races, and never having a stretch where the car was off. The rest of the field produced the best Indy 500 finish in history and a Milwaukee doubleheader nobody will forget, and it still was not enough. That is what a fifth title looks like.

Your turn: was 2026 a great IndyCar season or a boring one? The racing behind Palou was as good as it has been in years, but the championship was over with a race to go. Tell us where you land.

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