Alex Palou: The Quiet Spaniard Who Is Running Away With IndyCar
Welcome to the Happy Hour Racing Driver Spotlight - where we pull one driver into the garage, look under the hood at their career, and tell you what makes them tick. This week, we cross over to IndyCar for the number 10.
The Short Version
Alex Palou is a four-time IndyCar champion, the reigning Indianapolis 500 winner, and right now the best driver in the series by a wide margin. He is the first Spaniard to ever win the Indy 500, the first Spaniard to ever win an IndyCar title, and the first driver since Dario Franchitti to win three championships in a row. He also spent two years in the middle of one of the ugliest contract fights American racing has seen this decade, and came out the other side still on top. If you do not follow open wheel racing closely, know this: Palou is quietly having one of the great runs in IndyCar history.
From a Coffee Shop in Barcelona to the Indy Paddock
Palou was born April 1, 1997, in Sant Antoni de Vilamajor, a small town outside Barcelona. He came up through karting and the European single-seater ladder, the same road most IndyCar and F1 drivers travel. He won a GP3 race in Abu Dhabi in 2015, the first Spanish driver ever to win in that series, then bounced through Japanese Formula 3, Super Formula, and a brief Formula 2 stint before a 2019 IndyCar test at Mid-Ohio changed his direction for good.
He landed at Dale Coyne Racing for a rookie season in 2020, picked up his first podium at Road America, and did enough to get a call from Chip Ganassi Racing for 2021. He has been there ever since, and it has been one of the best driver-team pairings in IndyCar history.
The Breakthrough and the Titles
Palou won his first IndyCar race at Barber Motorsports Park in April 2021, in just his second start for Ganassi. He added two more wins that season and closed it out with a conservative fourth-place drive at Long Beach to win his first championship at age 24, the youngest IndyCar champion since Scott Dixon in 2003.
The titles kept coming. A second championship followed in 2023. A third came in 2024, won with only two race wins all year, a season that showed off the part of his game that separates him from everyone else: he almost never has a bad day. Then in 2025 he put together the best season of his career, winning eight races, capturing his fourth championship, and finally winning the Indianapolis 500, becoming the first driver to win the Indy 500 and the title in the same year since Franchitti in 2010. Three straight championships, 2023 through 2025, is a run nobody had matched since Franchitti did it in 2009 through 2011.
Signature Moment: The 2025 Indy 500
Palou had won everything else in IndyCar except the biggest race on the calendar. In May 2025 he ran down 2022 winner Marcus Ericsson late and held on to win the 109th Running of the Indianapolis 500 by 0.6822 seconds, the first Spaniard ever to win it. It completed the set. Two weeks later he kept rolling, and the win at Road America that summer summed up the whole season: total command, race after race.
SOLO at the top! Alex Palou's magical season continues with a victory at Road America.
— NTT INDYCAR SERIES (@IndyCar) June 22, 2025
By the Numbers
Here is the career so far, laid out in the parts that matter. Every number below is an IndyCar career figure as of Mid-Ohio, the most recent race of the 2026 season.
The McLaren Mess
Palou's career has not been all smooth road. In July 2022, Chip Ganassi Racing announced he had signed a contract extension. Palou publicly said that was not true and that he intended to drive for McLaren in 2023. Ganassi sued him in Indiana. The two sides settled that September, Palou stayed at Ganassi for 2023, and McLaren got testing rights in an older Formula 1 car as a consolation. He tested that car, ran a Friday practice session at the 2022 United States Grand Prix, and spent part of 2023 as McLaren's official F1 reserve driver.
Then in August 2023 he told McLaren he had no intention of honoring a separate deal to join their IndyCar team from 2024 onward, and re-signed with Ganassi long term instead. McLaren sued for breach of contract. A London court ruled in January 2026 that Palou owed McLaren just over 12 million dollars in damages. The two sides settled the following month with no appeal. Through all of it, Palou never stopped winning races for Ganassi. It is the strangest subplot of his career, and also the one that had the least effect on what he actually does on Sundays.
Off the Track
Palou lives in Indianapolis with his wife, Esther Valle, and their daughter, born in December 2023. Before moving to the United States, the two of them ran a coffee shop back home in Spain from 2018 to 2020, with Palou working the register and the espresso machine between racing seasons. He says it made him a coffee snob for life. He is also a serious biography reader, drawn to stories about athletes and business figures because, in his words, they show the struggle behind the success instead of pretending it came easy.
His go-to celebration meal is good sushi, though back in 2021 he made the mistake of mentioning he likes fried chicken after a win, and reporters would not let it go for years. He still says the adrenaline from race day makes it hard to sleep, win or lose.
The Bottom Line
Alex Palou does not talk himself up and does not need to. Four championships, an Indy 500 win, and a current points lead in 2026 say all of it for him. He has already matched a run of dominance that had not been touched since Dario Franchitti, and at 29 years old he is nowhere near done. Whatever happens with the rest of this season, IndyCar is currently Alex Palou's series to lose.
Palou is the reigning Indy 500 champion, and we have got the 109th Running gear to prove it. A few fan favorites in stock right now:
- Indy 500 Champions Tee
- 109th Indianapolis 500 Car Flag Tee
- 109th Indianapolis 500 Back Home Again Tee
- 109th Running Indy Patch Snapback Hat
- IndyCar 2025 Checkered Flag Sublimated Tee
See more in the IndyCar collection. New driver spotlights drop every Thursday.
