Alex Palou's Chip Ganassi Racing No. 10 IndyCar pitting at the Milwaukee Mile alongside the Team Penske pit stall

Chip Ganassi Racing Passed Team Penske, 18 Titles to 17

September 19, 2026

Chip Ganassi Racing Passed Team Penske: IndyCar's Biggest Rivalry Just Flipped

Welcome to the Happy Hour Racing IndyCar Race Preview. There is no race this weekend, so we are digging into the story that defined the 2026 season and will shape 2027.

Alex Palou's Chip Ganassi Racing No. 10 IndyCar during a pit stop at the Milwaukee Mile with the Team Penske pit stall alongside — Alex Palou's No. 10 Chip Ganassi Racing car on pit lane at the Milwaukee Mile, with Team Penske's stall working a few feet away. That is the whole rivalry in one photo. (Photo: Michael Barera, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

The Short Version

For as long as modern IndyCar has existed, Team Penske owned the all-time championship record. Chip Ganassi Racing tied it at 17 in 2025. Then Alex Palou won the 2026 title, and Ganassi went to 18 championships against Penske's 17 - the first time Roger Penske has ever been second on that list. The IndyCar season is over, the 2027 opener is not until March 7 at St. Petersburg, and the offseason belongs to the question of whether Penske can take its record back.

The Number That Just Changed Hands

Team Penske is still the most decorated organization in the sport by almost every other measure. It has 244 IndyCar race wins, 305 poles, and 20 Indianapolis 500 victories, which is more than any other team by a wide margin. No one is taking those away.

But the championship count is the one number both garages actually keep score with, and it moved. Ganassi's win in 2026 was its 18th. Penske has been stuck on 17 since Will Power took the title in 2022. For 30 years these two have traded the top of the sport back and forth, and this is the first time Ganassi has been the one holding the bigger number.

Here is the part that makes it sting more: these two teams have not just been fighting each other, they have been locking everyone else out. The last driver to win an IndyCar championship for a team that was not Penske or Ganassi was Ryan Hunter-Reay with Andretti in 2012. That is 14 straight seasons of a two-team sport.

How Penske Lost the Lead

Penske did not get passed because it forgot how to build race cars. It got passed because of a run of bad years that came from several directions at once.

Roger Penske, founder of Team Penske, whose team held the all-time IndyCar championship record until 2026 — Roger Penske. His team held the all-time IndyCar championship record for decades, and lost it in 2026. (Photo: Governor Eric Holcomb, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

The worst of it came in May 2025. Penske cars driven by Josef Newgarden and Will Power failed pre-qualifying inspection at the Indianapolis 500 with illegal attenuators. Both were sent to the back of the field, the team was fined 100,000 dollars, and days later Roger Penske fired three of his most senior people: team president Tim Cindric, managing director Ron Ruzewski, and general manager Kyle Moyer. Penske said at the time that nothing was more important than the integrity of the sport, and that the organization had failed over the previous two years.

Firing your entire leadership group a week before the biggest race of the year is not something a team absorbs quietly. Then Will Power, the driver who delivered that 17th title, left for Andretti ahead of 2026 after 17 years with the team.

The 2026 results tell the rest. Penske won three races - Newgarden at Phoenix and Gateway, Scott McLaughlin in the Laguna Seca finale - but its best championship finish was David Malukas in fifth with 514 points. Newgarden, a two-time champion, ended up eighth. That is a long way from a title fight.

How Ganassi Built the Run

Ganassi's 18 did not arrive in a rush. Jimmy Vasser started it in 1996, Alex Zanardi won back-to-back in 1997 and 1998, and Juan Pablo Montoya took 1999. Then Scott Dixon showed up and won six across 17 seasons, and Dario Franchitti added three in a row from 2009 to 2011.

And then came Palou, who has won five titles in six years. He is the third driver in history to reach five, behind only A.J. Foyt with seven and his own teammate Dixon with six, and he got there younger and faster than anyone ever has. His four straight from 2023 through 2026 tie the record Sebastien Bourdais set from 2004 to 2007.

The 2026 season was not close. Palou won six races, clinched the title at Milwaukee on August 30 with a race still to run, and finished 631 points to Kyle Kirkwood's 545.

The four threads running through IndyCar's defining team rivalry heading into 2027.

Why 2027 Could Flip It Right Back

Ganassi is going into next season without the man who won six of its 18 titles. Scott Dixon is leaving after 25 years, and he is not going somewhere quiet. Arrow McLaren signed him alongside Pato O'Ward and 2026 Indy 500 winner Felix Rosenqvist, with Ryan Hunter-Reay added for the 500 itself.

It's official: Arrow McLaren announces its 2027 lineup: Scott Dixon, Pato O'Ward, Felix Rosenqvist and for the Indy 500, Ryan Hunter-Reay. Car numbers for Dixon and Rosenqvist TBD ... Christian Lundgaard and Nolan Siegel won't return.
- Bob Pockrass (@bobpockrass) July 6, 2026

That leaves Ganassi with Palou, Kyffin Simpson, and an unannounced driver in the famous No. 9. Palou is 29 and already the veteran of his own team.

Penske, meanwhile, keeps Newgarden, McLaughlin, and Malukas, a lineup that won three races and finished fifth, sixth, and eighth. On paper that is a team one good winter away from being dangerous again. It is also a team that has said that for four winters running.

One more wrinkle: 2027 is the final season for the Dallara DW12 chassis and the 2.2-liter V6 that have been the sport's foundation since 2012. A new chassis and a 2.4-liter engine formula arrive in 2028. Teams have to decide how much of next year to spend chasing a title in an old car versus getting ready for the new one, and the team that guesses wrong could lose two seasons instead of one.

The Fan Debate

Here is the argument worth having: does Ganassi's 18 actually mean Ganassi is the better team, or does it mean Ganassi found the best driver of this generation and held onto him? Take Palou's five titles out of the column and Ganassi sits on 13. Take Penske's drivers away and you are doing the same math to a team that won across five different decades. Either the organization builds champions or the champion carries the organization, and IndyCar fans have been arguing about which one it is since Zanardi was winning races.

The Bottom Line

A record that stood for the entire modern era of American open-wheel racing changed hands this year, and almost nobody outside the paddock noticed because Palou won the title so early. Ganassi leads 18 to 17. It also just lost the six-time champion who built most of that lead, to a team that is clearly loading up. The most lopsided season IndyCar has had in years may have set up the most interesting one.