Alex Palou holds the 2026 NTT INDYCAR SERIES championship trophy alongside Chip Ganassi at the Milwaukee Mile. Photo: INDYCAR.com
Alex Palou clinched his fifth IndyCar championship at the Milwaukee Mile on August 30, and he did it the unglamorous way: fifth in the first leg of the Sunday doubleheader, tenth in the second, with enough points banked weeks earlier that the finish barely mattered. That’s the least interesting part of this story. The number that actually matters is 18 — the championships Chip Ganassi Racing has now won since Chip Ganassi fielded his first car in 1990, one more than Team Penske, making CGR the winningest organization in NTT INDYCAR Series history.
Palou’s coronation wasn’t entirely uncontested getting there. Kyle Kirkwood’s late-summer surge, headlined by a breakthrough run through the streets of Washington, D.C., kept the points gap tighter than the final margin suggested. But Palou had built such a cushion that Milwaukee was a formality by the time it arrived.
Strip away the marketing and the number holds up fine on its own merits. Palou, at 29, is now the youngest five-time champion in series history — A.J. Foyt was 32 when he got his fifth, Scott Dixon was 38 — and he got there faster than either of them, five titles in six seasons compared to Foyt’s eight and Dixon’s sixteen. He sits third all-time behind Foyt’s seven and Dixon’s six, both of whom spent their entire championship-winning careers in the same shop.
CGR’s own release leaned hard into comparing those 18 titles to what the Patriots, Bulls, Celtics and Yankees managed across the same three decades, which is a fun bar bet and a shaky argument. Those leagues cap rosters, split revenue, and compete under completely different structures than a multi-team, multi-driver INDYCAR paddock. The comparison that actually tells you something is the one inside the sport: Foyt, Dixon, Palou and Penske, all within shouting distance of each other.
Three Four-Peats, Three Different Eras
What actually separates Ganassi’s operation from Penske’s isn’t the raw total, it’s how many times the team has reloaded. This is CGR’s third four-peat: Jimmy Vasser, then Alex Zanardi twice, then Juan Pablo Montoya from 1996 through 1999; Scott Dixon and Dario Franchitti combining for four straight from 2008 through 2011; and now Palou from 2023 through 2026. Three different eras, three different driver lineups, one organization producing results regardless of who’s strapped in. That kind of institutional repeatability is harder to build than a single transcendent driver, and it’s the real argument for CGR over Penske — not the head-to-head title count.
It also isn’t happening in isolation. Palou’s championship arrived in the same stretch that Honda wrapped up its 12th INDYCAR manufacturers’ title, and CGR’s multi-car Honda alliance is a big reason why. A dynasty needs an engine partner as committed as the team itself, and right now Ganassi has one.
Check the Math
Here’s a smaller, nerdier point worth flagging since nobody in the paddock seems to be checking it: CGR’s own communications team can’t agree on its post-reunification win rate. One release put the total at 13 championships since 2008, a 68.4% share of the 19 available. A second release, issued days later, dropped that to 11 titles and 57.9%. Working backward through the years CGR itself has listed — four straight from 2008 through 2011, then six titles in seven seasons from 2020 through 2026 — the 13-title, 68.4% figure is the one that lines up with the team’s own timeline. Somebody’s math got worse between drafts, not better.
Penske Isn’t Done
Team Penske isn’t going anywhere in this conversation. Roger Penske’s organization still has 17 INDYCAR titles of its own and pulled off the same six-in-seven-seasons feat decades earlier, winning six championships between 1977 and 1983. Ganassi was gracious about passing his longtime rival, crediting Penske’s own standard for giving CGR something worth chasing. He was considerably less gracious about suggesting it’s over: “Stand by for more fun,” he said of Palou, who still has Dixon’s six and Foyt’s seven within reach if this pace holds.
The Real Story Is at Laguna Seca
The more interesting scene this weekend isn’t in a press release, it’s at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca. The season finale lands exactly 30 years after Jimmy Vasser won CGR’s first championship there in 1996 — the same weekend Alex Zanardi made the last-lap dive through the Corkscrew that’s still used to explain what these cars, and the drivers brave enough to trust them, can actually do. Zanardi died on May 1 at age 59. The corner is being dedicated as the Zanardi Corkscrew this weekend, and Palou will run the No. 10 in Zanardi’s red-and-yellow throwback livery in tribute.
Scott Dixon is having the toughest season of his CGR tenure at the same time — 12th in points and winless for the first time since 2004 — a rough note for a driver who trails only Foyt in career championships and has 58 wins of his own for this team. Whatever comes next for the Iceman, that’s where the real emotional stakes of this finale live, not in a stat sheet comparing INDYCAR trophies to Super Bowl rings.
What to Watch Next
Sunday’s race won’t change the championship, but it sets the tone heading into 2027, when IndyCar’s current car may be running its final full season before a new generation arrives. Penske will spend the winter believing it can still add championship No. 18 of its own, and Palou, at 29, likely has more championships left in him than most five-time champions ever get the chance to chase. The number worth remembering by Monday morning isn’t 18. It’s the corner at Laguna Seca that just got a new name.
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