That’s all she wrote, folks.
Alex Palou did what most in the NTT IndyCar Series universe expected: he won the 2025 championship. It seemed a long shot, like a Happy Gilmore tee shot drive, for Pato O’Ward, or anyone else, to make it a fight to the end.
A third-place finish for Palou at Sunday’s (Aug. 10) BITNILE.com IndyCar Grand Prix at Portland secured the title. It was his fourth in five years and seemed a forgone conclusion after a dominant season.
With two races left in the season, the fight is now on for the top five in the standings. Since O’Ward had mechanical troubles that burned out his slim hopes, he was saved from even more damage by a penalty on the guy chasing him in the standings.
Scott Dixon was in position to cut heavily into O’Ward’s gap, possibly as much as 26 points, with a top-five finish possible. But when Dixon turned Josef Newgarden out of the turn one chicane, the ensuing penalty dropped him to 11th. Therefore, Dixon only gained 13 points, sitting 64 points behind.
The last two stops will be ovals, where Dixon’s great experience can easily counter O’Ward’s great skill on these, so while the title is closed, second is not locked in yet.
Christian Lundgaard leveraged the last road courses to his advantage. His back-to-back runner-ups jumped him to fourth, 13 points behind Dixon and 11 ahead of Kyle Kirkwood.
Unfortunately for Lundgaard, he’s not the caliber of oval driver at the moment like those ahead of him, so climbing further will be challenging.
Kirkwood has chilled over the last five races. He’s finished in the top 10 once since Iowa, a sixth at Toronto, and fallen from being the guy hounding Palou to fifth in the championship. He won at World Wide Technology Raceway earlier in the year, but Iowa was so bad that it’s hard to predict what he will do at Milwaukee and Nashville, so he can regain ground to third.
Behind Kirkwood is Portland winner Will Power, who earned 53 points, which shot him up three spots, from ninth to sixth. If he has nixed all his bad luck, Power still has a bit of work to do to move into fifth; he’s 42 points from it.
Five points away from Power is Felix Rosenqvist. In fact, between Power and Marcus Armstrong in the ninth is just 11 points. Add in Colton Herta in eighth, the fight for the lower half of the top 10 will continue until the country music sings at Nashville.
Scott McLaughlin‘s seventh at Portland put him just two markers from David Malukas in 10th. If he can leapfrog the A. J. Foyt driver, then McLaughlin joining teammate Power in the top 10 is a great example of the fight in Team Penske.
Deeper in the pack, Callum Ilott‘s third top 10 of the season moved him to 22nd in points. In past seasons, that was big news, as it would put his rookie PREMA Racing in the Leaders Circle and the $1 million payout from INDYCAR during 2026. But with charters and his team being the only entry without them, then they don’t get any of that series payout. It’s a disheartening situation for a new team that is finally clicking.
With two races to go, the title battle is history now. But there’s still a race for the top five. It’ll continue to shake up as Palou takes a victory lap for the rest of the year.
Tom is an IndyCar writer at Frontstretch, joining in March 2023. Besides writing the IndyCar Previews and frequent editions of Inside IndyCar, he will hop on as a fill-in guest on the Open Wheel podcast The Pit Straight. A native Hoosier, he calls Fort Wayne home. Follow Tom on Twitter @TomBlackburn42.