There’s bad news for every IndyCar driver and team – except one – for 2026: Not only is Alex Palou back, but he’s also the likely favorite to win a fifth championship in six seasons (since 2021).

That’s the belief of many, including Mike Hull, Managing Director for Chip Ganassi Racing. Hull has been one of the top CGR officials who has guided Palou to four championships and 19 wins in his five seasons with the organization – including a career-high eight wins (just under half of the 17-race season) en route to his fourth IndyCar crown in 2025.

In addition, Palou’s teammate, six-time IndyCar champ Scott Dixon, won a ninth race for CGR last season, moving one step closer to AJ Foyt’s record of 67 career IndyCar wins (the 45-year-old Dixon now has 59 wins).

Palou has etched his name into IndyCar record books with his uncanny ability to win both races and championships, as well as capturing the first of what likely will be several Indianapolis 500 victories, as he did this past season. After spending his first full IndyCar season with Dale Coyne Racing as a rookie in 2020 (winless, finished 16th), Palou exploded into a force of nature in the open-wheel series when he joined Ganassi the following season.

Since then, the now 28-year-old Palou has been virtually unstoppable. Not including his 14-race rookie campaign with Coyne, Palou has 19 wins, 44 podiums and 12 poles in 84 races with CGR. That means he’s won in nearly every 4.5 starts and earned a podium finish in just under every two starts.

And he’s back for more wins, podiums, and titles for 2026.

Palou is reminiscent of several other greats that preceded him at CGR

When Hull and team owner Chip Ganassi lured the young Spaniard away after his rookie IndyCar season, he was the latest CGR-great in waiting, so to speak, joining a number of former drivers for the team over the years that also went on to greatness for the Ganassi organization.

“First of all, I would say that people probably really didn’t understand who Alex Zanardi was,” Hull said Thursday during the final day of the sixth-annual Epartrade Race Industry Week. “They probably didn’t understand who Jimmy Vasser was. They didn’t understand who Juan Montoya was. They didn’t understand who Scott Dixon was. They didn’t understand who Alex Palou was or now has become.

“When he came to us, what separated him immediately was the fact that he has such a positive attitude and an attitude that racing is about recovery on the next lap. That’s what racing is about, how the athlete immediately erases in their mind what just happened – whether it’s good or bad – because they have to do the next lap, they have to do the next corner, they have to do the next pit stop.

“If it’s a test day, you have to fully continue on down the road and not think about what you just did. If it’s qualifying, if you were blocked by somebody … it’s immediately mentally being able to be re-upped. That’s who Alex Palou is. Now you combine that with his instincts and his ability, and you match that up then with a team that operates in the same hemisphere, then you see what Alex Palou can do.”

With the exception of the contentious legal battle that pitted Ganassi vs. Palou in 2022 when the latter signed a contract to race in Formula One the following season while still under contract with Ganassi for 2023 (the battle was eventually settled out of court in Ganassi’s favor), Palou has remained loyal to CGR and has gone on to win the last three IndyCar titles in a row.

Hull: (Palou) represents all of us (at CGR)

“He represents all of us,” Hull said of Palou. “That’s how we work at Chip Ganassi Racing, and he represents all the people that came before him that drove race cars at Chip Ganassi Racing. And I would hope kids that are currently in karting that are 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 years old, understand that if they do all of those things at a formative age, they can be where he is today.”

That’s a pretty strong statement, but Hull firmly believes Palou is the perfect example of how an aspiring driver with talent, who proves himself and surrounds himself with a great team and top-level equipment, will eventually achieve greatness as a result. And even with four championships already, Hull believes Palou is just getting warmed up.

“Yes, I think he’s at the front end of something extraordinary,” Hull said. “And as Chip says, if a meteor doesn’t fall out of the sky and hits him, that can happen. Everything though has to continue to line up and the most important thing for all of us (and) the most important thing for Alex Palou is to work on today, and not worry about going back and polishing all those trophies but worry about the space for the next one.

“That’s really the key to success for any athlete or any successful business, or for all of us in our personal lives, really. As long as he does that and we do our job, the sky’s the limit.”

While IndyCar obviously will not cancel the 2026 schedule and immediately award Palou his fifth championship as a foregone conclusion, in a sense, and given what he’s done thus far, would anyone really and truly want to bet against him?