IndyCar - Is 2026 the Start of a New Dawn or the Next Chapter in an Era of Domination?
Image credit: Joe Skibinski, IndyCar Media Centre
“America - the land of the free…of opportunity…and self determination.” - Bobby Axelrod utters this sentiment in the final season of the hit Showtime series Billions and it’s an attitude that feels like an apt description for this year’s season of IndyCar.
Appearing alongside the usual rogues gallery are both familiar returning faces as well as brand new ones, each keen to prove themselves and make the next installment of their racing careers the best one yet.
The opportunity is there for everyone.
From the old hands of the sport such as ‘The Iceman’ Scott Dixon to one of the latest rookies in ‘The Norwegian Nightmare’ that is Dennis Hauger. For others, on both ends of that same spectrum, it’s about more than that. It’s about flipping the script and changing the narrative. Will Power and Mick Schumacher, for example, both have their own very unique points to prove. Yet for others still, continuity is the aim of the game and in one specific case, that of Álex Palou, that continuity has only one form - domination. The fate of all of these drivers ultimately comes down to what happens out on track. For their fates to be decided, they cannot simply rely on themselves though, for they must also reckon with what each of their fellow competitors intends to do. That balance, which is the key to realising their machinations, is not an easy one to strike - however it does make it incredibly exciting and fascinating for us to watch.
As we delve deeper into the month of May, the sixth round of the IndyCar season that took place on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Road Course is now behind us. The race itself proved once again that while Álex Palou is still a dominant force to be reckoned with, there are legitimate challengers to his throne. While he continues to execute with cold calculation, there is a promise from the racing Gods that there is still hope yet for the inevitable to not occur.
As we get ever closer to the 110th running of the Indianapolis 500, it’s the perfect time to look deeper into both, as well as everything in between, and understand how, whichever way the wind ultimately blows this season, we as outside observers of this racing spectacle can’t lose.
Álex Palou Vs Everyone Else
Let’s address the elephant in the room first - IndyCar’s very own horror villain, Álex Palou. It’s a somewhat unkind characterisation given how gentle and kind he is outside of the car - but once that racing helmet is on, it’s another story entirely. With just over one hundred race starts in IndyCar to his name, the Spaniard has already amassed four driver’s championships, collecting forty-seven podiums, of which twenty-two are wins, and thirteen pole positions along the way. Put simply, the Chip Ganassi Racing driver is the man to beat. The trouble is, almost no one appears to know how to do that. A win at the season opener was joined by a second victory in Barber and a third at Long Beach. A racing incident with Veekay in Phoenix may have helped his rivals somewhat, but not enough as he bounced back immediately with a second place finish in Arlington. Leaving Sonsio where he finished in the lowly position of fifth, Palou sits back atop of the Championship with a twenty-seven point lead over Kyle Kirkwood in second. His rivals then will need more than just bad luck to fall his way if they hope to defeat him. On track, he’s incredibly quick and nimble, more than adept at getting the tyres to work for him just the way he needs them too and can carve through traffic with the precision of a marine sniper. Sonsio alone was proof of that. Should he win his fifth title this year, Palou would enter a rarified atmosphere with only two drivers in all of history ahead of him - Scott Dixon and A.J Foyt - and plenty of time left in his career to topple them too.
“You can’t have a weakness, ultimately, because he will get you. If you have a weakness, if you’re not good in qualy, he’s gonna get you…you know there’s race pace, there’s strategy, there’s pit stops - you can’t have a weakness, simply. That’s the only way that you’re going to beat that machine, that number 10 Ganassi machine.”
Palou’s level of success so far combined with his age and the longevity one can have in the sport makes him a threat to everyone else that won’t be going anywhere anytime soon. The other drivers can’t simply try to outlast him. They have to learn how to not only take him on in a fair fight, but how to beat him too. Answers for how to do that on a postcard.
Kyle Kirkwood - Batman to Palou’s Superman?
Image credit: Joe Skibinski, IndyCar Media Centre
One driver who has proven himself up to the task and has beaten Álex Palou on multiple occasions is Kyle Kirkwood. An early contender for the Championship in a breakout season for the Floridian last year saw him win three races. But he would ultimately finish fourth overall, trailing Palou by a whopping two hundred and seventy-eight points, thus demonstrating Palou’s ferocity and brutality behind the wheel. This year however, Kirkwood seems different, stronger even - and he has the results to back it up. In the opening six rounds, he hasn’t finished lower than ninth (and that only happened in the last race) and has already stood on the podium three times, the only other drivers to do that being Palou himself and Arrow McLaren’s Christian Lundgaard. The second of those podiums, and Kirkwood’s first win of the year, came at IndyCar’s newest venue, the Streets of Arlington in Texas. In the lone star state, Kirkwood hunted down Palou before dispatching him with apparent ease with a very smooth, but ballsy, overtake. He’s beaten Palou before and he’s already proved that this season, he can do so again. Now he just has to do so consistently.
“I want you to remember, Clark, in all the years to come, in your most private moments, I want you to remember my hand at your throat. I want you to remember the one man who beat you.”
Image credit: Joe Skibinski, IndyCar Media Centre
Palou may be IndyCar’s answer to the Man of Steel but Kyle Kirkwood might just be in the running to be the series’ iteration of The Caped Crusader. He’s not on the same level as Palou as a driver - and right now it doesn’t appear that anyone is. But he’s demonstrating that he has something within him that Palou doesn’t. What that is exactly, is unknown. But it’s keeping him in the fight and sees Kirkwood hot on Palou’s heels as we head further into the month of May - the only driver less than a full race victory behind him in the standings.
Will 2026 give us a fight for the ages between these two? Or is there someone else who can spoil the party for both of them?
Team Penske - Resurrected?
Image credit: Joe Skibinski and James Black, IndyCar Media Centre
Before Team Penske can even reckon with that notion though, they have something else to do. That’s because the objective for this year for Team Penske is a simple one. Don’t create a sequel to last season. In 2025, the team was plagued with numerous issues throughout, both on and off track. When the car wasn’t performing for a plethora of reasons, the team was having to deal externally with the open secret that Will Power would be parting ways with the team after almost two decades and being replaced by promising talent David Malukas - and that’s before we even get to the attenuator controversy at the Indy 500 which sent shockwaves through the paddock and beyond.
Amusingly, Will Power would be the team’s best driver in 2025. With one race win in Portland and a further two podiums to his name, he demonstrated what Team Penske would be losing in 2026. Fortunately for the team, Josef Newgarden was able to come through for them right at the end of the year with a victory at the final race of the season at his home track in Nashville. But would it be enough to steady the ship?
Fast forward to 2026 and the team is so far succeeding in putting the past behind them. A seventh place finish for Newgarden was followed by a surprising victory in Phoenix, meaning his last ten victories in IndyCar have now all been exclusively at Ovals. While Arlington, Barber and Long Beach saw Newgarden struggling to fight at the front of the field, Sonsio saw him back up in fourth place. He sits in fifth overall and shouldn’t be dismissed from the Championship equation.
Scott McLaughlin meanwhile is focused on having a consistent season after a lackluster one last year, one that was fraught with bad luck. So far, that ambition has come with mixed results. A second place finish at the season opener was followed by an eighth place finish in Phoenix. He dipped to eleventh in Arlington after a challenging race and then was on the backfoot in Barber after a significant crash early in the weekend. He finished the race down in sixteenth. A driver capable of a lot more, McLaughlin bounced back in Long Beach to finish in sixth, only to end the race in Sonsio down in sixteenth again. McLaughlin is a driver seemingly locked in a battle with himself out on track, more than anyone else.
But once again at Team Penske, it’s their third driver who is currently performing the best. Except this time, it’s not Will Power but instead, his replacement, David Malukas. A thirteenth place finish at the first race of the season was not representative of his talents - but this has since been rectified with five top ten finishes, including a third place result at Phoenix and second place finish in Sonsio. Third overall in the standings as IndyCar heads to Indianapolis means that Malukas’ debut year with Team Penske is going rather nicely indeed. Could Malukas be the one to take the crown from Palou?
Overall, the team is doing what they need to so that they can clear away the cobwebs of yesteryear. Whether any of their drivers can be in true contention for the Championship remains to be seen. So far, so good then for Team Penske and it’ll feel like the victory they need on their way back up to the top. But one of their most critical decisions, in the form of one of the team’s best assets over the last two decades, may now become their undoing.
Will Power - Not Done Yet
Image credit: Joe Skibinski, IndyCar Media Centre
Having joined the series in 2008, Will Power joined Team Penske in 2009 and only now in 2026, changes teams again - this time moving to Andretti Global. Cast aside by the team he loyally served for seventeen straight seasons, he now finds himself at an inflection point. Questions are naturally going to be asked as a result. Does he still have what it takes to win? Can he adapt to a new team after such a long period spent at another? Is he quick enough? What will help to calm Power’s mind as he wades deeper into this new season is the knowledge that he left Team Penske as the highest placed driver in the championship last year and by losing him, they also lose the wealth of knowledge and experience that came with him that David Malukas simply doesn’t have.
“I want Andretti to be the first ones to knock them down.”
But this leap into the unknown for the Australian driver has been, and will continue to be, one of the biggest topics to talk about in 2026. So how is the two-time Champion doing so far this year? Good question. On the one hand, when he’s not been crashing in any number of the sessions available to him over a race weekend, he’s mostly had bad luck - the season opener is proof of that. But it’s not all doom and gloom. In Phoenix, the raw might of Will Power was teased as he mercilessly and methodically moved his way up the order into the podium positions.
“If there’s one driver who knows how to fight his way through on a short oval, it’s Will Power.”
All that hard work was undone though after Rasmussen’s rough and ready overtake on Power left him with a flat rear right tyre. He finished down in sixteenth. Then, on the third time of asking at the end of IndyCar’s first race in Arlington, Power found himself on the podium in third place alongside his teammate Kyle Kirkwood, relishing in the satisfaction of getting past David Malukas in order to do so. A heavy crash in qualifying in Barber put him at the rear of the field for the fourth race of the season. But that didn’t stop Power from making it all the way to twelfth by the end of a relatively drama free race. A penalty in Long Beach cost Power dearly, seeing him finish in nineteenth place. A rollercoaster race in Sonsio saw him start from the back of the pack but also lead the race at several points. Again, his finishing position of thirteenth place is not accurate for what he’s capable of. There’s still plenty of fight left in Power though and that, if nothing else, has been evident all season long.
“Having the whole team on the podium is a dream for me.”
Power has won at least one race in all bar one season of IndyCar that he’s contested (2023 is the culprit in this instance) and you’d need your head examined if you said he wasn’t going to win again this year. Is he a Championship contender though? It feels unlikely this time around. But in his first year with a new team, all the potential for an incredibly strong foundation to be built is there to set up a run for the fan favourite in 2027 - and there’s still the joy of going after and beating Team Penske this season in the meantime. On top of that, Kirkwood probably won’t say no to some help from Power when it comes to taking down Palou and Power’s proven himself capable of doing that too as recently as Portland last year. Power then is a driver with plenty to still drive him to the very top. What we’ve learnt - and will continue to learn - is that nobody determines who Will Power is, except Will Power.
What about Arrow McLaren?
Pato O’Ward is a name synonymous with even the most casual of IndyCar fans. But the Mexican driver has so far had an anonymous start to his 2026 campaign. That may not be such a bad thing though because aside from a seventeenth place finish in Barber and an eighteen place finish in Sonsio after being punted down the order on the opening lap, he’s finished every race inside the top five. Seventh in the standings overall, if Pato can keep this up, he might turn into a dark horse for this year’s Championship.
Christian Lundgaard appears to be flirting with the notion of a championship run too. The only other driver currently to have three podiums to his name, the second of those, his second place finish in Barber, comes with an important asterix. Like Kirkwood in Arlington, for much of the race, it appeared as if Lundgaard was about to play an absolute blinder as he propelled himself from a starting position of tenth into a race victory. Slicing and dicing into Palou’s lead ahead of him, everything looked on track for Lundgaard to at least reach Palou before having to find a way to overtake him and then somehow keep him behind. But a disastrous final pit stop by the Arrow McLaren crew cost him dearly, all but guaranteeing victory for Palou.
Instead, Lundgaard came out behind Rahal and proceeded to struggle for most of the remainder of the race to get past the veteran. While he managed to in the end, there was now no hope of catching Palou, let alone passing him. Still second place from tenth is hardly a bad result but the what if will have surely stung. Redemption came for the Danish driver in Indianapolis last time out though. Here, no errors or bad luck came his way and Lundgaard clinched his first victory for the Papaya outfit - sealing it with a simply sensational overtake on David Malukas. If Lundgaard can keep this level of performance up consistently - and if Arrow McLaren can do their part in the pitlane too - then Palou may have yet another problem on his hands besides Kirkwood, Malukas and O’Ward. Here’s hoping none of them get too distracted with one another and let Palou slip through their fingers. If any of these drivers can topple him, it proves Palou isn’t invincible but it also shows the other behemoths of the sport that the hierarchy of power in IndyCar is about to be reforged.
Don’t forget about Dixon
Image credit: Paul Hurley, IndyCar Media Centre
Then there’s Scott Dixon. Sixth overall in the standings after six rounds with five top ten finishes, you’d possibly be a bigger fool for underestimating him than you would be to underestimate Palou. Now a knight of the realm, the New Zealander has entered his twenty-third season of IndyCar in 2026. Yes, you read that correctly. Twenty-third. Over that time, he’s competed in three hundred and seventy-seven races where he was on the podium for one hundred and forty-three of them, winning fifty-eight of those and winning the IndyCar Championship six times in total. You’d knight him for those achievements alone.
So while he seems to make life a bit more difficult for himself with his frustrating qualifying performances, you can never count him out. Like Power, he’s won at least one race in all but one of his seasons competing in the series (2004 being the blemish on his record) and with his race pace having shown no signs of degrading, he looks set to win again this year. Put simply, he’s always worth keeping an eye on - especially as he was one of the few drivers to snatch victory away from Palou last year, which he did in Mid-Ohio. Currently an outside bet for the championship (winning it would put him level with A.J Foyt for the most of all time), it would be a story for the ages that would truly embrace the conviction that this piece opened with. Will it happen? To borrow a phrase from Formula One’s Murray Walker, anything can happen…and it usually does.
A World of Possibilities
Image credit: James Black, IndyCar Media Centre
All of this is on the table in terms of what to look out for before you even get to the rest of the IndyCar field. As we head ever closer to the Indy 500, every single driver in the Championship could see their fortunes completely rewritten by a single race result. The gap between any two drivers is less than fifty points and while, even at this early stage of the season, it may seem as if Álex Palou’s fifth IndyCar title is somewhat inevitable, IndyCar is still very much a series where any driver could conceivably win a race. Josef Newgarden proved that in Phoenix and Christian Lundgaard proved it again in Sonsio, with Scott McLaughlin and Felix Rosenqvist almost proving that too in St. Petersburg and Long Beach respectively. The other two steps on the podium are also very much up for grabs - look at Graham Rahal in Barber ending his almost three year podium drought as a perfect example of this and then repeating the feat just two races later on the Indianapolis Road Course. Only four of the twenty-five drivers on the grid haven’t finished inside the top ten so far this year and it’s surely only a matter of time before each of those four join the party.
Beyond the front runners, there are a plethora of storylines that are ripening to perfection. Marcus Ericsson is giving the impression that his trials and tribulations of recent seasons have finally come to an end. Dayle Coyne Racing’s new line-up of Hauger and Grosjean is already showing flashes of brilliance with the former qualifying in third at the season opener as well as having his memorable save at Phoenix after spinning the car while Grosjean made it into the fast six on merit in Barber. For the first time in a few years, it really feels like DCR could be on the precipice of something special and these two drivers might just be the ones to make it happen.
On the flip side, A.J Foyt Racing’s start to the season has not been what they were looking for. Despite a theoretically perfect blend of teacher and student between Ferrugi and Collet, the pair have been rather anonymous. For a team bearing the name of one of motorsport’s most legendary figures in A.J Foyt, they’ll be hoping for a comeback soon.
Image credit: Joe Skibinski, IndyCar Media Centre
Over at Ed Carpenter Racing, both drivers of Rossi and Rasmussen have enormous potential and Louis Foster and Mick Schumacher at Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing display the same traits. However, each suffers from their own tribulations - in Schumacher’s case, some of the most unfortunate luck that could rival PREMA’s mostly disastrous season last year. Like A.J Foyt, it’d be a massive shock if their situations remained as they are.
Meyer Shank Racing continue to be a dark horse on the rise as they probe the best way to break into the upper echelons of the series and take the fight to those at the top - and win. Rosenqvist almost managed it at Long Beach while teammate Armstrong has three top ten finishes to his name already. Both could easily prove to be a thorn in the side of many a Championship contender.
A driver capable of outperforming in the machinery provided to him, Rinus Veekay is the Juncos Hollinger Racing’s only real hope this season. In his fourth full season of IndyCar, teammate Sting Ray Robb has yet to finish higher than ninth. If he doesn’t turn things around soon - and in a big way - it wouldn’t be at all surprising for the team to take a chance on a rookie next year instead. Success of any kind is vital to the team’s longevity and so far in 2026, Robb isn’t proving to be the man for the job.
A similar fate may be looming for Arrow McLaren’s third driver in Nolan Siegel. With only four top ten results in his entire IndyCar career to date and the pressure mounting from team boss Tony Kanaan that he needs to finish inside the top ten overall at the end of the season to keep his seat, it’s a make or break year for the American. If he doesn’t raise his game consistently soon, we may be looking at a new driver joining Arrow McLaren in 2027.
Cayman driver Kyffin Simpson has had two tenth place finishes this season. Like Siegel, he’s got stiff competition inside his own team in the forms of Alex Palou and Scott Dixon. That may be to his benefit though as those are lofty heights to emulate. As long as progress, slow and steady as it may be, continues to come for Simpson, he should be safe for another season.
What’s Next?
Image credit: Joe Skibinski, IndyCar Media Centre
IndyCar returns at the end of month for the 110th running of the Indianapolis 500. This will be the bridge between the two halves of the IndyCar season. It’s the race that presents the drivers with the best opportunity to either build on what came before or to change their own narrative in such a way that nobody can deny their capabilities. Throw into the mix one shot drivers for the 500 such as Takuma Sato, Ryan Hunter-Reay, Jack Harvey and Katherine Legge, and you’ve got yourself one of the greatest sporting spectacles on the planet. Whether this season is one where we see a new champion crowned or it simply becomes the next chapter in an era of unseen domination, one thing remains certain - IndyCar is very much the racing series of the free…of opportunity…and self determination.