🇯🇵 Alex Palou

Álex Palou races at an elite professional level, the band on the Racer Rating scale that sits just below the very top tier, and carries FIA Platinum grading from his sportscar and endurance outings. He competes in the IndyCar Series for Chip Ganassi Racing, with his starts split close to evenly between ovals and road or street circuits, and has added occasional appearances in IMSA WeatherTech, GT World Challenge America and the World Endurance Championship.[1]

Palou has won the IndyCar championship in 2021, 2023, 2024 and 2025, and heads into 2026 leading the standings after a Portland win that stretched his margin at the top of the field; he also won the 2025 Indianapolis 500, the first Spaniard to do so. Before IndyCar he came up through the European single-seater ladder for Campos Racing in GP3 and Formula 2, then Hitech Bullfrog GP in FIA Formula 3 European and TCS Nakajima Racing in Super Formula, with a single win and a podium apiece in the latter two. His sportscar work has been limited but productive: a podium in his GT World Challenge America start for Mercedes-AMG Team Lone Star Racing, a podium from six IMSA WeatherTech starts for Acura Meyer Shank Racing, and a single WEC round for Cadillac Racing, from which he took 22nd in that year's points.[2]

His most frequent IndyCar opponents are Scott Dixon, a five-time series champion also graded FIA Platinum, and Pato O'Ward, an elite professional graded FIA Gold and a former Indy NXT champion; Palou is closely matched with both across their many meetings. Earlier in his career, driving for Campos Racing, he finished ahead of Lando Norris, later a Formula 1 champion, and twice ahead of George Russell, another future Formula 1 champion, in a driver pool that ran through more than a hundred names and counted Norris as its strongest.