Analysis: The last 100 laps at Iowa might win Alex Palou the IndyCar championship

Alex Palou, Chip Ganassi Racing's undisputed king of the IndyCar Series, pulled out a 117 point championship lead over his teammate Scott Dixon after the race in Toronto, Canada. His weakness, though, was the remaining seven races including three short ovals, statistically his worst track type.

The doubleheader weekend at Iowa was key for any competition to pounce at Palou's Achilles' heel. Josef Newgarden, third in the championship before the weekend, ran a near-perfect doubleheader winning both races and scoring all but two points available, just missing the pole positions in qualifying.

Newgarden needs help to win the championship, and Palou almost gave it to him. After finishing merely eighth on Saturday (and grabbing a bonus point for leading a lap), Palou was running consistently worse on Sunday, bouncing between ninth and 13th throughout the early and middle stints.

With some help from the No. 10 team, Palou mounted an important charge to the front to score his first ever podium on a short oval, finishing third.

"We had no pace," Palou said Sunday. "I was struggling to overtake. I was struggling to keep the tires under the deck, and the team just put me in the position that we are now. So, yeah, it was all up to the team today."

Champions are made when they can take bad performances to good, and good performances to great. Palou did both this weekend, and extended his streak of finishing every race this season in the top eight.

His comeback drive on Sunday was crucial. By driving from roughly 12th to third, Palou extended his points lead by at least 18, and now it sits at 80 with five races remaining.

Pit strategy was one part of the puzzle. In the first two stints when Palou was struggling to keep tires under him, he stayed out longer than Newgarden. That is likely a result of trying to score a bonus championship point by leading a lap before pitting. The downside? That leaves you vulnerable to cars who undercut the strategy, putting on fresh tires and pulling out a big gap you have to make up. It's especially effective on short ovals, where you can get trapped a lap down much more quickly than somewhere like Indianapolis.

That strategy flipped in the second part of the race. Palou's team pitted before Newgarden, and took tires during a caution period at lap 163 when some leaders didn't. Palou was able to charge through the lapped traffic and avoid going a lap down, and maintained a lead lap position. Then he pit with the leaders on lap 194 after his short stint charge.

The second part is the final push in the last five laps. Palou was fifth, the last car on the lead lap, when the final caution came out with ten laps to go. With a use-it-or-lose-it attitude he drove himself onto the podium.

"I knew that we were the last car on the lead lap, so I could risk it a little bit more," Palou said. "If I had an issue with something, I was not going to lose a position. So went on the outside. Had a good restart. Went on the outside of (Scott) McLaughlin, and I think (Felix) Rosenqvist was battling with (Will) Power and just to the narrow, and I got to the inside of him into three."

What ended up as an 18 point swing in the last 100 laps at Iowa on Sunday might end up making a difference if Palou runs into trouble. With a short oval at World Wide Technology Raceway and the infamously chaotic Music City Grand Prix in Nashville, Tennessee, left to race Palou could easily hemorrhage points through no fault of his own.

The minimum amount of points you can score in an IndyCar race is 5, and 10th place awards 20. In other words, Palou built his points cushion from one to nearly two races in the last 100 laps at Iowa. He can afford a crash, mechanical failure, or likely even both in the final five races and still keep the championship lead — something he couldn't had he finished 12th on Sunday.

Even in a scenario where Newgarden wins the final five races — meaning a tie with A.J. Foyt (1970) for the longest consecutive win streak in American open wheel racing history with seven consecutive race victories — Palou could conceivably negate it all by merely finishing on the podium the rest of the year.

Palou doesn't have this thing wrapped up. Newgarden is very good at some of the remaining tracks, and has a determination to finish well at Nashville, his home track. That being said, it's difficult to see a way for Newgarden to overcome the gap by himself at this stage.

In fact, looking at average finishes at the upcoming tracks, the handlers of the Astor Cup better get Palou's name ready for the engraver.

First, let's look at average finishes for each of the top five in the championship. Considering a tie for fifth, that's six drivers in our window. Let's throw out any results before 2020, before Palou joined the series.

What needs to happen to open up the championship heading into the home stretch?

1: Alex Palou needs to be caught before Laguna Seca.

Palou has Laguna Seca down, averaging a 1.5 finish over the series' trips there in 2021 and 2022. If Palou's lead is 15-16 points by the trip to California, his success might not be enough to save him.

A 15 point gap to the second place driver means the points difference between finishing first (50+1 for leading a lap) and third (35) is enough to lose Palou the title. Third place would be a career worst finish for Palou at Laguna Seca, though.

In a scenario where the gap is down to 15 points, that means the No. 10 has had trouble at least twice in four races. If the 10 team has their back against the wall Palou could turn human, and even a third place finish would leave him vulnerable to a catastrophic championship collapse.

Considering his good drives during the high drama of last year's contract situation, including a lawsuit filed by Chip Ganassi Racing against Palou, this could be a little far fetched.

2. Josef Newgarden needs to win at least twice.

You could probably pencil in Newgarden to win at WWTR now. I haven't checked the odds, but, as they say, "put the house on it." He has three consecutive victories at the track, six consecutive oval victories and won seven of nine ovals dating back to the start of last season.

If he wants to seriously challenge for the title, he needs another victory outside of that. Otherwise, he could score his fourth consecutive runner-up championship finish.

That could come at Laguna Seca, where Newgarden has an average finish of 4.5 since 2020. Ideally, Newgarden can add a victory at home in Nashville, at the IMS Road Course or in Portland to really put pressure on Palou heading into the final race.

It also isn't likely anyone besides Newgarden can seriously challenge Palou at this point. Dixon in third and -120 points to Palou, nearly two and a half races back, is likely toast unless calamity strikes Palou and Newgarden multiple times. He's -40 points to Newgarden at this stage. It's probably just too late for the Iceman.

A note on double points
This year was the first where IndyCar did not award double points for the Indy 500 and the final race of the year in quite some time. This could be the first year where it would have changed the outcome of the championship. In the double points world, Newgarden's Indy 500 victory (at least 100 points) and Alex Palou's 4th place finish (64 points) swings the championship around 20 points toward Newgarden.

3. Average finishes are not enough

For Josef Newgarden to seriously have a shot at the championship in 2023 he needs to aggressively outperform his average finishes. Using recent average finishes at each remaining track as a projection, Newgarden would finish 76 points back of Palou, only cutting four points out of the lead by the season's end.

The lead would constrict to around 63 points after the WWTR round, but that's as close as it would get.

Interestingly, Scott McLaughlin would beat out Pato O'Ward and Marcus Ericsson for fourth place, making it back-to-back years where the top four in the championship are Team Penske/Chip Ganassi Racing.

In the end, two things are true.

Josef Newgarden is on fire, and he might have one of the stretches of his career over the final seven IndyCar races, including his 2017 and 2019 championship campaigns.

Alex Palou can stroll to a championship anyways.