Yahoo Autos Poor Qualifying for Alex Palou Tightens IndyCar Championship Battle
Alex Palou will start the final race of the 2024 IndyCar championship battle on the 24th after an unapproved engine change and a poor qualifying effort this weekend. Palou's nine-place grid penalty was announced prior to qualifying, meaning the best he could start would be 10th as he tries to defend his Championship hopes against Penske's Will Power. Instead, Palou's car lacked speed as he settled into the middle of the speed charts
Palou stated that he felt much more comfortable driving the car in morning practice than in his qualifying effort and hopes they can work the car back to where it was.
"It was ideal; It was a lot more comfortable this morning during practice," Palou told NBC's Georgia Henneberry. "The first lap wasn’t too bad, and the second lap was really, really bad. Not what we wanted, not what we needed, but we’ll move from there tomorrow."
This is the latest in a string of surprise problems for Palou late in the season. It is notable that last week, he started the second half of the Milwaukee Mile doubleheader 20 laps late due to starter issues.
Alex Palou's championship can really only be stopped by Will Power. While Power's Penske teammate Scott McLaughlin is not mathematically eliminated from the 2024 championship title, as soon as Palou takes to the track on Sunday, he will be. This mathematical probability has led McLaughlin to suggest gradually more ridiculous activities to prevent Palou from starting the race, including serving him bad fish, riding Ducati's through the Tennesse countryside, and skydiving.
With McLaughlin mathematically eliminated at the start of the race, the crowd's primary attention will be split between where Palou and Power are running. Power made the most out of Palou's poor qualifying result and will start fourth behind Kyle Kirkwood, Josef Newgarden, and Felix Rosenqvist. This is Kirkwood's first pole of the season and the first oval pole of his career.
Power doesn't believe his car was capable of a pole this week but his happy with his qualifying results compared to Palou's.
"That is as good as I could do right there; you can’t ask for more than that," Power said on his fourth-place qualifying effort. "It would’ve been nice to get a pole, but you know how these things go."
The Spanish driver remains in control of his championship. If both drivers were to finish where they started, Alex Palou would win the championship by seven points. Power knows that a championship can only be achieved through massive success on his part and bad luck on Palou's.
"If it’s our day, it will be our day. If not, we will try again next year," Power said.
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