Loose lap belt for Power helps Palou cruise to 3rd IndyCar season championship

LEBANON, Tenn. (AP) — Alex Palou easily drove to his third IndyCar championship in four years when challenger Will Power’s seatbelt came loose minutes into the season-deciding finale Sunday at Nashville Superspeedway.

“When I saw (Power) going to pit lane, at first I was like, ‘Oh, what strategy are they going to do?’” Palou said. “Unfortunately, that’s not the way. Obviously, you don’t want your biggest competitor to go down that way in the season finale. It was very dangerous what happened to him.”

Colton Herta, who earlier this year moved to Nashville, won the Music City Grand Prix for his first career victory on an oval and second win of the season for Andretti Global. Herta topped Pato O’Ward in a wheel-to-wheel battle in the closing laps.

“I couldn’t ask for a better ending to the year,” Herta said.

But all attention was on the championship race as Palou, a Spaniard who won his first title in 2021 in his first season driving for Chip Ganassi Racing, won back-to-back IndyCar titles.

“He never broke a sweat,” said team owner Ganassi, who celebrated his 16th IndyCar title in 29 years.

“I don’t know too many guys who have three championships, not that many, but he’s in pretty rarified air right now,” Ganassi continued. “His name has certainly got to be in the conversation of great drivers.”

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Palou became just the 13th driver in IndyCar history to win at least three championships. He’s just the seventh to win three titles in four years with Dario Franchitti — also for Ganassi — the last to do so from 2009 through 2011.

“I had no idea it would be this much fun or he would be this successful,” Ganassi said about signing Palou before the 2021 season.

At 27 years, 5 months, 14 days, Palou became the second-youngest driver to win three championships. Only Sam Hornish Jr. was younger at 27 years, 2 months, 8 days when he won his third title in 2006.

Palou, who has 11 career victories that includes two this season, has never won on an oval and still collected three championships. This title came in the year he became the father to a young daughter, which he has called life-changing, as well as the opportunity to race in the Rolex 24 at Daytona and the 24 Hours of Le Mans with Ganassi.

“I think it’s surreal to have won three IndyCar championships,” Palou said. “Never in my best dreams did I think I’d be in this position.”

The title fight

The competition for the crown was only between Palou and Power, the two-time champion from Australia who won his last title in 2022 sandwiched between Palou’s run.

Power had two chances in the last two races to reclaim the crown but failed to capitalize both times. Palou had an engine issue two weeks ago at the Milwaukee Mile and Power was briefly in position to win the race until the Australian spun on his own and finished a disappointing 10th.

That allowed Palou to take a 33-point lead into Nashville, where the downtown street race had been shifted 35 miles away to the existing concrete oval because of construction on the Tennessee Titans’ new stadium. Palou had never before raced on a concrete oval, while Power finished 11th in his only career race at the superspeedway, IndyCar’s final visit in 2008.

But things began looking up for Power when Palou had a disastrous qualifying effort at 15th, and also had a nine-place penalty on the starting grid for an unapproved engine change. That dropped Palou to 24th for the start and Power, who qualified fourth, had erased Palou’s lead to a meager seven points when the race began based on their current running positions.

It was still going to take a lot of work for Power to give Team Penske the title as Palou only needed to rally to a ninth-place finish to win the title no matter where Power finished. He wound up 11th in the race.

Broken belt

It had long been a moot point because on the 14th lap, Power’s lap belt came undone.

“My belt, my belt has come off!” he shouted on his radio.

Power had to pit under green so his crew could get him safely buckled back correctly, and Power had dropped five laps off the pace by the time he got back on track.

By then, Palou’s lead was back up to 46 points as he sliced his way through the field. He drove from 24th to 12th in about 30 laps, while Power had plummeted to last.

He said after the race the belt came loose a second time in the closing laps and it needs to be sent back to the manufacturer for inspection.

“I’ve never had that before,” Power said. “I want to give a big congrats to Alex, a tough guy to beat ever since he joined Ganassi. Happy with the season, we did well, but we want to win that championship and we’ll come back next year.”

Power ultimately finished 24th in the 27 car field and dropped to fourth in the final standings.

“When it’s not your day, it is what it is,” Palou said. “It was my day, so that’s what happens. I don’t recall anybody having the (seatbelt) issue before and I’m sure they double check everything.”

Herta jumped up to second and was followed by Scott McLaughlin, who finished third in the standings and ended the season as the highest-ranked Team Penske driver for the second consecutive year.

O’Ward finished second in the race and fifth in the overall standings, while Nashville native and two-time reigning Indianapolis 500 winner Josef Newgarden was third in the race but a distant eighth in the standings.

Final standings

Scott Dixon finished 17th in the race, which dropped him to sixth in the overall standings. The six-time IndyCar champion had not finished lower than fifth in the standings since 2016.

Santino Ferrucci finished sixth in the race to and end up ninth in the final standings — the highest an AJ Foyt Racing car has ranked since 2002. But it wasn’t an overall banner day for the team as Sting Ray Robb’s 20th-place finish eliminated that car from IndyCar’s leaders circle program.

The leaders circle program pays a monetary bonus to the top 22 teams in the final standings and many organizations depend on that cash to fund their season budgets. Robb’s car — which will be driven next year by David Malukas — fell one point short of the leaders circle bonus.

The drivers who squeezed out the final spots were Pietro Fittipaldi for Rahal Letterman Lanigan and Christian Rasmussen, who at the last minute was given the final three races of the season at Ed Carpenter Racing in an effort to keep the car inside the money.

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