AllRacing

And then there were four

There are four IndyCar races to go after Pato O’Ward’s win on Sunday at the Honda Indy Toronto, and only four drivers remain in the hunt with a mathematical chance of winning the championship.

A maximum of 216 points are available across Laguna Seca, Portland, Milwaukee, and Nashville (54 points apiece), and with O’Ward’s latest victory in the No. 5 Arrow McLaren Chevy, Alex Palou’s comfortable lead in the Drivers’ standings (534) has been reduced from 129 points to 99 on approach to this weekend’s Java House Grand Prix of Monterey.

There were seven drivers left to chase the Astor Cup going into Toronto, but with unremarkable finishes from many of those inside the top 10, more have been voted off of IndyCar’s Championship Island as the season finale comes into view on August 31.

In reality, the battle is set among Palou and O’Ward (437) and that’s unlikely to change, as third-place Kyle Kirkwood from Andretti Global (363) is an impossible 173 points behind the leader and Palou’s Chip Ganassi Racing teammate Scott Dixon is fourth (362) at 174 markers adrift from the three-time champion.

After Laguna Seca, the championship cutoff is 162 points to stay in play, and while Kirkwood and Dixon can certainly earn enough points this weekend to get below that threshold, it becomes 108 after Portland, and that’s a problem. No front-running driver has cut more than 30 points off of Palou’s championship lead in a single race, which makes the 66 Kirkwood needs to acquire and the 67 Dixon needs to get by the end of Portland a massive task for the duo to accomplish. And that would be to simply prevent elimination.

There’s no hope for anyone other than Palou or O’Ward to take the championship in 2025, and the odds are continue to be unkind for the Arrow McLaren ace. Especially when taking into account that Palou absolutely loves the next two tracks on the calendar. In his four visits to Laguna Seca, Palou has yet to miss out on making the podium; it’s two wins, including last year from pole, plus a second and a third. Over the same four races, O’Ward’s best is a fifth from 2021, two eighths, and a ninth.

Shift to Portland, where Palou clinched the 2023 title, and he has two wins since 2021, a second, and a 12th. Combine the four results from Laguna Seca and the four from Portland, and Palou has reached the podium seven out of eight times while O’Ward is chasing his first at both tracks.

But as Toronto – a street course O’Ward previously loathed and seemingly had no luck — proved, he is always ready to strike and cannot be counted out based on past results. At the same time, Palou’s greatest strength is expressed on road courses, where he’s dominated Laguna Seca and Portland and taken four out of five road course wins this season, with the only miss coming at Mid-Ohio where he finished second. If there was a perfect two-race sequence for the championship leader to create more separation to O’Ward, it’s right in front of him on Sunday in California and on August 10 in Oregon.

Palou can’t win the title at Laguna Seca, but two weeks later in the Pacific Northwest, it’s certainly possible when the unassailable lead becomes 108 points after the checkered flag. For those who want to see the championship go down to the wire, it’s vital for O’Ward to step into victory lane this weekend, score back-to-back victories, and prevent the deficit from swelling to more than 100 points.

After the top four, fifth-place Christian Lundgaard from Arrow McLaren (317) has his best championship ranking since joining the series in 2022, but he’s been in the midst of a strange and precipitous slide without actually losing his spot in the rankings. At his closest, the Dane was 42 points behind Palou in the standings and rose as high as second following the race at Barber Motorsports Park. After the Indy 500, he’s settled into somewhere between fourth and sixth place in the championship, with fifth being the sweet spot for the last four races.

Even so, the margin to Palou has exploded. Lundgaard’s been fortunate to have a constantly revolving cast of challengers rising and falling behind him so there’s been no sustained threat to surrender fifth place, but since Detroit, he’s had a number of forgettable finishes that sank his chances of vying for the title. Leaving Toronto, Lundgaard and the No. 7 Chevy are the first of the new drivers who are no longer eligible after falling 219 points behind Palou — three points on the wrong side of the threshold.

Meyer Shank Racing’s Felix Rosenqvist in sixth (309), who crashed to close the Toronto race, and teammate Marcus Armstrong in seventh (283), who was fast but had a poor finish on Sunday, are also ruled out as championship contenders to expand the knockout pool to 23 of IndyCar’s 27 full-time drivers after 13 of 17 races.

Elsewhere, Santino Ferrucci’s sidelining at Toronto meant he lost 10th in the championship, and it was taken by AJ Foyt Racing teammate David Malukas (259), who makes his second visit to the top 10 this season, with the first landing after the Indy 500 where he placed second. Ferrucci fell to 12th in the standings.

Dale Coyne Racing’s Rinus VeeKay (252) was the other big mover, holds 11th, and could overtake Malukas for 10th with a strong outing at Laguna Seca.

The race for Rookie of the Year is locked in a c ontest of who can have the best worst finishes, as Robert Shwartzman from PREMA Racing is 22nd in the standings (159) and tied with Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing’s Louis Foster in 23rd (159).

IndyCar’s Leaders Circle program is vaguely interesting with four races to go, and with the cutoff being the top 22 cars with charter agreements in the Entrants’ points standings, which excludes PREMA, it’s Foster’s No. 45 RLL car on the bubble (159), Sting Ray Robb’s No. 77 Juncos Hollinger Racing Chevy in 23rd (133), RLL’s No. 30 for Devlin DeFrancesco in 24th (123), and Coyne’s No. 51 car for Jacob Abel in 25th (95).

With the No. 51 DCR entry unlikely to move out of last place, it leaves the Nos. 45, 77, and 30 to squabble over the last $1 million Leaders Circle contract, and it could also include Arrow McLaren’s No. 6 car driven by Nolan Siegel in 21st (168), who could fall into battle if one or more bad results emerge in the coming weeks.