Alex Palou was four years, one month and five days old when Scott Dixon won his first IndyCar race. The New Zealander was 20 years, 11 months, and 15 days old at the time.
Father Time has added age and experience to both men, now teammates at Chip Ganassi Racing, and with Dixon taking his latest win on Sunday in Mid-Ohio at 44 – with a 45th birthday looming – and Palou at 28, the greatest IndyCar driver of the century and the greatest next-generation driver stood together on the podium.
The Spaniard has been all but unbeatable since he joined Dixon at Ganassi in 2021, taking three championships after Dixon earned his sixth and most recent in 2020. Palou’s also done the majority of winning for Ganassi over that period, including the six victories he’s taken and turned into a huge championship lead in 2025, but he was reminded of Dixon’s ruthless pursuit of victory when he peered up and saw what perfection looked like as Dixon executed a flawless run from ninth to first.
Palou couldn’t say the same; he was mostly untouchable for 85 laps but fell off the track with five laps left and Dixon took the invitation to improve from second to a lead he held onto despite his teammate’s best attempts to correct the mistake.
Call it a gift, or a lucky win, and both would be accurate, but Dixon had to work a demanding two-stop race strategy call to save fuel from the outset and cleave one pit stop from the 90-lap contest – Palou and the others in the top five went for three stops – to put himself in a position to capitalize on any opp ortunities to take the win.
Having led numerous races only to have an ill-timed caution or other misfortune take victory from his hands and deliver it to a rival, the Kiwi was understandably pleased to have the score settled in his favor, even if it came at his teammate’s expense.
“As soon as I saw the caution at the start, which we had been talking about, I was like, man, the two-stop is on,” Dixon said. “We worked pretty hard this morning in the warmup on fuel mileage and making sure we got the car balance where we needed it.
“First stint was pretty easy. Second stint we actually got into a bit of trouble on the soft tires with the left front. I don’t know if it was that tire, but 10 laps in I could see it starting to come apart, and I knew that we were locked in on the two-stopper so that was going to be pretty difficult, so we pushed and kind of used the average on the black tires and used them a little bit more once we got to the final stop.”
A radio communication error at the opening race in St. Petersburg was the most recent event where Dixon was in the frame to win and ended up losing out to Palou, who pitted one lap sooner and used the undercut to capture his first victory of the season. Dixon’s last stint at Mid-Ohio involved another pit-related miscue that slightly hampered his outright pace, but then Palou lost control of his car and the 60th win of his career materialized.
“The final stop, [they] didn’t take any of the front wing out, so it was so loose for that last stint,” Dixon added. “I was just really looking at the corner and the car would turn itself, which, one, is really physical, but two, it’s really hard to push extremely hard because you start to lock rears, especially into Turn 4 and into Turn 2 and also into Turn 9 where ultimately that got Alex.
“We were hoping that we were going to clear him, but obvio usly they were super fast today and pushing really hard on the three-stopper. Maybe earlier on in the stint I should have pushed a little bit harder, but just wasn’t sure what was going to happen with that left front on the reds.
