It\u2019s good to be Alex Palou.<\/p>\n
This year\u2019s Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach champion has taken plenty of checkered flags during his meteoric ascent to the top of IndyCar. Remarkably, he\u2019s won 11 of the last 22 IndyCar races he\u2019s run in, and he has taken a podium spot in fully half of the races he\u2019s run in his career. For the non-racing fans reading this, there\u2019s not really a way to put into words how truly insane those numbers are.<\/p>\n
Palou has won 22 IndyCar races at the age of 29 in just six years\u2014he\u2019s already tied for 20th in IndyCar career wins all-time and has won four of the last five IndyCar Series Titles as the top driver. That\u2019s tied for second most in history, and he\u2019s got a great chance to win it again this year and pull within striking distance of Scott Dixon\u2019s six titles (he won his sixth at 39, a decade older than Palou).<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not just the hardware, though. Palou\u2019s first trip to the winner\u2019s press conference saw him walk in with an easy smile and well-earned confidence, and he advanced that image throughout the Q&A with local media.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel so lucky with the opportunity to win the (Indy) 500 last year, Long Beach this year, I\u2019m on this amazing cloud of happiness,\u201d said the beaming Spaniard.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He also had what every top-tier winner needs: luck. The full-course yellow couldn\u2019t have been better-timed, with a quick pit stop allowing him to move up into first.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou want to think that I was not giving up, but I think it would have been very tough for us (without that yellow),\u201d he said. \u201cMy confidence was high, but my chances were low.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
In addition to luck, Palou has a great team behind him. Barry Wanser is Palou\u2019s race strategist and car manager and he acknowledged that the duo as well as the rest of the team at Chip Ganassi Racing are on an historic run.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe put a lot of effort into this, it doesn\u2019t come easy,\u201d he said. \u201cI know a lot of people are saying that\u2014but it\u2019s hard to win in IndyCar.\u201d<\/p>\n
Palou did his best to pretend that it\u2019s not coming easy to him, but wasn\u2019t as convincing as Wanser.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s super super cool,\u201d he said of winning Long Beach. \u201cI mean we\u2019ve been so lucky to have so much success.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked about the incredible 50% podium rate he just smiled and shrugged.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, it\u2019s incredible, I don\u2019t know what to say,\u201d he said. \u201cThis team is amazing, and it gives me the opportunity every single race to compete. No comment?\u201d<\/p>\n
Some IndyCar fans complained on social media that Palou\u2019s dominance has been boring, but that\u2019s not his problem\u2014and it\u2019s not likely to be a problem in Long Beach, where local fans love a repeat champion and will likely be rooting for Palou to join the ranks of Al Unser Jr., Michael Andretti, Dixon and others who\u2019ve dominated our race over multiple years.<\/p>\n
For those sports fans who\u2019d prefer at least a little drama from Palou, he did sweat it out a bit when asked about a dance that he and Wanser had come up with to Taylor Swift\u2019s \u201cFate of Ophelia.\u201d Smiling, he declined to perform, joking, \u201cI\u2019m not ready, I\u2019m feeling nervous\u2026I just had a long race, I\u2019m very tired.\u201d<\/p>\n
Perhaps for the first time in his golden career, Palou received a chorus of boos in response.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s good to be Alex Palou. This year\u2019s Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach champion has taken plenty…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":288648,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132],"class_list":["post-288647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=288647"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288647\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/288648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=288647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=288647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=288647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}