Yahoo Movies Colton Herta Wins Long Beach, Alex Palou Takes the IndyCar Championship
Alex Palou entered the 2021 IndyCar season as a winless second-year driver called up unexpectedly to Chip Ganassi Racing only because Felix Rosenqvist made a move to Arrow McLaren SP and the team had an opening. He ends the season as a three-time winner, an Indianapolis 500 runner-up, and a series champion.
It was an exceptional season, and, until last weekend, an exceptionally competitive one, too. Palou came into the season-ending west coast swing trailing Pato O'Ward by ten points in a five-way title fight between them, Josef Newgarden, Marcus Ericsson, and reigning series champion Scott Dixon. He would win while O'Ward floundered at Portland, finish runner-up while the other contenders struggled at Laguna Seca, and hold a steady fourth to clinch the championship today at Long Beach. The three-race battle was open enough that any of the group could have taken the title, but it was Palou who struck gold as the contender to do what they needed to do in all three races.
It was a less fortunate day for his chief rival, Arrow McLaren SP's Pato O'Ward. After two disappointing weekends, the Mexican rising star needed to win the day while Palou finished 11th if he wanted to walk away as a champion. Instead, he was wrecked in the hairpin on the opening lap by Ed Jones, who was attempting a dive-bomb pass for eighth but ended up crashing into O'Ward in seventh. The McLaren driver attempted to stay in the race, but the car gave out in the pit lane 20 laps later. O'Ward fell to third in the season standings after a two-win season, opening the door for Josef Newgarden to record a runner-up finish after a two-win season of his own.
Scott Dixon and Marcus Ericsson, both teammates of Palou at Chip Ganassi Racing, finished the season fourth and fifth, respectively, after combining for three wins. Surprisingly, Ericsson won one more race than Dixon.
But the star of the last two weekends in racing was not a championship contender at all. Colton Herta seemed to glide effortlessly to his second win of the season at Laguna Seca last weekend, but this weekend's fight was much more difficult. He led both practice sessions before qualifying, but a brush with the wall in his group qualifying round pool left him outside of the Fast 12 and Fast 6 sessions and starting from behind when the race began. It got worse on lap 1, when he was collected in the crash caused by Ed Jones further up in the field and actually briefly hopped a front wheel over teammate Ryan Hunter-Reay's left-rear tire. But the car was relatively undamaged, so Herta stayed in the race.
He charged to the lead within 30 laps. He spent the next 30 building an enormous 14 second lead. A caution for Oliver Askew's brief trip into the tires erased that gap, but Herta held off Newgarden at a gap of just one second in the race's closing laps. Newgarden closed within half a second with two to go, but he ran out of time. Herta took his third win of the season.
2021 was always going to be a season of decorated veterans holding off the charge from unproven young talent. As the season went on, it became clearer and clearer that the young talent was not going to stay unproven for long. At the beginning of the season, the group of Herta, O'Ward, and Palou was one driver with three wins and two more without one. Now, all three are multi-time winners. O'Ward will get a promised F1 young driver test with McLaren at the end of the year as a reward from company boss Zak Brown directly. Herta doubled his career win total and proved his place as the lead driver at a championship-level Andretti Autosport program. And Palou did more than anyone else: He recorded his first three wins, his first career pole, his first first podium finish at the Indianapolis 500, and his first career championship.
This year, the future was Herta, O'Ward, and Palou. Next year, that trio will be the present. They will take their position alongside Scott Dixon, Will Power, and Josef Newgarden as preseason favorites to win a championship. Their golden age is here already.
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