I have lamented many times how, in motorsport, rumors and decisions about the future tend to distract us from the here and now. In the case, for example, of the WEC top-flight for the past four years and Toyota’s never-ending internal battle, it would be understandable if the focus shifted away from the on-track action and more towards the bright future with new rules, new cars and new manufacturers.
But in IndyCar, I think it’s just sad that we seem unhappy with the status quo of the series, which generally involves more than a dozen potential winners on any given weekend and, at the halfway point in the season, six or seven drivers in three or four teams they have title chances.
There was some hope that this year would not be the case, because most of the big-name drivers and teams had their place secured until at least 2023. Alexander Rossi had a decision to make regarding his future, and he did, and Arrow will pass. McLaren SP , where he will join Pato O’Ward, who resolved some early season issues with the team. Other than that, there were no big question marks, so we were able to keep our focus on a gripping battle that, after nine rounds, has seven drivers separated by 70 points.
Or so was my hope, and with some sadness I saw that the only thing that had happened was that attention had turned to next year’s silly season , as several stars and future stars will reach the end of their contracts at the end of 2023.
And then the world turned upside down. A few hours after Chip Ganassi Racing confirmed that the option to renew Alex Palou for 2023 was effective -the press release carried the usual phrase of the 25-year-old Spaniard: “Happy to continue in such a good team”-, the pilot appeared on his social networks to say that the phrase was false and incidentally announce that he will leave Ganassi at the end of the season.
Moments after that little “What?!” The statement from McLaren arrived that Palou had joined the “family” of the team, and that he will share an F1 test program with fellow IndyCar drivers Pato O’Ward – who is already an Arrow McLaren SP driver – and Colton Herta, who has just carried out a test of days with last year’s McLaren in Portimao.
Are Palou and Herta now rivals for a place in Formula 1 with McLaren in 2024?
Although the news came in a truly surprising way, the move itself was not entirely unexpected, as Palou has been linked with moving to Arrow McLaren SP for a few months now. Many of us wonder why a driver would decide to leave the best IndyCar team of the last quarter century to join a team that is still trying to establish itself as totally top-notch. There were three possible answers: McLaren was offering Palou a much higher salary, an opportunity in Formula 1, or both.
Considering that McLaren had recently agreed to test Herta in an F1 car – a move that temporarily sidelined O’Ward – the likelihood of Palou finding an F1 seat anytime soon seemed remote. McLaren already has an excellent young driver with a hunger for F1 in its squad, O’Ward himself, and will surely be able to call on a similarly talented driver, Herta, provided Michael Andretti ‘s dream of taking his Andretti Autosport team to Formula 1 does not come true.
However, it also seemed unlikely that McLaren would offer Palou a staggering salary just to get him out of his current team and into an Arrow McLaren SP-Chevrolet. And anyway, it’s hard to think of a brilliant driver like Palou changing a car with the chance of winning another title for more money. So the bottom line is that there is perhaps a very desirable Formula 1 prospect for Palou in his new deal.
In May and early June, Motorsport.com contacted some interesting and credible sources – two by chance, one on purpose – and all three agreed that while Palou had shown much less desire for Formula 1 than O ‘Ward and Herta, he also has his sights set on the premier class. The three sources, when I promised them that I would not reveal their identity, also admitted that they were not in possession of all the data.
Here’s a rundown of their combined contributions that, frankly, sounds like an overly embellished plot for a soap opera. Take it as pure fiction if you wish, but in light of what happened on Tuesday night, it may not seem so far-fetched anymore.
Here it goes!
Sometime in late April, as the IndyCar circus travels to Barber Motorsports Park for round four of the season, McLaren CEO Zak Brown has a conversation with Palou. There is a mutual antipathy between Brown and Chip Ganassi, with Chip Ganassi relishing the idea of snapping up Ganassi’s latest champion and adding him to McLaren’s growing roster of talent. Brown can’t make any promises about F1 just yet, but having Palou on his team and competing against Ganassi’s in IndyCar would amuse him, if only for a year.
So once Daniel Ricciardo decides on his future – which surely won’t be with the McLaren F1 team beyond 2023 – Zak, Andreas Seidl and the McLaren board of directors will have to choose between O’Ward, Palou and possibly Herta as soon as possible. who crosses the Atlantic to join Lando Norris in his Formula 1 team. Brown and Palou reach a provisional agreement, not a contract, but a verbal agreement based on a series of conditions.
Soon, because of who he is, Chip finds out about that conversation and is understandably furious. Palou’s contract reportedly prevents him from talking to rival teams at the time, let alone reaching a verbal agreement. He had a two-year contract plus an optional one, and until a new contract is drafted or Chip does or doesn’t exercise that option, Palou isn’t free to negotiate with others. Certainly, at least not in April of the second year.
So with a theoretically airtight contract, Ganassi tells Palou (remember, it’s all fiction): “Fuck it, I’m going to exercise my option on you for 2023. There is no salary renegotiation in sight even though you won the championship, the same deal I struck with you, with Felix Rosenqvist before you, and with Ed Jones before that, and then if you want you can disappear.”
Brown would have been terribly upset if that issue came up because 1) he appears to have been beaten by Chip, 2) he couldn’t get Palou until at least 2024, and 3) on the surface it would appear that he has reneged on the pact between team managers and animators. Palou to break the rules of his current contract.
And yet in mid-July we’re here, and apparently Brown hasn’t been beaten by Ganassi, he’s landed Palou for 2023, and the only question is who’s right, who’s wrong, and whether the truth lies somewhere. place in between.
[Netflix series finale song].
How much of what is described in the previous four paragraphs is true? How much of this is hearsay, fabrication, and hype? Towards the end of last month, I had an off-the-record conversation with Palou, laying out my theory and asking if he could confirm or deny any version of what happened and that he was about to leave Ganassi. He listened to me, smiled, laughed and convinced me that it was all a lie, that he was happy where he was, etc., etc.
“Psst! Felix! You’ll never guess what’s going on. I substituted for you once, now I’m going to do it again…maybe”
The only thing we know for sure is that there is considerable unrest floating around, now out in the open thanks to Ganassi announcing on Tuesday that he has re-signed Palou, Palou later denying it and declaring he is leaving his current team, and McLaren he quickly posted that he has hired the 2021 IndyCar champion, albeit in an as yet unspecified role.
One of the crucial questions is whether Palou’s current contract with Ganassi states that he cannot specifically negotiate with another IndyCar team. If so, that would suggest that McLaren and Palou have upheld the law by sticking to the details: Palou was not welcomed by IndyCar’s Arrow McLaren SP but by McLaren Racing. Could that mean that Palou will be in F1 as early as 2023 – unlike O’Ward and Herta, Palou already has the 40 points required for the Super License – and that Ricciardo has already told McLaren privately that he will stop racing in F1? F1 at the end of this season?
Or if Ricciardo’s words on Wednesday can be taken at face value and he will race to the end of his contract next year, would Palou be prepared to spend a season as an F1 test driver and driver-in-waiting, contesting some practice sessions? FP1 together with the TPC program [former test car]?
Ganassi CEO Mike Hull again stressed to IndyStar Tuesday night that “Alex Palou is under contract with the team through 2023,” and there is a theory that Hull’s comment, and Ganassi’s posting his statement long before the Palou-McLaren deal was announced, was Chip’s chosen method of publicly reminding everyone involved that CGR has to be paid a lot of money should Palou move to McLaren in 2023.
That would make some sense, but would a team as respectable as Ganassi issue a statement that also included an apparently fabricated quote from Palou? That would suggest a loss of perspective within the CGR ranks, which is misplaced. It seems much more likely to me that someone pulled the trigger on a statement that had been prepared in anticipation of Palou staying with them until the end of 2023.
It also seems inconceivable that the McLaren board of directors is willing to pay Ganassi to sign a Palou who, although he was the most complete driver in IndyCar in 2021 , has other drivers at his level in terms of mixing youth with immense talent. Across the pond, McLaren already “owns” such a driver in O’Ward, and there is another of similar caliber, Herta, which is part of McLaren’s TPC programme. In other words, McLaren don’t need Palou so badly that they risk incurring a financial penalty for his signing, so they have to be sure the deal with the reigning champion is the right one.
Palou’s decision to leave the team that made him an IndyCar champion has been sour enough that he wonders why he is so willing to leave. Recall the opposite case of Ryan Briscoe , who was fired by Ganassi at the end of his torrid IRL IndyCar season in 2005, but did not publicly complain about it and some eight years later was given the chance to race in the Indy 500 with Chip. . That earned him a full IndyCar season with Ganassi in 2014, and although he was let go again at the end of the season, Briscoe did not attack anyone, returning to the wheel of the Ganassi-run Ford GT IMSA program from 2016 to 2019. In that period he had 10 wins, including two at the 24 Hours of Daytona.
So what kind of driver is confident enough in his future to despise and infuriate the owner of one of the best teams on the planet? Once again, an interesting theory has emerged: that Palou has no intention of racing long-term, or at least not from the cockpit, and that he will retire at the age of 30. But I’m not sure that it is.
Palou’s departure could help cement Dixon’s future with the CGR IndyCar team.
If this affair has been something of a nuke in the IndyCar paddock, the consequences are in some ways just as fascinating. Chip Ganassi’s disenchantment with his dealings with Palou over the last eight weeks caused him to study at least two openings on his IndyCar team at the end of 2023 left by Palou… and? And probably Jimmie Johnson.
If Ganassi had been able to retain Palou, he could have tried to persuade Scott Dixon to move to his Cadillac sports car team, but that proposal could have carried the risk of the New Zealand legend leaving for AMSP. The McLaren team has long trailed the six-time champion and Scott himself is keen to prolong his career in the single-seater world and delay the full-time move to IMSA. Tuesday’s news, and AMSP’s amassing of talent, may have ruled Dixon out of that trade, but it has also made him more desirable to Ganassi. No team owner would want to lose two champions in the space of two years.
Palou’s imminent departure also means that Ganassi is on the hunt for a new occupant of car #10 a year earlier than he intended, as even if Chip wins any legal case on this matter, he’s not going to give wins to a driver who remains under duress. In that case, Rinus VeeKay might be the best option available. He has a high degree of raw talent and, to Motorsport.com ‘s knowledge, has yet to sign a deal for a fourth season with Ed Carpenter Racing.
But VeeKay is also a candidate for Arrow McLaren SP’s third car, along with O’Ward and 2023 newcomer Alexander Rossi should Palou be posted to Formula 1, and Felix Rosenqvist to Formula E. Don’t take this latest move for granted, though: if Palou has no place in the #7 AMSP-Chevy, McLaren could settle for Rosenqvist.
In the meantime, this whole deal will likely speed up efforts by team owners to sign their current drivers beyond 2023, or make big bets on top drivers who will be available next year. For example, I’d be surprised if, in 2024, the Penske-Chevrolet team didn’t include current starters Josef Newgarden, Will Power and Scott McLaughlin.
Could Herta, with his F1 ambitions perhaps thwarted by the Palou signing and the non-existence of an Andretti F1 team, lock himself into a long-term deal with Ganassi? That combination, with Dixon and Marcus Ericsson on the side, could be devastatingly strong.
Whatever the scenario, whatever the lineup, Ganassi will be strong next year, and he will be strong in 2024 and beyond; Chip won’t be left searching through the leftovers. As angry or betrayed as he may feel right now, he will undoubtedly pull off a masterstroke, and his team will remain a title contender.
In the meantime, McLaren has assembled such a formidable driving force in its various teams that it is putting itself under pressure similar to that mentioned by Jean Todt when he hired Michael Schumacher for Ferrari in Formula 1. If the various branches of the McLaren team do not have success now, they can only blame themselves.
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