Alex Palou keeps rewriting the IndyCar record book almost by accident. On Saturday at Road America the four-time champion took pole for Sunday's XPEL Grand Prix — his 18th career pole, his sixth of 2026, and a fifth in a row that hasn't been matched in the series for decades.
The last driver to take five consecutive poles within a single season was Danny Sullivan in 1988, 38 years ago. The only other man to string five together at all was Chip Ganassi Racing great Alex Zanardi, across the end of 1996 and the start of 1997. Palou now joins that company, and he did it on an afternoon he described as anything but smooth.
"Yeah, it was so tough," Palou said after qualifying. "Q1 I felt great. Q2 I struggled a ton. Yesterday I felt great, but this morning I struggled, as well. I knew it was going to be very tough to piece it together. My lap, it felt good. There's always room to improve... It's always surprising. It's always so fun and so tough to get it right. I think everything is so tight that, yeah, still surprises."
The pole continues a season that is starting to mirror his dominant 2025 campaign. Palou has four wins, six top fives and seven top 10s through the opening nine rounds, and carries a 49-point lead over Andretti Global's Kyle Kirkwood as he chases a record-tying fourth straight title. Yet he was quick to draw a distinction between raw speed and the cleaner execution that defined last year.
"In terms of speed, maybe. In terms of execution, no," Palou said when asked if 2026 has been an even better run than 2025. "I think last year we were able to execute almost perfectly."
That refusal to coast is, by his own account, deliberate.
"I'm improving in places I was not as good last year," he said. "On the other side, I feel like sometimes I do mistakes I would not have done last year. It's the good thing and bad thing about sports: you cannot relax every single second; you need to keep on working on everything, otherwise everybody is going to catch up."
"Best of the best right now," Malukas said of Palou.
Road America has long been Palou's personal proving ground. It was here, in a Dale Coyne Racing entry in 2020, that the then-rookie delivered his breakthrough drive, charging from 14th on the grid into the top five and announcing himself against a field stacked with champions. He has since won two of the past three races at the 4.014-mile Wisconsin road course and three of the last five.
A victory on Sunday would make him the first driver in Road America history to win the IndyCar race there four times, surpassing the three-win mark shared by Mario Andretti, Emerson Fittipaldi and Michael Andretti — the kind of company that frames just how far Palou's career has already travelled. Starting from pole, with a points cushion and a circuit he loves, the only realistic obstacle left is the one he keeps warning himself about: complacency.
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*Originally published on [Motorsports Global](https://motorsports.global/article/palou-makes-history-with-fifth-straight-indycar-pole-at-road-america). Visit for full coverage.*