The owner of one of IndyCar’s most successful teams accusing a legendary rival squad of “interference” over its championship-leading driver’s future and saying he’s lost all the respect he used to have for that legendary rival is a sensational situation.
That’s what’s happening in IndyCar right now with Chip Ganassi versus Zak Brown and McLaren over Alex Palou.
But McLaren and Brown were clearly the targets of Ganassi’s furious statement on Saturday.
So how is Palou getting away with so little criticism or seemingly not being held to account by Ganassi over something that not just affects him, but the lives of hundreds of team members among others in IndyCar?
Two of IndyCar’s biggest names have gone to war over the driver who is now 101 points clear with three rounds remaining after Saturday’s Indianapolis race.
McLaren Racing CEO Brown got the first word in when he said he was “extremely disappointed that Alex Palou does not intend to honour his contractual obligations to race with us in IndyCar in 2024 and beyond”.
Ganassi issued a retort on Saturday, unable to stay quiet on the matter.
“Anyone that knows me knows that I don’t make a habit of commenting about contract situations,” it read.
“Subsequently, I have been quiet since day one of this story but now I feel I must respond.
“I grew up respecting the McLaren team and their success.
“The new management does not get my same respect.
“Alex Palou has been a part of our team and under contract since the 2021 season.
“It is the interference of that contract from McLaren that began this process and ironically, they are now playing the victim.
“Simply stated, the position of McLaren IndyCar regarding our driver is inaccurate and wrong; he remains under contract with CGR.”
It’s no surprise to see these fiercest of rivals go at it, but it’s been a surprise to see how these statements have been interpreted.
Ganassi is going hard after McLaren without acknowledging the elephant in the room.
Without Palou, there would be nothing for McLaren to interfere with. It’s Palou who declared – while under contract at Ganassi – that he was leaving for McLaren last year.
It’s Palou who – according to Brown – has wilfully agreed a contract with McLaren, even though he has an exclusivity clause in his Ganassi contract until September 1 this year.
It’s Palou who has now told Brown he is not joining McLaren despite that team planning towards his arrival for what has likely been months.
Ganassi may have reason to be upset with how McLaren has acted after the team has gone after more than one of its drivers, and signed one of its biggest sponsors in NTT last year. McLaren would argue it has acted above board and was within its rights to try to sign those drivers and that sponsor when it did.
But Ganassi’s failure to – at least publicly – address Palou’s (repeated) acts reflects badly on itself as it calls out McLaren for its actions.
It’s easy to see why. Ganassi inevitably wants to keep Palou happy. He’s dominating IndyCar for it right now. It needs him. Criticising his conduct might risk Ganassi’s chances of keeping him. But does that make it fair for Ganassi to criticise McLaren’s conduct in public statements, but not Palou’s?
This is all a shame, because Palou would be very high on the list of people I’d like to spend more time with in IndyCar. He’s humble, down to earth, a team player at the track, and his crew members adore him.
Always smiling, he’s polite, fun, always asks how you’re doing and takes a genuine interest in what’s new to you.
Frankly, he’s an absolute joy to be around.
Throughout the uproar around his future last year, he made a genuine attempt to answer every question, too.
Even in his second language, he would pause after a complicated question to process it and work out how to best answer when he could have just batted it off with something generic.
It felt like you could see the cogs moving in his brain, if that’s how the brain actually worked. And more often than not he’d find a way to answer, even though there was the occasional “I’m not going to comment on that, no”, rebuttal.
I have so much respect for how he faced that adversity and tried his best to work with the media so they could do their job – even sometimes to his own detriment.
All of that doesn’t alter the fact he has repeatedly put himself and the teams he’s been connected to in the limelight for the wrong reasons off the track, and I like many others believe there was a better way to conduct the business which has led to him seemingly try to get out of two contractual agreements he himself agreed to.
I don’t want to see Palou criticised, but it seems unfair McLaren is getting the public dressing down from Ganassi on its own!
THE BIG QUESTIONS ABOUT PALOU’S DECISIONS
There are still so many questions to consider and answer relating to this bombshell news and we’re still crunching all of that little over 24 hours after McLaren’s first disgruntled announcement.
Let’s see if we can answer some of those in a linear fashion to get a better holistic understanding of what’s happening.
Why did Palou want to leave Ganassi for McLaren in the first place?
I don’t think we ever got a full, on the record explanation of all the reasons. Clearly, for Palou, the chance to test a Formula 1 car was one thing McLaren could provide that Ganassi couldn’t. Opening the door of the world of F1 gave Palou new avenues of possibility.
It’s also believed that McLaren offered a significant increase in salary, which sources indicate Ganassi has only recently offered to match with a deal put forward in the last couple of months in a bid to get Palou to stay.
It’s worth also considering at this point that Palou had had a tough 2022 season, and was only one point ahead of McLaren’s lead driver Pato O’Ward in the championship before he dominated the final race and jumped up the order.
The gulf between Ganassi and McLaren appeared to be closing and with the expansion to a third car for Alexander Rossi, momentum appeared to be on McLaren’s side. At least to the point it would be worth joining to get the F1 chances, increased pay and not an enormous step-down in terms of IndyCar competitiveness.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing, as we’ll explore in a minute. But making the decision in 2022, it seemed like the opportunities all stacked up to a package Ganassi could not match.
Why was he fine to still stay at Ganassi after trying to leave?
This one’s simple: he had won the 2021 title with Ganassi and had an emotional as well as friendly bond with many of the personnel behind the scenes. Don’t underestimate the power of how strong those bonds were formed off the back of Palou delivering the title in his first season for the team that year.
The 2022 season was more of a struggle, obviously, but he knew the upside of the team and had formed close relationships with many of its personnel.
Why did he still commit to McLaren for 2024?
There are a couple of things that make this tricky. First, Brown and The Race’s sources said there’s a McLaren-Palou deal for 2024. Palou and Ganassi have not discussed it in public and Ganassi’s statement on Saturday implies it had the contractual right to him. So we have to state that.
Also, we don’t have any confirmation when the supposed McLaren deal was penned, whether it was last year or this year even.
What we can reasonably assume is that it would be sometime earlier this year when a) McLaren’s IndyCar results were looking stronger, b) there was still an outside chance of an F1 seat with either McLaren or another team on loan from McLaren and c) before a new deal matching McLaren’s salary was reportedly offered by Ganassi.
So why has he changed his mind?
Well, those three things changing, to a certain extent!
It must be clear to Palou that, McLaren deal or not, he would have to commit to an IndyCar drive before a 2024 F1 seat was going to become available. His potential options are at AlphaTauri and Williams, and they both need time to play out based on Daniel Ricciardo, Logan Sargeant and even Sergio Perez’s performances in the upcoming races.
With F1 running until November, a decision at both teams isn’t expected until much near the end of the season, long after Palou will have chosen his IndyCar seat.
It’s clear then that an F1 team would need to buy him out of an IndyCar deal in order to put him in F1 for 2024. IndyCar teams wouldn’t be happy about that as that would also be late in their own silly season when most of the top driver options will be off the table and replacing Palou would be extremely tough.
McLaren has had plenty of form in IndyCar this year but it’s clear that it needs more experience and a bigger factory to work out of, one suitable for a three and eventually four-car team. That’s coming, via its acquisition of Andretti Autosport’s old base, but it’s not here yet.
It hasn’t won a race this year and while it should have on multiple occasions, it is not the powerhouse Palou and Ganassi have been together in 2023. Palou’s delivered the form even he as the driver couldn’t have predicted, so hindsight is a great thing.
With the same money on offer and no F1 on the horizon, it’s logical as a driver you’d want to stay with the team that has helped you earn a 101-point championship lead!
Where will he end up?
This depends a bit on how much Brown and McLaren want to fight for the deal they claim they have for Palou, and who might prevail in that argumentative scenario. Ganassi has the original contract, McLaren has invested millions in Palou and his F1 testing.
There’s paddock chatter that Michael Andretti has also made an offer for Palou – like I’m sure any team that can afford him has – and although Andretti has looked likely to sign Palou’s current Ganassi team-mate Marcus Ericsson in recent weeks, McLaren now needs a driver and Ericsson is the top free agent so a merry-go-around may be about to start.
Ganassi appears the most likely 2024 option for Palou, but until 36 hours ago, sources indicated Palou had a deal with McLaren and that’s where he’d be going.
That school of thought hadn’t changed for 12 months or so before Friday’s U-turn, so anything could now happen!
