Team Penske’s Will Power believes that IndyCar’s reigning champion Alex Palou will be “very tough to beat” to this year’s title, but says four of the final five races being on ovals should “bring him back to us”.
Chip Ganassi Racing’s two-time champion Palou is yet to win a race on an oval as he bids for a third crown in four seasons.
Palou leads the points by 49 over Power, who scored his 43rd IndyCar victory last time out on an oval at Iowa that broke a tie with Mario Andretti on the all-time winners list. That victory ended the 2018 Indy 500 champion’s own five-year oval win drought.
“The championship is right there for us,” said Power in Toronto, where he damaged his title bid by gaining a penalty following a clash with team-mate Scott McLaughlin when running ahead of Palou.
“You know, there's five or six people that can win it, but we have a great shot.
“We're right there with all those guys. It's going to be interesting the way season finishes with ovals. Who that favors, I don't know, but I feel like it brings Palou back to us because if it was road and street courses, he is very capable of just going out and dominating them.
“It probably just mixes it up more for sure. Palou is absolutely gonna be very tough to beat, but we could get him, like this is a good chance cos, as you see, the ovals can be very mixed up of who's up front and who's not.
“It's not like, I would say, having Palou consistently at the front of road and street courses.”
Power has scored 10 oval wins in his IndyCar career, at both big tracks – Texas, Fontana, Pocono and Indianapolis – and short ovals at Milwaukee and Iowa.
When asked at what point in his career, which was built on a foundation of road course racing in Europe, did ovals feel more natural for him, he replied: “Oh, it just honestly comes and goes, like depending on where you are and how well you've done recently. Trying to think when they switched for me, but it's probably like way back in 2014 or something.
“I can pretty much go to any oval and feel like I have a shot of winning, and that has been the case, although Josef (Newgarden, his Penske team-mate) has just won so many of them in the last five years, and in particular the last two years, that no one else has really got in there.
“But it's good to have him on the team. You know, you've got a guy that's very good at that discipline that you can learn off.”
