IndyCar News: Alex Palou – a perfect 10!

Newly-crowned four-time NTT IndyCar Series champion Alex Palou (pictured) continues to ascend among the all-time greats, but that success has been built on the foundation of blood, sweat and tears from the men and women at Chip Ganassi Racing.

In many ways, championships and Chip Ganassi Racing (CGR) have become synonymous with one another, with the organization capturing its 17th Indy car title (15 powered by Honda) in 2025. The achievement is all the more remarkable considering the outfit started as a single-car outfit in 1990.

And that hard-earned success doesn’t come without incredible people. Among them is Julian Robertson, Palou’s race engineer, who first joined CGR in 1993 and has carried a variety of roles over the years within the team. Notably, he was a race engineer that helped guide a young Scott Dixon to the first of his six titles in 2003 before becoming the team’s director of engineering for several years.

“Who knows as a race engineer what he would have really been able to accomplish, but he certainly was a big part of all of Chip Ganassi Racing’s success,” said Barry Wanser, Senior Manager of Racing Operations at CGR and Palou’s strategist.

“Coming back to race engineer when Alex came on board, it’s been refreshing for Julian as well. The amount of experience he has is really showing, and the connection he’s been able to make with Alex really shows.”

Since joining CGR in 2021 to drive the Honda-powered No.10 entry, Palou has been nearly untouchable. In addition to hoisting the Astor Cup Trophy four times over the last five years, he has also amassed 19 wins, including the 109th Running of the Indianapolis 500 this past May, along with 43 podiums in 84 starts with the team.

“He’s great,” Palou said of Robertson. “He’s been my first and only track engineer at CGR since the first test I did with the team. It’s been amazing. The experience he has; I think he has 16 of the 17 championships with CGR.

“The amount of times that he has won and the number of different drivers that he has seen, it’s been incredible for me to learn from, and for me to get experience from. As every other person, he’s a great character on the team. He brings a lot of energy and the love and passion he has for the sport is amazing. It’s a big, big part of our success.”

Even with his brilliance, though, Robertson makes up only part of what propels what Wanser calls “The Brotherhood.” Brian Welling, who cut his teeth as a longtime assistant engineer at CGR for part of Dixon’s title runs, moved to the No. 10 Honda in the same role when Palou joined but is now serving as his performance engineer.

The team also hasn’t been afraid of looking outward for talent, either, adding Blair Bean from Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing to fill Welling’s previous role as assistant engineer. The team also has one of the best in the business as its crew chief in Ricky Davis, who has been with CGR for roughly 30 years.

“He’s been the assistant engineer for the last two years and Brian moved to the back of the timing stand to be the performance engineer,” Wanser said. “So, we still have Brian, who brings a wealth of experience tracking fuel, managing a variety of different things on the stand that need to be handled by how we structure the engineer and assistant engineer role. It’s good because he’s also a backup for Blair.”

While too humble to mention himself, Wanser is also another valuable spoke on the wheel. Robertson, Wanser and Welling might roll off the tongue like a law firm, but that trio also share the decisions on strategy, too.

“I manage the timing stand but between Julian, Brian and I, we do the strategy,” Wanser said. “Typically, unfortunately, there’s three of us, so even if you would have somebody who doesn’t agree we have two others that do, it’s easier to make the decision on what route we want to take.

“We’re constantly talking about strategy prior to the race and then as soon as the green flag waves we’re constantly, ‘So how far are we going on the fuel? What do we do if a yellow comes out?’ We’re constantly talking about that.

“When you add up all of that, my 20 years of doing strategy, Brian has been with the team 19 years now, Julian for over 30, it’s a lot of experience making those decisions. Fortunately, we’ve been on the right side of a lot of those decisions that make a big difference in the races.”

Together, they’ve helped bolster the legacy of CGR’s No. 10 Honda.

This year’s run to the title was mesmerizing, with six poles, eight wins, 13 podiums, 14 top fives, 15 top 10s and 778 laps led in 17 races, but the lineage of success is deeper rooted.

Arie Luyendyk was the first to pilot a No. 10 entry for CGR in 1993. Jimmy Vasser drove the entry in the 2000 Indy 500, with Thomas Scheckter and Darren Manning, among others, also behind the wheel in various partial or full-time drives from 2003-05. Trips to Victory Lane, though, remained elusive.

However, the late Dan Wheldon changed that in 2006 by winning two races, including the season-opening round at Homestead-Miami Speedway, en route to second in the championship (matching Sam Hornish Jr. on points but losing via a tiebreaker). Wheldon added four more wins over the next two years before Dario Franchitti took over at the end of 2008. In the No. 10, the Scotsman went on to capture three of his four titles (2009-11) and 12 wins, including the 2012 Indy 500. His other Indy 500 victory for CGR in 2012 saw the entry switched from No. 10 to No. 50 as part of an honor to then-sponsor Target on the company’s 50th anniversary in 2012.

There was stellar experience on the timing stand for Franchitti, too, with Chris Simmons, now CGR’s Director of Performance, as his race engineer, and Wanser on strategy. Although there have been comparisons over the connection Palou and Robertson share to what Franchitti and Simmons had, Wanser simply said, “It’s different.”

When Franchitti traded his helmet for a headset in an advisory role at CGR in 2014, the tough times returned as the entry only won twice over the next seven years (Tony Kanaan, 2014 at Fontana; Felix Rosenqvist, 2020 at Road America).

Ever since Palou joined, that winning history has been restored in the No. 10 Honda. Considering the Spaniard has already accomplished so much and is only 28 years old, he seems set on extending it. In order to do that, though, it takes a special supporting cast in pit lane.

“We’re literally acting like we’re a group of brothers and it’s very unique to have that,” Wanser said. “Sometimes engineers can be very focused and dry. Julian has an incredible sense of humor and so does everyone else. And so does Alex—a lot of people don’t get to see that. We literally are just having a good time.

“There’s no finger pointing. The unique thing is we’re all giving each other credit. No one’s taking credit; we’re all giving each other credit and we’re having a lot of fun doing it. That’s pretty rare. What we do is a very serious business and you have to stay focused, but there’s no substitute for having a good time and having a good time with those you are close with.”