In Sunday’s race from the streets of Toronto, Alex Palou earned a second place finish and extended his points lead to 117 points over Scott Dixon.
It was the vinyl of his new livery that helped him achieve that result, however, as it was the only thing holding his front wing together in the final laps.
Just after halfway through the race, Palou’s wing was seen to be canted sideways and scraping the track on the right side.
It became evident that the nose itself was split, and the gap widened as the laps went on. The vinyl wrap was slowly tearing, and just barely lasted long enough to allow Palou to take the checkered flag in second place.
“I could feel it dragging on turn two,” said Palou after the race. “I could feel it dragging. I was, like, ‘Oh, man, that’s not good.’
“Then also on the curve in turn five and in turn eight, but I didn’t think it was that bad. I could feel that it was increasing. Barry [Wanser] told me ten laps to go, and I thought, honestly, that we were not going to end the race with that nose.
“The right side started disappearing, and the left side started coming up. Yeah, it was really bad, honestly, and it was tough to drive because I didn’t really have the same grip to the right and to the left.
“Obviously it’s one of the most bumpiest tracks that we have on braking zones, on curves, and then turn ten it was the worst where I couldn’t do anything. I was just trying to go around [the dip in the track], but I was losing quite a lot of grip compared to the following guy.
“Yeah, I was pretty surprised. I think it was only the vinyl, the stickers that were holding it because there’s nothing else there. So, yeah, pretty impressive.”
If Palou’s wing had fallen off completely, it would have gone underneath the points leader’s front wheels and could have led to a dangerous situation with no steering.
As it was, the 85th and final lap came around just quickly enough to allow the wing to stay in place, securing a 13 position gain on the day.
It was just the latest example of seemingly everything working out well for Palou, who has been nearly faultless over the middle third of the season.
If even a poor qualifying result and a broken wing can’t stop him from extending his points lead, there may well be nothing his rivals can do to keep him from his second series championship.
