Red Bull’s latest silly-season headline had the right ingredients: a multiple IndyCar champion, a vacant 2026 seat, and a team resetting after a turbulent summer. But the Alex Palou-to-Red Bull story looks more like smoke than fire.
IndyStar floated the idea this week that Red Bull has sounded out Palou for a move to partner four-time F1 world champion Max Verstappen from 2026. On paper, it’s a fun fit: Palou’s been the class of IndyCar, winning four of the last five titles and this year’s Indy 500, and he’s shown the sort of relentless, low-mistake form that tends to translate anywhere.
Reality, though, is less romantic. Red Bull sources have pushed back on any talks, and Palou’s camp went a step further. “I have not talked to, nor have been contacted by any F1 team about Alex,” his representative Roger Yasukawa told PlanetF1.com. Chip Ganassi, never one to mince words, called the whole thing “clickbait,” adding he’d spoken to both Palou and his management, and “they know nothing about it.”
There is, reportedly, an F1 escape clause in Palou’s Ganassi deal, which runs through the end of next year. But even that nugget doesn’t shift the underlying message from the Spaniard’s side: his focus remains on IndyCar, and on winning more with the car and team currently setting the standard.
So why did this catch fire? Because Red Bull still hasn’t solved its 2026 riddle. With Christian Horner ousted in July and Laurent Mekies now in as team principal and CEO, the team’s immediate priority was stability. Verstappen is committed for 2026, but the second seat remains the question that won’t go away.
Yuki Tsunoda’s promotion from the Racing Bulls outfit to the RB21 hasn’t yet yielded the sort of authority Red Bull needs next to Verstappen, despite recent upticks. Liam Lawson got a look earlier this year and didn’t seize it. Isack Hadjar is fast but green. In that chaos, Palou is exactly the kind of proven operator who makes sense on a whiteboard.
But a whiteboard isn’t a paddock. The lure of F1 is real, especially with 2026’s reset on the horizon, yet the idea that Palou would leap at a seat only to be measured daily against Verstappen feels… optimistic. As he said after winning the Indy 500: “There’s not many seats I’d consider changing (for)… I don’t really know there’s many seats I’d want to be in compared to the [Chip Ganassi car] right now. It’s pretty tough to beat. The fun part of being a racecar driver isn’t being famous. I like winning races.”
Until something concrete lands in front of him, expect Palou to keep doing just that. And expect Red Bull’s second-seat carousel to keep spinning.
