For the second year running, Honda left an IndyCar season with every trophy that matters. The 2026 NTT INDYCAR SERIES closed Sunday at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca with Alex Palou wrapping his fifth drivers’ title, Kyle Kirkwood locking in second in the standings, Dennis Hauger claiming rookie of the year, and Honda completing a sweep of the manufacturers’ championship and the Indianapolis 500. The sport hasn’t seen this kind of clean table-clearing since the last time Honda did it, in 2025.
Palou’s championship math was settled a week earlier at Milwaukee, but the Chip Ganassi Racing driver still rolled into Laguna Seca as the story of the season. Five titles. Four in a row. He is 29 years old and now sits third on the all-time IndyCar championship list. His 2026 campaign produced six victories and anchored a Honda season that totaled 10 wins and 13 pole positions across 18 races. Sunday’s race wasn’t his cleanest, Palou finishing eighth, though the Astor Cup was already his.
Kirkwood’s P2 finish in the race translated directly to P2 in the championship, the best standings result of his IndyCar career. The Andretti Global driver won twice this year, taking the Java House Grand Prix of Arlington and the Freedom 250 Grand Prix of Washington D.C., both inaugural events on the 2026 calendar. That Honda holds first and second in the drivers’ standings for the third time in four years is a structural advantage that tends not to happen by accident: 13 of 15 Honda-powered cars scored manufacturers’ championship points during the season.
Hauger’s rookie title was clinched despite neither of his two race appearances at Laguna Seca going to distance, the Dale Coyne Racing driver listed as a non-finisher. It didn’t matter. Honda has now taken 12 of the last 14 rookie of the year awards, a pipeline-development record that suggests the manufacturer’s involvement at the entry level is as deliberate as its work at the front of the grid.
Felix Rosenqvist, who won the Indianapolis 500 back in May in what Honda characterized as the closest finish in the race’s 110-year history, added a fourth-place result Sunday. Marcus Armstrong came home seventh, Marcus Ericsson ninth, and Kyffin Simpson tenth, rounding out a Honda top-10 that was as deep as any in the field.
The manufacturers’ championship is Honda’s 12th overall in American open-wheel competition and arrives exactly 30 years after the company’s first titles in 1996. That anniversary framing is easy marketing copy, but the underlying numbers are harder to argue with: 10 victories, 13 poles, five podium sweeps, and a rookie title in a season where the only championship Honda didn’t win was one it didn’t enter.
The series heads to St. Petersburg in March 2027 for its season opener. Palou returns as the defending champion for the fifth time, Kirkwood as the closest thing to a challenger Honda produced against itself, and Hauger as a sophomore with a title already on his shelf. It will take something unusual to break the pattern Honda has built over the last two seasons. The question is whether any team outside Ganassi has started building it yet.
Source: Honda. Images courtesy of Honda.
