Sunday at the Milwaukee Mile was Pato O’Ward’s day – until it wasn’t. But it took something historically special to upstage the driver who became the first to win two NTT INDYCAR SERIES races in the same day since Rick Mears in 1981.

Yes, the driver doing the upstaging was Alex Palou (photo, top), who with a pair of top-10 finishes in the Snap-on INDYCAR Weekend clinched his fifth season championship and fourth in succession. Only A.J. Foyt (seven) and Scott Dixon (six) have more titles in a career, and before Palou came along, only Sebastien Bourdais had won four championships in a row.

Palou secured this season crown ahead of the final race for the second straight year. He will roll into WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca for this weekend’s Mission Foods Grand Prix of Monterey (Sunday, 2:30 p.m. ET, FOX, FOX Deportes) with no pressure clouding his vision. He has won each of the past two races on the Monterey Peninsula and three of the past four.

Palou spent the two Milwaukee races in a protective mode, only occasionally putting his No. 10 DHL Chip Ganassi Racing Honda in a precarious position. At one point he had light tire-to-tire contact with another driver’s car, but he quickly backed out of the fight.

Admittedly, Palou didn’t have a strong car Sunday, and that’s why he so happily accepted finishing 10th in the Snap-on Makers and Fixers 250 and fifth in the Snap-on Milwaukee Mile 250 (due to Saturday’s rain delay those races were completed in reverse order). Palou ended the day with an insurmountable 100-point lead over Arrow McLaren’s Christian Lundgaard.

Pato O'Ward

Arrow McLaren had strong performances in Milwaukee, with O’Ward (photo, above) scoring his second and third wins of the season by leading a combined 174 laps. Doing so pushed his career total to 12 wins, and he will head to Laguna Seca with a chance to repeat as the season runner-up, something that looked unachievable just a few weeks ago.

Lundgaard used the best oval-track day of his career to score finishes of third and sixth, and that allowed him to climb to second in the standings with one race left. He leads Andretti Global’s Kyle Kirkwood by two points and O’Ward by four.

David Malukas

O’Ward, Palou and Lundgaard were among the eight series drivers with top-10 finishes in both of Sunday’s races. Another was Team Penske’s David Malukas (photo, above), who despite coming home second and fourth dropped a position in the standings (O’Ward took fourth from him).

The other drivers with a pair of top-10 finishes were Juncos Hollinger Racing’s Rinus VeeKay (third and seventh), Team Penske’s Scott McLaughlin (fourth and second), Ed Carpenter Racing’s Christian Rasmussen (fifth and eighth) and Andretti Global’s Marcus Ericsson (ninth and ninth). VeeKay’s efforts, coupled with the struggles of Andretti Global’s Will Power (a pit road speeding penalty while leading one race, hitting the wall in the other), lifted the Dutch driver back into the top 10.

Kirkwood had the day’s toughest luck and never put pressure on the 91-point lead Palou brought to the event. Kirkwood finished one position behind Palou in the race that ended first – that was technically Race 2 – but was 15th in Race 1. Those results dropped him from second to third in the standings.

Through it all, O’Ward shined on a day like never before. He would have soaked up all the glory if not for that pesky Palou winning yet another series championship.