Double the Pato

 Alex Palou wrapped up his record-tying fourth straight IndyCar title yesterday in Milwaukee, launching him into the IndyCar stratosphere alongside the likes of A.J. Foyt and Scott Dixon, which is not a bad stratosphere to inhabit.

His fifth title overall -- all in the last six years, mind you -- puts him behind only Foyt (seven) and Dixon (sixth) in IndyCar history. He's the first driver since Sebastien Bourdais from 2004 to 2007 to win four straight championships, and, at 29, he's the youngest driver ever to win five total.

In other words, he's the Man. And likely to be the Man for quite a few more years.

But that wasn't all the precedent-denting that went on at the Milwaukee Mile yesterday.

Did you hear what Pato O'Ward did?

He won two races. In the same day.

Won the regularly scheduled 250-miler, outrunning Scott McLaughlin on exhausted rubber in the late going. Then, three hours later, he won the rain-interrupted Milwaukee Mile 250 from Saturday, ducking under David Malukas on a late restart to complete the double play.

O'Ward was leading that one when persistent rain red-flagged it after 90 laps on Saturday. So he won one race while simultaneously leading another, which he admitted in the first post-race was Weird City.

"Yeah, I've never been in this position before ... pretty crazy," he said. "We could make history today by being the first IndyCar driver to win two races in one day."

He was wrong about that, but you couldn't blame him for not knowing. He's only 27, after all. The last time an IndyCar driver won two races in one day happened 18 years before he was born; that driver was Rick Mears, surprise, surprise, who swept both ends of a doubleheader in Atlanta way back in 1981.

Now the Double Pato joins the Richard Repeat in the books, while Palou becomes the first driver in 19 years to win four straight championships. Not a bad day for history at the Mile, which has seen quite a bit of it.

First guy to win an IndyCar race there, after all?

Wilbur Shaw. In 1933.