NASHVILLE, Tenn. – His 9-month-old daughter, Lucia, still is too young for bedtime stories, but Alex Palou believes his own career would be quite the fairy tale to share with her someday.

An unknown racer bursts into IndyCar and turns enough heads to join a powerhouse organization in his second season.

He stunningly wins in his debut on the way to becoming the first Spanish champion in series history. Less than a year later, he is embroiled in a contractual mess and vows to leave the team.

He returns for an apparent farewell year but wins a second title with a virtually perfect season and decides to stay (which triggers a lawsuit from a rival team). He then becomes the first repeat IndyCar champion in more than a decade.

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It’s easy to see the reason team owner Chip Ganassi has proclaimed Palou’s career to be “a storybook unlike any other,” and why Palou still can’t get over his surreal odyssey.

“If you look back, we have had a crazy four years,” Palou told the IndyStar over a plate of scrambled eggs and avocado at the downtown Renaissance Hotel on the morning after claiming his third IndyCar championship in four seasons. “And I’m just glad that everything worked out for us.

“We’ve had a lot of drama. It’s like everything was amazing — you win the first championship — and then everything goes to hell. And then suddenly it’s all even better than when it started.”

As he ends his fifth season in IndyCar, life is better than ever for Palou.

He and wife Esther are building a house in Indianapolis that should be finished by December when they will make a Christmas visit to their native Spain for the first time in nearly a year.

“This is our home,” Palou said. “One of the goals Esther and I had was to live at some point in America. We like the culture; it just fits our lifestyle.”

And the series’ second-youngest three-time champion is settling in at the track, too. Palou, 27, increasingly was outspoken during his fifth season.

He expressed disappointment on NASCAR beating IndyCar to Mexico City (“Everybody is overtaking us left, right, left, right.”). He has targeted weekend scheduling as his top pet peeve (Palou wants more practice and a mandatory three days of on-track activity, noting that a two-day cram session at Nashville was “pretty bad”).

But there is a limit to how much Palou will embrace the champion’s megaphone. He tends to prefer remaining outside the spotlight despite his eye-popping results.

Hours after Sunday’s season finale at Nashville Superspeedway, video surfaced on social media after midnight of Will Power (the only driver who entered the race with a shot of beating Palou for the title) sitting in on the drums with a honky tank band at Tootsie’s on Broadway.

After a few celebratory pizzas and beers with family and friends at his trackside bus, Palou was in bed by 10:45 p.m.

But it would be inaccurate to label him a shrinking violet.

“A side of him that a lot of people don’t see is he’s got a great sense of humor,” Ganassi said. “Alex is as serious as they get as a race driver. I can tell you he has a good, sharp wit. I like that a lot about him.”

Though revealing occasional glimpses of his deadpan (he wryly pleaded ignorance of further championship obligations after Sunday night’s title ceremony), Palou is selective about his more outgoing side.

He knows that hurts his potential popularity relative to charismatic stars such as Pato O’Ward, but he doesn’t begrudge the choice to sacrifice some appeal for performance.

“There’s a lot of drivers that they allow everybody to see that side, and I’m not that kind of guy, at least now,” Palou said. “With the people that work with me, I joke a lot. But when I’m racing, it’s my time to be focused and not to be joking around. For me, it doesn’t work to be joking with other people before driver intros or joking with fans.

“I get it’s super important, and I know that would bring me a lot of other good stuff, but I know I wouldn’t perform as well on track, and that’s not me, either. It would be a fake me. But when I work with my team, I joke all the time.”

The team often jokes back because “they have to keep up with me somehow,” Palou said with a laugh. “We have a ton of fun.”

That includes mechanics lobbing daily “dad jokes” at a driver who still is figuring out that concept in his first year of fatherhood.

“Sometimes dad jokes are tough for me,” Palou said. “Because it’s a reference to some English- or American-specific word, and I’m like, ‘What do you mean?’ so by the time they explain, it’s not funny anymore. But the dad jokes still are fun. Maybe I’ll start getting into it.”

It’s somewhat astounding the team can laugh at all given how ugly things got in midseason 2022. Palou signed with Arrow McLaren, and Ganassi took him to court in a contract dispute that last months.

Palou recalled being ostracized by Ganassi and teammate Scott Dixon at an awkward team dinner in Nashville before the Music City Grand Prix two years ago.

“I’m not proud about it, but I’m proud about our comeback, which didn’t take five years,” Palou said. “It took one year. It was quite easy to just say, ‘Hey, just like we lost one year in ‘22 with distractions, let’s not lose another one,’ and everything started working since. And this year it’s been 2021 when I had nothing to worry about.”

Said Ganassi: “I think the biggest change that he’s gone through is having a daughter. I think that’s brought him even more focus on his career and his life, his family. There’s a lot of speed in that.”

Speed is a family affair for Palou. He celebrates his racing accomplishments on a WhatsApp chain with 20 relatives, many of whom were present at his fifth birthday party when he jumped in a go-kart (his big present) for the first time on April 1, 2002.

His dad and a few others were in attendance Sunday at Nashville.

“As a family, we’re all very close, and we all started in my racing together,” Palou said. “We’ve had a lot of emotions in a very short period of time that we never thought we would have because everybody is part of it.

“We never thought that we would have an opportunity just to live my dream of being in IndyCar. And now you win your third championship and it’s like, ‘What just happened?’ It’s very cool.”

You even might say it’s storybook.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: IndyCar: How Alex Palou won three titles in four years