Itching for
Kiwi IndyCar star confident of his team’s potential
A rejuvenated Scott Dixon thinks his Honda package will be more competitive this year with a new aero kit being used in the IndyCar Series.
The New Zealander will kick-off his 16th campaign with the Chip Ganassi outfit at Monday’s season-opening round on the streets of St Petersburg, Florida and fans will get to see the new-look package in race mode for the first time.
Initial testing has Dixon believing the advantage that his Chevrolet rivals enjoyed last year won’t be as significant, if any advantage at all.
“The Chevrolet had considerably more downforce at street courses, low grip road courses and short oval — maybe 500-700 more pounds of downforce and yet they still had more drag,” Dixon told the Herald.
“Penske and the good [Chevrolet] teams are still going to be very strong I just think you may see more of a mix with the good Honda teams being closer to winning races than we saw last year.”
The new aero kit will see cars have less downforce and Dixon’s Chip Ganassi Team has opted to keep some
16th season with Ganassi Racing
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and 18th overall.
40 career race wins (fourth alltime).
● Series champion 2003, 2008,
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2013, 2015. Top three in championship 11 times.
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valuable test days up their sleeve for once the season kicks off.
“The car feels good — it is definitely a big change of direction,” he said. “We have been gradually adding downforce over the last five years and now it is almost a reduction of 25-30 per cent, especially on the road course and short oval.
“A different direction but it should make the cars a little trickier to drive and probably to get them in the box that you need for the race.
“Everything has gone pretty well in testing. We have kept a few test dates to the end of this month — we saved a few more to use later in the season.”
The traditional series opener has been a place where Dixon has succeeded although he has