Behind Chip Ganassi Racing’s historic year
Team could lock up top 2 spots before final race
For Scott Dixon and Alex Palou, it’s been a season of “what ifs.”
Palou’s have been fortunate – recovering from a pitlane crash in the Indy 500, having podium contenders crash behind him at Detroit, watching Andretti Autosport bungle Colton Herta’s strategy at Road America and Palou’s front wing hanging on by a sticker at Toronto, among others. Dixon’s have been regrettable – crashing a car with podium potential in practice at Road America and getting crashed out at Long Beach while running 6th.
That’s what has set the current championship stage.
With two races to go, Palou holds an almost insurmountable lead over his six-time champion teammate – 74 points with a maximum of 108 up for grabs at Portland and Laguna Seca. Last Sunday, the championship leader arrived at World Wide Technology Raceway with a 101-point lead and four challengers still alive. Despite a nine-place grid penalty for an unapproved engine change and an otherwise quiet race day at a track he’s averaged finishing 14th at during his career, his 7th-place finish was good enough to keep Dixon, the runaway race-winner, at arm’s length.
But in an era where IndyCar titles are hardly ever – not since 2005 – decided before the season-finale, one team now knows it’s sealed the Astor Cup with two races to go. Josef Newgarden’s two crashes in as many races – one to start the Gallagher GP (that helped propel Dixon to his win) and the other to end his day last Sunday while on a five-oval win streak – means Dixon or Palou will be this year’s champion.
It will mean Chip Ganassi Racing’s third in four seasons, fourth over the last six and 10 in the last 16 campaigns.
“And it was acknowledged that we achieved what we set out to do, but we haven’t celebrated as a team yet. We certainly will, but I think everybody celebrated a little bit (Sunday) a little bit by just exhaling,” longtime CGR managing director Mike Hull told IndyStar this week. “Maybe that’s the short version of celebrating we get, being able to inhale and exhale.
“Of course, the upside for where this is is obvious. Unless everybody misses their wakeup calls (for Portland and Laguna Seca), we’re going to finish 1st-2nd or 1st-3rd in the championship, and that’s quite an achievement – particularly for how much this series prides itself in having equal cars through the grid. It’s a great testament to how hard this team has worked, not just in 2023 but how hard they’ve worked over the years to do what we’re about to do.”
And what Dixon and Palou have an opportunity to do, despite CGR’s championship dominance in recent years, is a rare occurrence for the team. Not since Dario Franchitti’s return from his oneyear NASCAR sabbatical in his debut season with CGR (2009) has the team had drivers sweep the top two spots in the championship race. Still, that year’s three-way battle included Team Penske’s Ryan Briscoe and came down to a brilliant fuel save from Franchitti to pull it off, after Dixon had won the penultimate race to take the points edge into the finale.
Never since then has CGR unquestionably put together the best two seasons in the sport, and whenever Penske has come away with titles since (2014, 2016, 2017, 2019 and 2022), they’ve had the runner-up driver, too. For Franchitti’s other two CGR titles, Will Power played spoiler in the middle, and when Palou burst onto the scene in 2021, Newgarden and Pato O’Ward finished ahead of Dixon.
Outside of Alex Zanardi’s CART championship he clinched with four races to go for CGR in 1998, Hull and company haven’t been able to so confidently soar into the closing stretches of a season.
For Dixon, Palou’s lone challenger for Sunday’s penultimate race of the year (and if he doesn’t clinch, at Laguna Seca, too), Hull said that’ll come with plusses and minuses.
The No. 9 crew will know almost exactly what the No. 10 will be doing the moment the 26-year-old Spaniard straps into his cockpit on race day. But that information flows both ways.
“They’ll both have a peak into what’s going on with their teammate, their strategy, how they’re preparing their car, how they read the racetrack, how they do the segments in the race, what their tire strategy probably is – or most of it, anyways,” Hull said with a chuckle. “You still have to make your own decisions based on the information you have, but let’s face it, having teammates like them who are willing to share like they do helps all of us.”
Hull made a point to marvel at how not just Palou and Dixon, but the entire team has helped lay the foundation for Honda’s hopeful victory in the manufacturer’s championship, including seven of HPD’s 10 wins and 15 of their 23 podiums, despite just two of their 10 poles.
“Look at what this team has done. It’s built to run four cars, and this year’s results have been the best of any season running, again with three in the top-10 (like a year ago),” he said. “I think we’re building what it takes to win with multiple entries and also by showing that we don’t favor one over another.
“But we also can’t sit on that, because we know our competition will get us quickly if we do. This has to be a springboard for us going forward.”
Even after his two wins, Dixon continues to brand his 2023 campaign as a ‘trying one’ – a variation of a phrase he began using even before the 500 when he was midway through a stretch that would take him until July to notch his second podium of the year. And yet, the 43-year-old is in the midst of the most consistent, reliable season of his career. Never before has he finished all but one race 7th or better.
Show this single-season resume to someone in the IndyCar paddock – 14 top-10s, nine top-5s, four podiums and two wins – and just about anyone would guess that has ‘champion’ written all over it. That Dixon could win his third consecutive race while leading the most laps and have Palou clinch his championship unequivocally by finishing on the podium says everything about just how strong CGR has been throughout 2023.
“I think the No. 10 car has had an almost perfect season. They’ve done everything great. When people have those years, it can be a bit hard to watch for other competitors in the field,” Dixon said Sunday post-race. “I’ve been in that place, too, where anything you kind of tough just kind of turns to gold or goes in the direction you want it to.
“I think that’s very special, but until we’re mathematically out of it, we’ll keep pushing as hard as possible, as we always do. It would take a pretty big hit, maybe a mechanical or a crash to make it interesting for Laguna, but anything is possible, right? The goal for us the last two races is to try and win both of them.”