It’s rare that you get a team owner come to a press conference with their winning driver and declare, actually, another one of their drivers should have won!
But that’s what happened with Chip Ganassi at the end of last weekend’s 2025 IndyCar season-opener in St Petersburg.
You might think that's a bit disrespectful, but it shows how highly Ganassi rates the driver in question: Scott Dixon.
Alex Palou, the race winner, had followed Dixon for almost the entire race. Both had started on the soft tyre and were able to ditch it after a lap one caution, which meant unlike those who started on the hards, Palou, Dixon and the others on that strategy would not have to do a long stint on the rapidly degrading and eventually very slow soft tyre.
However, at their last stops with just under 30 of the 100 laps to go, Palou was called in a lap earlier than Dixon, and that undercut proved to be the race winning move.
Of course, Palou had to nail perfect in and out laps to undercut Dixon and get ahead. He fully deserved to end up winning the race in how he executed everything on his side.
But actually Ganassi had wanted to pit Dixon on lap 72 just like Palou. It just couldn’t get that information to him quick enough because his radio wasn’t working.
“If everything was 100%, he would have won, it was simple,” said Chip Ganassi of Dixon.
“He would have won the race. The race was over. It was one stop to go, and we pitted a lap later than we wanted him to. That was the race. That was the difference between he and Palou.”
Dixon later added: “You have a fuel light, you know when the car is going to run out. I didn't know if they could hear me, so I was just telling them I'm just going to run to the light and see what happens.
“Ultimately I think for me, it was just one lap too long. I should have pitted maybe when I saw the 10 car coming in [the #10 car, Palou, was behind, so Dixon would have had to watch him in the mirrors and react in time, not easy!].”
Dixon also confirmed this was his first race in his whole IndyCar career without a radio.
It was a majestic performance considering Dixon didn’t really know when others around him were saving their equipment or pushing, how much push to pass they had, what fuel mixture he needed to be running or any communication with the pits. And he still pulled off a last lap pass on Josef Newgarden for second.
“I was a bit surprised that he was going to stay out with that traffic, so [he was] super unfortunate,” added Palou.
“We normally don't have issues like that. When you have a strategy race like it was today where you might have enough fuel to make it and you don't want to always go to the end, like as drivers, we get alarms of fuel, and then you know you need to pit.
“But maybe that was not the right thing for the strategy, and it was not.
“Unfortunate for Scott, but at least we finished 1-2.”
This whole scenario triggered an interesting thought: that while this was an isolated incident and bad luck, I do wonder if Dixon’s last few years in IndyCar have been underestimated.
Let’s start by saying, Palou deserves every bit of credit he gets for how incredible he is, and his team too. But one area he has an upper hand here is that his #10 team has basically been unchanged since he came in 2021.
It's never just Palou winning on his own, and it's never his team gifting him victories. They work hand in hand and should be applauded for it.
On the other hand, Dixon's engineers and mechanics have rotated a lot more. Certainly you wonder how many championships Dixon might have had if he had the people - and the stability of the people - on the #10 car as Palou has.
Dixon is 44 and starting the 25th season of his IndyCar career. Palou is 27 and starting the sixth year of his.
I wonder if some people are too prone to making easy judgements on Dixon vs Palou just because one of them is (providing Dixon doesn’t end up defying time itself) closer to the end of their career than the start whereas Palou is at the peak of his.
If, for example, Dixon was 25, would there be a lot more inspection of how much change there has been in his side of the team and how much bad luck with things like radios breaking he’s had lately?
I don’t think Dixon’s slowing down, and I think he’s had a lot of misfortune to go with the instability of personnel around him since his last championship in 2020.
And none of this is to take away from Palou’s achievements as they are deserved. It’s just an interesting chain of events. And maybe a hint that people are writing off Dixon when they actually should be praising him for being better than ever.
