Racer - Winter 2013

irst things first: How could ridiculously successful Chip Ganassi Racing, with two of the best IndyCar drivers of the past quarter-century, find itself struggling for pace in the first half of the year?

Chip’s explanation puts the blame largely on Honda Performance Development, but that’s not really how more objective types saw it. Yes, HPD’s single-turbo engines weren’t quite on par with the Ilmor-built twin-turbo Chevrolets at the start of the year, particularly in terms of drivability. But the Hondas had their strengths, too – notably punch out of low-speed corners.

And besides, Honda-powered cars lined up second and sixth for the opening round of the season in St. Petersburg. It’s just that neither of them were Ganassi cars. Dario Franchitti, Charlie Kimball and Scott Dixon started 10th, 14th and 20th.

What had in fact happened was that an ambitious shock-and-damper program had led the CGR team down the wrong path in the off-season, but the issue only really became apparent in the opening session of the opening round, as Dixon explains.

“Pre-season testing at Sebring and Barber was misleading,” he says. “Testing is often that way. Even after you see the times, you never know exactly how much pace you have relative to the others.

“But when we didn’t have any specific issues at St. Pete yet qualified only 20th, we realized there was quite a big problem.

That night we switched everything back to 2012 setups and in the race we climbed through the field and finished fifth.

“Then it was Barber [Motorsports Park], a smooth natural road course with flowing corners, and that masked our two main problems, which was how the car handled bumps and the drivability of the Honda engine at that time. So we qualified on the second row and finished second there.

“The problem is, so much work is done in simulation these days,” says Dixon. “If Sebring or Barber is your starting point, you work your way through a matrix of shock and damper setups and then from the data you get there, simulation suggests how it’ll apply to various other circuits.

But if at some point in the process you go

With 33 Indy car wins to his name, Scott Dixon is now seventh in the all-time winners list, behind Foyt, two Andrettis and three Unsers.

2013 INdycaR sERIEs

This revolution was televised. Dixon tells ABC/ESPN how he won Pocono. A week later he’d have two more victories to talk about, having dominated Toronto’s double-header. That drew him within

29 points of the championship lead, but there would be more twists to come…

off on a tangent, there’s no real-world testing to get you back on the right path.

You don’t discover it until it’s too late.”
Let’s be clear: the Ganassi cars weren’t
always behaving badly. Franchitti took pole
at Long Beach, for example (as Dixon lost
his fastest qualifying laps with a spin that left
him at the back of the grid and ended with
an 11th-place finish). It’s just that several
teams had made leaps in the off-season, so
retracing 2012 steps wasn’t enough to put
Chip’s boys at the front on an ongoing basis.

And there was little respite on ovals,
either. The Ganassi team as a whole was
invisible during the Month of May, its cars
notably undergeared for race day conditions
at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. As Dixon
observes, “Although my car was handling
fine, when you come out of Turn 4 already
on the limiter in sixth gear, it’s pretty
obvious you’re going nowhere today.”
In Iowa, Dixon scored a heat win
against one-third of the field. But in the
main event, his engine went lame, just
two weeks after gearbox failure rendered
him a DNF at Texas Motor Speedway.