Ganassi Reflects on 17 IndyCar Championships

By Dennis Krause

Chip Ganassi Racing enters this weekend’s Borchetta Bourbon Music City Grand Prix presented by WillScot having clinched the championship recently at Portland International Raceway with two races remaining this season.

Alex Palou, driver of the No. 10 Chip Ganassi Racing Honda, has had a historic season as he becomes just the fourth driver to three-peat as champion. His eight wins in a season ties him for fourth most in the all time list and he’s the sixth driver in series history to have four or more championships.

It’s also the 17th INDYCAR SERIES championship for the team, tying Team Penske for most titles in series history.

For Ganassi, this season has been particularly rewarding.

“Obviously to have a driver like that under your roof is a great thing,” commented Ganassi. “You pair a great driver with a great group of people, great engine, great tires, great chassis, a group of people that know what they're doing when it comes to race strategy and screwing cars together and what have you, you end up with a pretty good package.

“We obviously knew going into the season we thought we had a good package. Quite frankly, none of us could have dreamed this type of year really. I think you would have thought I was a little boisterous or whatever had I predicted this in the beginning of the year.”

As far as tying Penske for the most championships in series history, Ganassi noted that racing is all he does.

“I don't have any other businesses. I wish I did sometimes. No, this is all I do. That's all I want to do.

“I love racing. I love being at the front. I love all forms of racing. I can appreciate every form. Over the years we've been involved in many. I love the business. Our team is not overloaded with money, but we get the most out of the money we spend. We're not the most well-funded team out there.

“I got a great group of people that know how to get the most out of what they work with. We have a lot of Swiss Army knives around the race shop that we get the most out of our people. I'm really proud of them.

“This is another championship for them.”

One of the unique features of Ganassi’s 17 INDYCAR titles, is that Juan Pablo Montoya is the only driver to notch a single championship (1999). Jimmy Vasser, Alex Zanardi, Dario Franchitti, Scott Dixon and Palou have all won multiple titles.

Ganassi admits he doesn’t have an answer for why that is.

“I don't know. We obviously have a driver that understands what makes the car work. We have a group of people that understand what makes the car work.

“I've got to be honest with you, too. I think you can look at not each championship, but certainly the few of them here and there, I'm not blind to the fact, I should say, that some of my strongest competitors are in disarray right now. That's part of it.

"I mean, part of our success - I'm not throwing anybody under the bus - but part of our success is other teams are having some challenges right now. But that's part of it. It's part of it. It's part of the game.”

Palou has won the championship four times in the last five years. That’s Michael Schumacher, Lewis Hamilton and Jimmie Johnson kind of domination. How does a driver and team combination hit on that kind of success rate?

For Ganassi, it comes down to giving the driver what he wants.

“If you take out the obvious things like talent and ability and good engineering and whatever with all these people, I'd like to think in our team we work a little harder at giving drivers what they need.

“That might be different for Palou than it is Dixon, or different than Kyffin (Simpson). Different people need different things. We're not etched in granite with every single thing we do on the team. We personalize whether it's the setups or treatment of people. Everyone's not the same.

“I'd like to think we do a good job of getting the most out of our people from top to bottom, from the drivers all the through the organization. It's because I think I take the time to talk to these people. I'd like to think I do anyway.

“This is what I do seven days a week. I work hard at it. My team works hard at it. That's what we're trying to do.

“I don't have any other way to explain it.”

When Ganassi signed Palou after the 2020 season, he didn’t think he’d win four titles in the next five years. But what did Ganassi see in him when Palou was driving for Dale Coyne Racing?

“The thing that stood out to us, really it's the ultimate question you ask yourself in this particular sport of INDYCAR racing, the first and foremost question you have to ask yourself is, Does the guy like Indianapolis? I don't care who you bring there, some guys take to it and some don't.

“When he was with Dale Coyne, he was pitted right next to us in the race. They had terrible pit stops. They still finished fourth in the race. Said to me that kid likes this place. That's what we look for, first and foremost: Can he get himself around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway? If you like that, that's a big start.

“Hey, we've seen plenty of guys that are great drivers that haven't really figured it out there yet. So that was originally what we saw.

“To say that did we see four championships in five years in him, absolutely not. You would have thought I was off my rocker if I said that in 2020.”

Ganassi maintains it takes a team to win in INDYCAR. Employees like Ricky Davis, crew chief on Palou’s No. 10 car, Julian Robertson, Palou’s race engineer, Barry Wanser, Senior Manager of Racing Operations and strategist for Palou and team managing director, Mike Hull, for example, have been with the team for 25 years or longer. According to Ganassi, there’s speed in tenure.

“Having these guys around, understanding how we work, how we get things done, again how to work with each other, it all plays together to make a team.

“It takes a team to win these days. It takes everybody and everything to do it the way we do it. I don't know how other teams do it. Way we do it, it takes everybody and everything.

“Having those guys around with those years of experience unquestionably adds to our success from time to time.”

Ganassi noted that success has meant more to his employees than maybe a larger paycheck somewhere else.

“We try to give our people what they need. I mean, I don't think we pay the most money. You have to like to win. There's plenty of people that have left our team. A lot of them come back after. They go, Geez, I didn't know what that meant winning all those races and what it's like when you don't. I've heard that story more than 10 times, so...

“I don't know. You have to have a will to win and a will to be a part of the team. A lot of teams say they're a team, but they sure don't look like it to me. I don't know. I can't worry about everybody else's team. I have to worry about my own.

“I try to do the best job for our people. It's all I know how to do. It's all I know what to do. I try to treat everybody right, treat everybody like I want to be treated.”

For Ganassi, now is not the time to reflect on what has been an incredible, historic season for the team. That will come later.

“Yeah, I mean, we begin to do that in the off-season. Obviously we're focused right now on Nashville. We want to go win that race. We'll talk about the championship certainly in off-season, celebrate it the right way. I couldn't be more proud of my team. I couldn't be more proud of Palou.

“Let me point out one thing I pointed out the other day. It wasn't that long ago in motor racing, I remember in 1997 or '8 with Zanardi, we had won the championship before the end of the year. We went to Australia was the last race of the season in there somewhere. I remember our engineer Morris Nunn was amazed that Zanardi had the ability to want to go out and win even though he'd already won the championship.

“For young people today, that seems like an obvious thing maybe, but it wasn't that many years ago that it wasn't so obvious. Teams at the end of the year, they almost pulled their cars off the track because they didn't want to crash them at the end of the year when there were no points to gain or no championship to win.

“You have that on one end to today where we have Alex. I walked up to him on Friday night at Milwaukee. I said, What do you think about this weekend?

“He said, What do I think about it? I think we want to win.

“That's a great thing for a guy to say after winning a championship already. I think there's a lot to be said for that. It's not a new phenomenon for us, but it's certainly something that not that many years ago was a different take, if you will.”

It’s been 15 seasons since a driver has won the Indianapolis 500 and INDYCAR championship in the same year since Franchitti did it for Ganassi. The team’s success this season is something not to be taken for granted, said Ganassi.

“When we win a race, back at the race shop, we do some things,” Ganassi explained. We have a luncheon, talk about the win and whatever. Just recently we had a show of hands about how many people have ever won the Indy 500, how many people have been involved in a team that won the championship. I was surprised at the number of people that hands were raised, that it was their first Indy 500 or their first championship.

“I took a little extra time in the meeting to explain, Don't take this stuff for granted because it doesn't happen that often. It looks easy, but it's not.

“You can tell me how many times we won the Indy 500. I can tell you how many times we've lost it, okay? These things don't happen often, and they don't happen matter-of-factly. It takes a lot of work on a lot of people's part and a lot of luck.

“We've been blessed with that this year so far. We want to keep it going.”

The longer Ganassi remains in the business of racing, the more meaningful his successes have become, particularly this season.

“Yeah, I mean, I think back to when I was a kid, I just wanted to race cars. You start racing cars, you start having success, you want to have more success, so you work harder at it.

"But my emotions today for winning races are more than they used to be because I think now, at my age, I appreciate them even more than maybe I did when I was in my 20s and 30s. Yeah, I appreciate them even more.”

Championship number 17 is certainly one to celebrate and appreciate.

Dennis Krause has spent decades covering all forms of motorsports, including over 40 Indianapolis 500s, with stints at WIBA Radio, PIT PASS - Radio’s Premier Motorsports Magazine and Motorsports Minute. Follow him on X @DennisKrause500 or motorsportsminute.bluesky.social or motorsportsminute on Threads or MotorsportsMinute+ on Facebook.

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