After 25 years, Dixon leaves Ganassi with championships, records and family bonds

MONTEREY, Calif. — Scott Dixon arrived at Chip Ganassi Racing needing a lifeline.

Nearly a quarter-century later, he leaves as one of the pillars of the organization.

The significance of the partnership was on display Friday at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca, where Chip Ganassi presented Dixon with a Rolex Submariner desktop clock to commemorate their 25 seasons together.

It was a fitting gift for a relationship Ganassi believes will stand apart in IndyCar history.

“The last 25 years, that’ll be down in the history books, and everybody will remember that for just what it was — 25 great years together,” said Ganassi, who joked he had to tell Dixon to pull himself together as the six-time NTT INDYCAR Series champion became emotional.

Dixon heads into his final race with CGR on Sunday with mixed emotions after a relationship that has produced the second most championships in INDYCAR history, an Indianapolis 500 victory, 58 of his 59 wins and a bond with Ganassi that survived everything from dominant seasons to Dixon once destroying two race cars in the span of roughly four laps.

There is no simple way for Dixon to summarize what it means to walk away.

“Mixed emotions, I guess,” Dixon said. “Kind of how the whole year has been, to be honest. I guess a lot of reminiscing. … I guess it’ll get emotional sometime.”

For Ganassi, the connection long ago grew beyond the normal relationship between a team owner and driver.

“More than a family,” Ganassi said. “He’s a big part of the family here that will endure forever. No matter where he is or where he goes, there will always be a bond.”

The partnership began almost by accident.

Dixon was driving for PacWest Racing when financial problems crippled the team early during the 2002 season. He had recently signed a contract extension with PacWest and finally was beginning to make some money when the operation collapsed.

Toyota helped find him another home, and Ganassi expanded his organization to accommodate Dixon and several former PacWest employees.

“For me, it was a lifeline,” Dixon said. “Chip definitely drove a hard bargain. I wouldn’t say I drove for free, but it was pretty much close to it.”

Ganassi remembers the arrival far more modestly than what ultimately followed.

“Scott came to us at a time when the team he was with was going out of business, and he’d only won one race,” Ganassi said. “Nobody really knew. I mean, they knew he was a good driver, but at the time we weren’t thinking about 25 years. We were thinking about next year.”

Instead, Ganassi said, it became “a storybook film” of record-setting success.

Dixon quickly found something at Ganassi he had not experienced everywhere else in his career: an organization where nearly every conversation centered on the same thing.

Winning.

“When you walk through the doors, all anybody ever spoke about was winning,” Dixon said. “Which was kind of refreshing coming from a lot of the teams that I had done, even in junior categories. But at the same rate, it was daunting to be with such a powerhouse.”

The relationship truly took hold after Ganassi moved to the Indy Racing League in 2003.

Dixon qualified deep in the field for the season opener at Homestead-Miami Speedway but won the race. The next day, hungover after celebrating with friends, Dixon woke to a telephone call from Ganassi.

“He’s like, ‘Man, that was really cool. Well done. I don’t think you understand how big of a deal that was,’” Dixon recalled. “I think that’s when it kind of really sunk in. This is cool.”

Dixon won the championship that season.

It would hardly be his last.

Yet the success never made Dixon believe Ganassi’s approval was guaranteed.

“Chip is in this business to win,” Dixon said. “I’ve always admired him for the way he steers the ship and for his pure competitiveness. … This is wholeheartedly what he does, and he wants nothing more than to win every Sunday.”

That shared competitiveness helped sustain a pairing that lasted far longer than most owner-driver relationships in professional sports.

Dixon believes part of the explanation is surprisingly simple: Their personalities fit.

“The most gratifying, I guess, probably the longevity,” Dixon said. “Honestly, I think we really have personalities that don’t conflict. I feel like I try to be pretty low maintenance. I think he runs a team that’s in the same situation.

“We talk when we need to. We don’t oversaturate each other.”

That doesn’t mean Ganassi never made his displeasure clear.

“I’ve probably never been yelled at as much throughout my life, even during the school days, as much as I’ve been yelled at,” Dixon joked.

Sometimes Dixon gave him reason.

One particularly miserable weekend at Milwaukee remains part of team lore. Dixon estimates he destroyed two Ganassi cars within roughly four laps, suffered injuries in one of the crashes and ultimately watched the race from his hotel room before driving home.

“I probably have a record,” Dixon said.

The 2004 season was difficult throughout the organization, difficult enough that Dixon has wondered whether his future with Ganassi was ever secure.

Ganassi doesn’t dispute how bad it was.

“I kind of have to agree,” he said. “We had a tough year there, but we persevered.”

Ganassi believes the struggles ultimately strengthened both the driver and the organization.

“We actually learned a lot because having an off year like that, we learned to work on a lot of things that made our car better,” he said.

Dixon agrees that those lean seasons proved critical.

“I’ve always commented on those years,” he said. “I think Chip probably learned the most about himself. The team did as well. I definitely did as a driver and as a person.”

Ganassi saw another change, too.

Dixon had been young when he won his first championship in 2003. After the difficulties that followed, Ganassi believes he emerged more complete.

“2004 will do that to you,” Ganassi said. “It’ll mature you pretty fast when you have a bad year.”

Then came 2008.

Dixon married his wife, Emma, in February, won the Indianapolis 500 in May and capped the season with another championship. Emma also became pregnant that year.

“It was just one of those epic years where a lot of great memories happened,” Dixon said.

There were many more.

Dixon won the 2015 championship on a tiebreaker over Juan Pablo Montoya in a finale so unexpected that Dixon still remembers Ganassi crowd-surfing during the celebration.

There were championship runs, Indy heartbreaks and victories across multiple generations of cars and teammates.

Ganassi marvels at the volume of it all.

“It turned into a storybook film, if you will, of 25 years of greatness, breaking records,” Ganassi said. “Let’s face it, he’s won what, 59 races, 58 of them with us. It’s quite a lot.”

Dario Franchitti became one of Dixon’s closest friends and most important teammates. Dixon described their partnership as one largely free of ego, built on mutual respect despite dramatically different driving styles.

Dixon calls himself aggressive and “heavy-handed.” Franchitti, he joked, drove “like a grandma” going to get groceries.

Their friendship has endured long enough for Dixon to happily needle Franchitti about his three Indianapolis 500 victories.

“The gripe I’ve got with Dario is that he’s never actually won an Indy 500 under green conditions,” Dixon joked, before quickly adding, “You’re amazing, Dario. I love you.”

The list of teammates Dixon worked alongside at Ganassi reads like a history of modern IndyCar: Franchitti, Dan Wheldon, Tony Kanaan, Ryan Briscoe, Tomas Scheckter, Felix Rosenqvist, Jimmie Johnson and, more recently, Alex Palou.

Dixon has watched Palou become the latest great driver in the Ganassi lineage. Palou wrapped up his fifth INDYCAR title in six seasons last weekend. It was also his fourth consecutive, marking the third time in 30 years that Ganassi drivers have completed a four-peat sweep while collecting a series-record 18 titles.

“Talent and adaptability is insane,” Dixon said of Palou. “We’re already seeing one of the greats of all time, I think, of IndyCar.”

That lineage began before Dixon ever arrived.

Jimmy Vasser. Alex Zanardi. Juan Pablo Montoya. Franchitti. Dixon. Palou.

For Dixon, being included among them remains difficult to process.

“It’s cool to hear in that conversation,” he said. “I just love doing what I do. I feel really fortunate.”

He also credits Ganassi’s insistence that information be shared throughout the organization rather than hoarded by individual cars or engineering groups.

“Chip has always been very much on the forefront of being open book and trying to really move the whole machine forward, opposed to one select group,” Dixon said.

Does it work?

“For sure, if you want to win,” Dixon said. “If you look at Chip’s stats, he wins a lot.”

So why leave?

That was the question Dixon wrestled with before making one of the biggest decisions of his career.

It was not impulsive. Dixon describes himself as someone who doesn’t “jump ship” without a meaningful reason.

But after spending nearly his entire top-level career inside one organization, Dixon began wondering what he didn’t know.

“I kind of want to feel uncomfortable again,” he said.

Dixon has worked alongside some Ganassi employees for so long that he estimates he has spent more time with them than with much of his own family. The familiarity is comforting, but it also helped fuel his curiosity.

“I’m definitely closer to the end of my career than when I started,” Dixon said. “It just made me really think, do I want to spend my whole career with one team and not really see what else is out there, or how people process things differently, or how they achieve what they do?”

The next opportunity also carries a deeply personal connection for Dixon because of its New Zealand heritage. He’s moving to Arrow McLaren Racing next season and that team was formed by Bruce McLaren, like a Dixon a fellow Kiwi.

He grew up hearing stories from his father about Bruce McLaren, along with fellow New Zealand racing greats Chris Amon and Denny Hulme. Dixon has spent time with McLaren’s family and sees his next chapter as another connection to a country he has represented throughout his career.

“New Zealand packs a pretty heavy punch,” Dixon said. “It shows the world just how much motor racing means to us all.”

Before that chapter begins, Dixon has one final race in the No. 9 PNC Bank Honda

It has been an unusually frustrating season. Dixon enters the finale in danger of finishing a season without a victory for the first time since 2004.

“Not winning has sucked,” Dixon said. “This year has been horrendous.”

There have been flashes of speed, he said, but mistakes, strategy calls and other problems have repeatedly spoiled opportunities.

It is not how Dixon wanted his Ganassi career to end.

“The goal is obviously to try to win the last one,” he said.

Whatever happens, Dixon said Ganassi and the organization have handled his impending departure better than he expected.

“Chip’s been amazing,” Dixon said. “The whole team’s been really amazing. And I’m definitely thankful for that.”

Dixon said the hardest part may be leaving the people.

His advice to whoever inherits the No. 9 is to take advantage of them.

“Lean on everybody,” Dixon said. “There’s a lot of great people here that will help you succeed even more than you have in the past.”

And if his successor needs advice on how to handle Ganassi?

Dixon laughed.

“Some days are easier than others,” he said. “But honestly, only fond memories for me.”

The Rolex clock Ganassi handed him Friday will serve as a reminder of all those years, though the owner said there wasn’t much thought required in choosing the gift.

It was a newly released Submariner desktop clock, the first non-watch clock Rolex has produced, Ganassi said. When his Rolex representative received one, Ganassi said he was told simply: “That’s for you.”

After 25 seasons, the symbolism seemed appropriate.

After all the races, arguments, championships, crashes, celebrations and thousands of days together, Dixon knows changing teams cannot erase the relationships.

He has received messages from crew members struggling with the realization that this is their last race together.

Dixon reminds them that he isn’t disappearing.

“We’re going to be friends forever,” Dixon said. “We’re family. Still going to see them at every race. It’s not going to be in the same room a lot of the time, but away from the track, it won’t change.”

Ganassi sees it the same way.

“He’s a big part of the family here,” Ganassi said, “that will endure forever.”

The familiar orange PNC hat might disappear. The No. 9 will belong to somebody else.

But Dixon does not view Laguna Seca as goodbye.

“Just want to say a massive thank you to all the CGR fans for over the years, what we accomplished, what we did together,” Dixon said. “Not saying goodbye. I’m still going to be around.

“But the number nine is now going to a new driver. I’m a little bit sad about it. I just want to say a big thank you.”