Chip Gansssi Racing’s Barry Wanser says that six-time NTT INDYCAR SERIES champion Scott Dixon, driver of the No.9 PNC Bank Honda would have been in the title race in Nashville this weekend were it not for some bad luck during the 2024 NTT INDYCAR SERIES season.
The Iceman, heads into the season-ending Big Machine Music City Grand Prix at Nashville Super Speedway in fifth place in the championship.
Dixon has won two races this season and is one of only a handful of drivers including Will Power to have competed at Nashville Super Speedway before.
Speaking about Scott Dixon and Alex Palou for whom he is race engineer for, Wanser said:
Yeah, I think even from day one I think they had mutual respect, but certainly there’s a greater respect there when another driver is actually performing and winning.
What that does for the team, what that does for Scott, he’s had some bad luck this year as well. If you were to add up all of his finishes where they didn’t score very many points, he would be right there in title contention as well. Sometimes it’s the culmination of the season where Scott hasn’t been part of it in the last couple of years.
Certainly when you have more than one driver that’s getting performance out of the car, that gives data and video to the other engineers, race engineers, and drivers to improve those cars. That’s what we do at Chip Ganassi Racing.
It’s an open book for all the drivers, all the engineers, every session, all the information. Scott benefits from that, as well as Alex benefited from all of the years of information and data that we have.