Scott Dixon, Marcus Ericsson and Alex Palou are at the moment second, third and fifth respectively within the 2022 NTT IndyCar championship, simply 27 factors aside, and even Palou is barely 33 factors off factors chief Will Energy of Workforce Penske-Chevrolet. With 150-plus factors out there over the ultimate three rounds, Palou nonetheless has sturdy hopes of defending the IndyCar crown he earned with Ganassi-Honda in 2021.
Nevertheless, CGR believes Palou breached the phrases of his contract by signing with McLaren for 2023, at a time when staff proprietor Chip Ganassi nonetheless had the suitable to choose up the choice on his champion. Consequently, Ganassi is taking Palou to court docket over the matter.
Regardless of this, CGR’s managing director Mike Hull insists that the staff is not going to favor Dixon and Ericsson over Palou because the trio every tries to earn Ganassi’s 15th IndyCar drivers’ championship since 1996. Requested if Palou’s #10 automotive will obtain as a lot focus within the subsequent three races because the #8 (Ericsson) and #9 Dixon, Hull instructed Motorsport.com, “Sure, completely, and that’s a really sincere reply.
“We’ve a driver of huge expertise driving the #10 automotive and now we have a terrific sponsor behind that automotive in NTT [also IndyCar’s series sponsor] and the American Legion has been a significant a part of that automotive on and off, additionally. We’ve lots to achieve from Alex Palou successful races, and we frankly don’t care about that a part of it [as in, which car succeeds].
“Sorry to disappoint anyone who’s writing about this, akin to your self, or anyone who then reads this! Profitable races is what we do, and we’re very blissful that Alex is driving one in every of our vehicles. Yeah, there have been some issues that will stymie lots of people, however guess what this staff does: we simply race vehicles, and having the very best drivers in your vehicles helps you win races, and having the very best drivers working collectively helps you win extra races, and extra championships.
“It’s that straightforward for us. No matter occurs going ahead concerning Alex and who he drives for, I’ve a fantastic diploma of respect for what he’s performed for us. That gained’t change.”
Alex Palou, Chip Ganassi Racing Honda
Picture by: Gavin Baker / Motorsport Pictures
Hull confirmed, too, that for the great of themselves and the staff as an entire, there was no change within the debriefing room between Ganassi’s 4 drivers and their respective race engineers.
“The way in which we have a look at it’s that you must have free trade of data to be able to set route for your self when it comes to setup. Let’s say that Scott and Alex have a dialog about how they drive Flip 1 at Nashville. They strategy it completely in a different way however they learn the racetrack the identical manner, and that helps them perceive a lot better, with their engineers, what they should do with their vehicles to get across the racetrack. It’s the identical after we had simply two drivers, three drivers and now 4 drivers.
“Scott, Alex, Marcus, Jimmie – they proceed to work effectively collectively to assist learn the way you create pace on the racetrack, and so they don’t maintain something again. Their drive types aren’t essentially the identical – one driver might have extra consolation with the entrance axle, one might have consolation driving off the rear axle – however they find yourself on the identical pace.
“I imply, you look again at after we had Dario [Franchitti] and Scott, they drove very, very in a different way however they went the identical pace. And the way they did it was that they helped one another enhance and helped arrange their vehicles and located a fantastic diploma of success.”