Chip Ganassi looks forward as racing accomplishments grow
Scott Dixon was standing behind the thronged celebration stage at Sonoma Raceway, conducting interviews in the afterglow of his dramatic championship-snatching IndyCar victory when Chip Ganassi interrupted.
Clad in his typical white dress shirt and black pants, ubiquitous sponsor hat and a few pieces of metallic confetti, Ganassi came with a request. Or a demand. Sometimes the differentiation isn’t easily defined for the sometimes-gruff team owner, even for someone was has employed Dixon since 2002.
Drawing his thin face back as to form a jowl, and contorting his New Zealand accent into Ganassi’s tough-guy tone, jolly version, Dixon imitated the exchange.
“Come on Dixon! You gotta come and do crowd surfing.”
“I’m like, ‘I’m good man’,” Dixon recalls, assuming his markedly more hushed intonation for a moment. “And he’s like, “No, get out there and crowd surf.” And so then I was like, ‘Which way did you go, man? He’s like, ‘You gotta go forwards.’ I’m like, ‘That doesn’t seem right, man.’ After that I was like, yeah, that was the wrong way.”
Forwards, as in facedown, might have created some awkward moments for those elevating Ganassi in the mosh pit this late August afternoon, but forwards as a principle has defined the owner and his organization in its 27 seasons.
A one-car CART team has grown into an organization that fields teams in the NASCAR Sprint Cup and Xfinity series, Verizon IndyCar Series, Global RallyCross, IMSA and World Endurance, comprising 14 cars and 18 drivers and 17 championships and 173 wins in all series combined. In 2010 he completed the so-called “Chip Slam,” by claiming the Rolex 24, Daytona 500, Indianapolis 500 and Brickyard 400 in the same 12-month span.
And this weekend his team will lead the four-car Ford GT factory contingent as the automaker marks its return to the 24 Hours of Le Mans for the first time in 50 years.
“I have a rough estimation in my head, where they’re at. But I don’t try to look at that stuff,” Ganassi told Paste BN Sports. “There will be plenty of time to look backwards. We need to be looking forward.”
CHASING PENSKE
At 58 years old, Ganassi figures to have much forward left, taking into account the nettles of sponsorship and maintaining competitive edge. He is actually one of the younger owners in the Sprint Cup and IndyCar garages, and factoring in his success, especially in open-wheel racing, he is on pace to challenge marks of the owner against whom he is constantly compared: Roger Penske.
Ganassi has ground to cover regarding the most important prize, the Indianapolis 500, though. Penske has won the race 16 times, Ganassi five, albeit in 23 fewer seasons of ownership. While Penske, 79, has ceased his sports car operations — focusing now on NASCAR, IndyCar and a V8 Super Cars program in Australia — Ganassi continues to excel in sports cars, winning a record six times in the Rolex 24.
“Especially if you look at race wins alone, that’s already getting pretty close,” Dixon, who will drive for Ganassi at Le Mans, said. “I think Indy is something Chip would like to improve his numbers on and we’re definitely going to work hard on that, but you know, there are some milestones Chip has got before Roger. He is young. He is still as fired up as ever. He is one of the most competitive people I think you will ever meet.”
And like Penske, Ganassi has watched his Sprint Cup Sereis team make a long slow progression for respectability. Ganassi did not win his first Daytona 500 until 2010 with Jamie McMurray and has not had a driver finish higher than third in the standings — Sterling Marlin in 2001, the owner’s first season in Sprint Cup. Penske won his first Daytona 500 in 2008 with Ryan Newman — and subsequently in 2015 with Joey Logano — and his first championship with Brad Keselowski in 2012.
“I think that he’s activated and done well in long-distance racing, sports car and he’s proven to be the best there,” Penske told Paste BN Sports. “He’s obviously a guy we have to beat every day in the IndyCar side and I think in NASCAR, I feel, with McMurray and (Kyle Larson), he’ll see some success.”
Of the owners of current and recent power teams in the Sprint Cup garage, Rick Hendrick is 66, Jack Roush 74, Joe Gibbs 75, Richard Childress 70, Gene Haas 62 and co-owner Tony Stewart 45. While Ganassi grew up with the support of his late father, Floyd, and his successful construction enterprise, Ganassi’s business is now solely building and maintaining a race team, an often-mentioned obvious source of pride and motivation.
“I don’t lay awake at night worrying about my competitors’ age, but I think it’s because the work a lot of those guys have done has enabled guys like me to come along, whether it was Roger here or Rick down there,” Ganassi said. “Those guys set a pretty high bar in terms of how they run their business.
“Certainly, they’re different than me because they have their Monday through Fridays. And they’re a lot different than their Friday Saturday and Sundays, whereas mine is just racing.”
NOTHING BUT RACING
Any career is segmented by waypoints and decision and the characters who add or to detract from a philosophy or a trajectory. But Ganassi’s seems uncommon even in that context.
A Pittsburgh native who made five Indianapolis 500 starts and ended his career as a driver after a major accident at Michigan in 1984, he graduated from Duquesne with a finance degree and bought an interest into a former team, Patrick Racing, in 1988 to begin his ownership arc. Enamored with the craft of driving and unleashing the next prospect upon the next unwitting series, he worked a deal to bring an aspiring Formula 1 driver — Juan Pablo Montoya — to CART in 1999 and watched him win a series title and Indianapolis 500 in his first try. Montoya migrated to NASCAR in 2006 after several years in Formula One and was reunited with Ganassi. After the 2013 season he replaced him with Larson, a highly regarded prospect as the relationship with Montoya stagnated.
The likes of Dario Franchitti, who won three of his four IndyCar championships with Ganassi, Alex Zanardi, who earned two CART titles with Ganassi and Scott Pruett, who has claimed five sports car championships with Ganassi, have added to his team’s legacy. As has landing and maintaining retailer Target as a sponsor for more than a quarter century, an astronomical duration in modern racing. Bringing in business partners such as Felix Sabates and Rob Kauffman has also bolstered his stability.
And still, a core facet of the being seems to be a pride in the fact that racing — unlike many of his peers — is his lone business. The money to buy speed is now predicated on hustle — the hustle of those with whom he surrounds himself and the willingness to roll a white shirt sleeve into a wad at the elbow when exertion is needed. Apply that to little lessons learned from the likes of legendary motor sports figures like Michael Andretti or Andy Granatelli or countless other acquaintances, and a philosophy develops.
“I’m not interested in becoming them. I want to take pieces of them and I want to be me,” Ganassi said. “You take all that sort of little bit of this little bit of that from each person and then you sort of sprinkle that over a team of people ad you end up with what you would hope is something you’d be very proud of to present to the world of racing.”
And ultimately, maybe most importantly, he’s a guy who likes racing and racers. Any time. Any place.
“He’s on the pit box for the Indy 500, but then like last year at Sonoma when a bunch of guys went to Rico Abreu’s property up in St. Helena and raced dirt outlaw karts, he showed up,” said Justin Marks, a part-time NASCAR Xfinity Series driver for Ganassi. “He sat on the hill side and watched them raced. That’s just kind of how invested he is.”
And Dixon appreciates that. Tied for fourth on the all-time open wheel wins list, the defending and four-time series champion is the longest-tenured driver for an owner willing to make brutally necessary business moves when necessary. They get each other. So they get their best.
“He creates the environment. I love being part of the environment,” Dixon said. “All these guys are wanting to win. They are no guys here just here to collect a paycheck. I think we’ve worked well together. When contracts come up, it’s like, “Hey, you wanna go again?” Absolutely. That’s about the conversation.
“Yes, we have those fired-up moments from time to time when its competitive or I’ve done something poorly or I think the team could step it up in some areas but that’s the competitive level.”
And then you surf. Forwards.
Follow James on Twitter @brantjames