Dixon 'surprised' to be P2 in IndyCar points

Of all the reasonable expectations Scott Dixon held for himself entering 2017, sitting second in the championship after three rounds was never a consideration.

Not with his Chip Ganassi Racing team switching from the dominant Chevy engine and aero package to Honda's equipment and definitely not with an aero kit freeze in place. And then you have the ongoing theme in Dixon's IndyCar career where slow starts usually force the four-time champion to rally from behind for the rest of the year.

With all three factors in play, Dixon should be mired toward the bottom of the standings as the Verizon IndyCar Series heads to Phoenix this weekend. Instead, the New Zealander returns to the one-mile oval – a race he won 12 months ago for CGR – with a palpable sense of frustration. In fact, the season has gone so unexpectedly well for Dixon, the 36-year-old bristles at the thought of being six points behind championship leader Sebastien Bourdais.

"At St. Pete we definitely had the best car, and strategy could not have gone any worse for us at Long Beach," Dixon told RACER after a runner-up finish at Barber Motorsports Park. "But I think we always expect to go to a race and fight for the win, and when that can happen but doesn't, it's normal to be frustrated. Sure, there were the big changes over the offseason, but it's been a good start for us and we've been pleasantly surprised with the speed we've had."

"Chip Ganassi pointed out two things that I don't think we would have been able to predict," added CGR managing director Mike Hull. "Who would have guessed that [Ganassi's] Kyle Larson would be leading NASCAR's Cup standings at this point and Sebastien Bourdais would be leading in IndyCar? So in terms of Scott Dixon, I think it's the same; I don't know how many people would have predicted our current position. We're just going about our business and trying to get the most of it from day to day."

Continuity among the engineers and mechanics that field Dixon's No. 9 entry has played a significant role in his early surge, and on the technical front, powerful engines from Honda Performance Development have certainly helped the 2008 Indy 500 winner and the other front-running Honda entries. Hull also credits a rededicated effort within CGR's IndyCar program for the recent potential shown by the Kiwi.

"Maybe we're trying harder to explore every aspect of the car to make it as good as it can be than we had to last year," he said. "Frankly, we didn't have to work as hard with the Chevy aero package to match it up to the mechanical package. You could make a mistake on the balance with the Chevy aero package because it's incremental, and if you went a few steps too far, it wouldn't slow you down too much. What we're working with today is more sensitive to those changes, and we've had to work harder to understand the reasons why. That's the difference in our approach."

Honda won two street races on the trot with Bourdais and James Hinchcliffe before Team Penske and Chevy took control at Barber. The shifting tides spoke to Honda's well-known aero limitations, how those shortcomings were masked on the street courses by its strong engines and the vast number of slow corners, and were then exposed on Barber's high-speed road course.

In maximum downforce configuration at St. Pete and Long Beach, Honda's superior acceleration, the lack of quick corners where big downforce comes into play and impressive top-speed figures made the difference between winning and losing. At Barber (above), where the same maximum-downforce setup was needed to fly through its fast and flowing corners, a difference in peak downforce output tilted the advantage in Chevy's favor.

With an estimated 300 pounds of additional downforce available to Chevy drivers, it's easy to understand why race winner Josef Newgarden and the rest of the Penske cars were on rails while Dixon's hands were a blur trying to control his car at the limit.

"St. Pete and Long Beach are very different types of street courses, and we had the speed at both of them, and then to go to a road course at Barber where the Chevy aero kit favors those cars with its high downforce, to come away with a second was very good," Dixon conceded.

According to Hull, achieving a proper balance with the Honda package isn't a problem, but the time and effort it takes to find the sweet spot is different than what the Bowtie runners enjoy. That said, with a few hundred pounds of peak downforce missing from their arsenal, Honda teams can also expect to surrender fractions of time in each high-speed corner at the short ovals and most road courses.

"You have to match the aero and mechanical grip with the Honda very precisely, and you can do it, but you have to work really hard at it," Hull said. "I think if we went back to working with the Chevy product today, with all we've learned and how our mindset has changed over the last several months, we'd probably be better at it."

Chevy's extra downforce made the difference at Barber and, barring the unforeseen, it should produce a similar result at Phoenix. As much as he'd like to win there for the second time in two years, it sounds like Dixon won't be surprised or frustrated if Chevy takes the win Saturday night in Arizona.

"This weekend might be a little bit of a shock to the system," he said. "But we'll have to see how it goes. If we can have a good result, whatever that ends up being, that's what matters."