Why Dixon's Indy 500 defeat is bad news for his IndyCar rivals

How does it feel for a team and driver to do everything right and still miss out on Indianapolis 500 glory? Autosport put the question to Michael Cannon, Scott Dixon's Chip Ganassi Racing engineer, after the five-time IndyCar Series champion lost the chance of a shootout to the chequered flag with now two-time Indy winner Takuma Sato.

"In Chip's team, we just say, 'OK, let's move on. Let's go and win the championship,'" he replies. "It's unfortunate how things transpired, but we can't change it now. Takuma Sato and Rahal Letterman Lanigan won the Indy 500. That's it."

It's this attitude that makes the Ganassi team so admirable. One can picture the scene immediately post race - human dynamo that is highly practical team manager Barry Wanser making sure the troops carry on as normal in the post-race tear-down/pack away process, the smooth tones of managing director Mike Hull placating anyone who's perhaps still steaming about the misfortune, and competition manager Chris Simmons (below, left with Dixon) taking a deep breath before shrugging off the disappointment then doubling down on the next rounds of the title race. He's been there, done that, and experienced extreme highs and lows with Dixon and Dario Franchitti before this.

The brains trust within the Ganassi IndyCar ranks of course includes technical director Julian Robertson, also Felix Rosenqvist's race engineer, who has done so much great work over the years, and has the team's incredible list of achievements to show for it.

In fact, scanning the list of human resources that Ganassi has put together, and the management structure itself, puts one in mind of former Formula 1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone's comment when he saw McLaren's Ron Dennis had drawn together Marlboro money, Honda, Gordon Murray, Steve Nichols, Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna for the 1988 season. "You could start a bloody war with that lot!" he said. Ecclestone wasn't wrong and, sure enough, it resulted in the MP4/4 - the most dominant F1 car of all time.

But in IndyCar in 2020, everyone runs spec equipment, so the differentiator is specifically the personnel. As well as being smart - and race-smart - Ganassi staff members are defined by their collective mindset.

For instance, the team as a whole never underestimates the opposition, and however good Dixon's car appeared to be through the variety of conditions encountered in practice and qualifying, everyone involved knew it would be a tough fight. Indeed, Cannon went a stage still further and recognised who would be their principal opposition...

"You do the grid walk on Sunday and look at the aero packages that some of them are running, and I was pretty confident that the guys we'd end up racing would be Sato and Alexander Rossi" Michael Cannon

"You go through Carb Day and you look at the competition and figure out who you'll probably be racing," he explains, "and you narrow it down to eight or ten cars. There's some that can be immediately eliminated, and then because we had the advantage of Honda horsepower, we could eliminate others too.

"Then you do the grid walk on Sunday and look at the aero packages that some of them are running, and I narrowed it down some more. I was pretty confident that the guys we'd end up racing would be Sato and Alexander Rossi, both of whom have already won this race, and they'd be racing Scott who has also already won here.

"Rossi said he had the car to win, I think Scott would say the same thing about his car and Taku would say the same about his.

"The key for us was that we kept the balance of the car throughout the race. We went down half a turn of front wing at the first pitstop, but we basically got our sums right for maintaining car balance in that type of weather. But then some people were close enough that they were able to catch up. The opposition was strong.

"In Sato's case, you can never discount how well he goes around Indy. He's won it twice now, but he also had that great performance in 2012, and he was strong there last year, coming from the back to finish third. I worked at KV Racing when he was there and I have the greatest respect for him - a very, very bright guy."

But there remains a crucial question - if one wants to delve into the what-might-have-been scenarios - about fuel consumption. Having made his final stop one lap earlier than Dixon and third-placed finisher, Sato's RLL team-mate Graham Rahal, would Sato have had enough fuel to make it to the chequered flag without Spencer Pigot's huge shunt causing the last five laps of the race to be run under caution?

Even Sato himself admitted that he was rocking the fuel rich/lean knob back and forth - and when he was leaning it out was when Dixon closed up. Cannon is careful not to avoid being an ungracious loser.

"We'll never know," he says finally. "We think we know what we know about the fuel scenario. When Taku moved ahead of us, where obviously you're going to get worse consumption than in the draft, it meant we could run full-rich and he couldn't. But even so, we could get close but couldn't yet get around him.

"At that point Sato was still able to flash up to full-rich fuel if he felt threatened and had the race gotten to the last lap or two running under green, he's less likely to have had that option.

"But whatever, it's water under the bridge. Sato scored his second Indy 500, hats off to him and Rahal Letterman Lanigan - and Taku's race engineer, my old mate Eddie Jones. That's the second time he's done that to me! Last year, with my old team [Dale Coyne Racing] it looked like we were going to get a 1-2 at Gateway, and in the end it was Taku who came through and won!

"At the end of the day, you can't play Monday morning quarterback, what's done is done. At least we don't have to wait a whole year for the next shot at Indy, right? It's about 280 days until Memorial Day Weekend 2021...."

The team having done everything right on Dixon's car, Cannon says his main regret about the event was that "we couldn't get our other two cars a bit closer to the front." Marcus Ericsson qualified 11th and was running eighth when he shunted at Turn 1, while Felix Rosenqvist started 14th and came home 12th.

Rosenqvist commented: "I think we had a car that could do more today. I think I am still figuring out how to work the ovals. I think that is the biggest Achilles heel in our operation right now on the #10 car."

Ericsson, meanwhile, was left puzzled over why he lost control.

"I didn't feel anything before the crash that indicated an issue," he said. "The car was feeling really good today. The car has been feeling good all month...

"I was getting into the rhythm of the race, then it just really stepped out on me. I need to analyse and look at how it happened because I didn't expect that."

In fact, Cannon feels much the same.

There will remain days on which the #9 CGR-Honda gets beaten. There will be days when it's pushed hard. But while Dixon's strongest rival in each race is someone different, his championship lead is going to build and build

"We're still trying to work that one out," he says. "Something funny went on. Rossi had a similar accident as did [Alex] Palou, and for our part, we can see a little bit of weirdness in the data for Marcus's car. That's all I can say."

Given the "let's move on" attitude prevailing at Ganassi, despite what most would regard as a crushing disappointment, what can we expect from the squad at Gateway's double-header this weekend? Huge strength.

Cannon has been careful to play down his own contribution to Dixon's success this year - "Chip's guys had scored five championships and 45 wins with Scott before I ever showed up!" - but the 1.25-mile oval could prove to be one of those venues where Cannon is the difference-maker. Last year at Dale Coyne's team, he saw Sebastien Bourdais and Santino Ferrucci start from second and sixth, and run 1-2 for much of the evening.

"I think we'll be in the ballpark," he says modestly. "The emphasis may change a little given the lead Scott has in the championship [84 points], but yeah, we should be good. Having said that, I expect all the usual suspects will be in there too."

It may prove a scrappy weekend for IndyCar, with Hurricane Laura due to hit the region on Friday evening. But as ever, the smart money would be on Ganassi to deal best with Fate's slings, arrows and downpours, just as it seems best able to cope with compressed race weekend schedules and finding the best balance for cars equipped with aeroscreens. The team's engineering rearrangement for 2020 appears to have paid off, perhaps by supplementing rather than replacing.

There will remain days on which the #9 CGR-Honda gets beaten. There will be days when it's pushed hard. But while Dixon's strongest rival in each race is someone different, his championship lead is going to build and build.

It will be truly shocking if anyone beats him to the IndyCar Series title this year.