Scott Dixon Q&A

It's good. There definitely hasn't been much time off, which is a pain. There has been a lot of promotion in the offseason and preseason. Hopefully that aspect will slow down some. There is so little driving now, especially in this series because of the short practice sessions and no real testing. You're hardly ever in the car so they use you in other ways.



The team did a great job. I basically just dived in, but it was a good year to come in because everybody was on the same playing field. We just seemed to improve the car a little quicker than most people. In a lot of ways, I'm more prepared coming in this year, but sometimes not knowing what is coming is better. With CART, the venues and the circuits they were on were awesome and a lot of fun, but the racing was shit. That's the good thing over here - the racing. The biggest thing that lit up in my eyes was Homestead. If you had a good car you could race to the front whereas in CART, if you had the best car and started 12th, you'd probably finish 10th because two guys fell out. That's very difficult and for a driver it's very frustrating.



It's hard to say. I think the team in general is probably the favorite. You have to go in thinking you can win the championship again. I think the team is strong enough to do it and Darren Manning will be a great addition. I can't see any reason why he won't be trying to do the same. If you go in thinking anything less, you're wasting your time. Going into last year there were a lot of different favorites and I don't see it any different this year. Honda and Team Green are very strong so far in the tests. It should be fairly similar for the main teams - Target, Team Green, Penske and probably Panther. The cars at the front should be similar to last year.



I don't know. We don't have too much to go off of at this stage. Sam is obviously very talented, but you don't know what it was like at Panther because he was always by himself and it's hard to rate drivers when they are by themselves. I think he'll struggle having to be a team player. You see that all the time. He and Helio don't like each other, and Sam is difficult enough to talk to anyway. He's a strange guy. Those two can probably feed off each other, which could be good. I thought Tomas would have shown a little better at Homestead, but the problem is that you don't know what anybody is doing. Both guys should do extremely well with the teams that they've got because they are established, very good teams. I'm sure they are going to be up there.



I think everybody is focused on it a fair bit, especially after some of the incidents. They definitely need to work on some of the aspects of the car lifting. I know they have been spending a lot of money doing that already and they have made a lot of improvements. It's unfortunate, but a lot of times you learn from accidents and maybe they wouldn't have thought of fixing things if these things hadn't happened. It's part of racing and you can't do much about it. It's pretty obvious that going to an all-oval series is always going to be more dangerous. You can't escape it. I think they have done a great job. They're making improvements. At Indy they will slow the cars down with a 3-litre engine and less downforce. That's going to help a lot.



That's the problem. That, and you don't want the car to be too easy to drive. If they just took the horsepower away your grandmother could drive the bloody thing. Last year they had a good balance. The cars were difficult, especially on the mile tracks. The shorter circuits were a lot of fun. If they just take the horsepower away the cars will be too easy and the lesser teams will find it easier. You'll just get a big pack of cars and they'll all crash into each other. There will be drivers up there that probably shouldn't be out there racing with other guys. I really do hope they look into it extremely well, especially since the first showing of the new package is going to be at Indy. It will be a difficult job for them, but I think everybody is confident the IRL will do the right thing.



I think it should be 50-50, but I think six road races is probably the highest you'll get out of them. That was the good thing about CART. They had a great mix and fans from all parts of racing. It was the most challenging series in the world at its peak. I don't see why you wouldn't go 50-50.