Chip Ganassi Racing wary that Scott Dixon can "beat Alex Palou like a drum" after 2025 landslide

Chip Ganassi Racing managing director Mike Hull believes that Scott Dixon can script a sensational comeback after getting outclassed by teammate Alex Palou last season. 2025 was a historic year in IndyCar, with Palou having a once-in-a-half-century type of season.

The Spaniard equaled IndyCar legends like Mario Andretti, Dario Franchitti, Sebastian Bourdais, and Al Unser Jr on more than one front. He secured six poles and won eight of 17 races and triumphed at an oval for the first time in his career, and that too, the biggest oval of all, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, by winning the 109th Indy 500.

Meanwhile, his six-time IndyCar champion teammate Scott Dixon struggled to adapt his driving style to the new cars powered by hybrid power units. Mike Hull, who has been with Chip Ganassi Racing for over 30 years, addressed Dixon's plight in an appearance on the RACER Channel.

When asked about whether the Kiwi driver would need to adopt a new driving style to adapt to the new weight distribution in the car to get closer to Alex Palou's recent level of performance, which is facilitated by a smoother driving style, Hull replied [1:03:40 onwards]:

"First of all, to answer your question, he'll figure it out. He will. And when he does, I don't care what you say about his maturity, he can beat Alex like a drum if he wants to once he gets that to that point, and vice versa, there's no question."

Though Dixon seemed miles behind Alex Palou's pace throughout the season, his consistency enabled him to finish third in the standings. The 45-year-old's sole 2025 race win came at Mid-Ohio, resulting from a rare error by Palou, who lost the race lead in the final third after going off the track.

The Dan Wheldon trait that drove Scott Dixon "nuts" towards embracing a new driving style in IndyCar

Scott Dixon with Chip Ganassi and Dan Wheldon at the Firestone Indy 200 - Source: Getty

Mike Hull also shared an anecdote about how Scott Dixon was faced with such a teammate threat early in his career. The late Dan Wheldon joined Chip Ganassi Racing in 2006, immediately after winning his first IndyCar championship the previous year.

Wheldon's driving style on ovals pleasantly surprised the CGR bosses and Hull, who'd never seen such smooth steering traces in their lives. Dixon, who was also an IndyCar champion by that time (first title in 2003), was baffled by how well his new teammate drove.

"When Dan Wheldon turned up at Chip Ganassi Racing, I had never... I don't know how to compare him to anybody else as an oval racer," Hull said via RACER. "I only know what I saw in him when he showed up. He had such a frictionless driving style, and you looked at his steering traces, you thought that he didn't even turn the steering wheel. Extraordinary. On a flat track like Indianapolis, it was unbelievable."

Mike Hull described how efficiently Dixon reacted to Wheldon's threat and surpassed the Briton in doing what he did so well.

"Scott Dixon watched that; it drove him nuts. He went crazy trying to figure it out. In about six months' time, and that was an old series at the time, Scott Dixon became a better Dan Wheldon than Dan Wheldon was."

At 45, Dixon is showing no signs of slowing down. He will continue racing for CGR in 2026 alongside Alex Palou and Kyffin Simpson in pursuit of a record-equaling seventh IndyCar championship.