Scott Dixon, Chip Ganasssi featured in upcoming IndyCar movie, ‘Born Racer’

By May 25, 2018, 1:24 PM EDT
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If you’re an IndyCar fan – particularly if you’re a fan of IndyCar’s Scott Dixon and Chip Ganassi Racing – you’ll definitely want to check out the trailer to the upcoming Universal movie, “Born Racer.”

The documentary features:

  • Dixon, a four-time IndyCar champion and 41-race IndyCar winner, who after 18 years of IndyCar racing, still has an unrelenting drive to win
  • Why drivers feel so compelled to risk their lives in order to succeed
  • Ganassi, one of the most prolific and successful owners in motorsports
  • The all-encompassing life of everyone involved in the CGR IndyCar operation, both on- and off-track

As Ganassi likes to say, “We live to race. There is nothing else.”

Check out the trailer above.

Also, here’s some excerpts from Friday’s post-practice press conference that included Dixon and Ganassi talking about the upcoming movie:

DIXON: “It’s definitely for me not something I’m really keen on. I guess we had some iterations before, processes that we had talked about. This one just felt like the perfect fit. The people that were involved, the concept, what we were trying to get out of it. For me, actually Emma (his wife) and I, the first time we saw it probably two weeks ago, it was just really exciting and really cool to see the detail that nobody really gets to see.

“I think going through my career, you get asked so many different questions, Why do you do this, what about your family, blah, blah, blah. This is just unprecedented, back-stage access people don’t get to see. It’s got something for everyone to, one, understand the sport of IndyCar, the sport of racing, being in a competitive environment, then also the numerous amount of people that make this happen. It’s such a team sport. A lot of people forget about that as well.

“I’m really excited for it (the movie). I think there’s lots of cool stories, lots of cool, interesting people in there that they captured really well. For me, that was the biggest thing. When I’m out on track, I don’t get to see what’s going on behind the scenes. Even for me, it was a definitely a breath of fresh air, really fun to see that process.”

CHIP GANASSI: “Start with the speed. These are fast racing cars. They’re a lot faster than NASCAR cars, quite a bit faster than a Formula 1 car. To me speed is at the essence of racing. Anybody can race bumper cars around, 50 miles an hour. You’re talking about a skill level that very few people on the planet might have.

“You get into this sport and you have this desire to win. I obviously was a driver before. When I started a team, I always wanted to have a team that drivers would want to drive for. When you have a desire to win, you try to surround yourself with like-minded people, that have that same unrelenting desire to win. It starts small with people in the team. You bring people onto the team. It sort of snowballs, this unrelenting desire to win kind of snowballs.

“Drivers come along like Scott Dixon that have that same unrelenting desire to win. It feeds upon itself. I have to tell you whether it’s the team members, whether it’s the partners in the team, the sponsors, the PR people, the guy mopping the floor to the people that answer the phone, everybody in the organization is focused on people with an unrelenting desire to win.

“I think what Matthew and the people from Universal have captured in this film is just that. That’s so rare because we oftentimes are caught up in talking about cars and fans and engines and body kits, safety of course. At the essence of why people like Scott Dixon, why people like Mike Hull, the engineers, all these guys, at the essence of all that is an unrelenting desire to win. Everything else is sort of peripheral to that, if you will.

“It’s not often you get people in from the outside like the film people or Universal for that matter, that want to capture that. It’s easy to capture the simple things like the hoopla, the fans, the food, say it’s fast, same old shots you see all the time. But these guys were different. I think they wanted to get to that essence of an unrelenting desire to win. I think they’ve captured that.”

IndyCar Detroit GP starting lineup: Alex Palou wins first pole position on a street course

By Jun 3, 2023, 4:00 PM EDT
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DETROIT — Alex Palou won the pole position for the second consecutive NTT IndyCar Series race and will lead the Detroit Grand Prix starting lineup to green on a new downtown layout.

The 2021 series champion, who finished fourth in the 107th Indy 500 after qualifying first, earned his third career pole position as the first of three Chip Ganassi Racing drivers in the top four (Scott Dixon qualified fourth, and Marcus Ericsson sixth).

Scott McLaughlin will start second, followed by Romain Grosjean. Coming off his first Indianapolis 500 victory, Josef Newgarden qualified fifth.

INDYCAR IN DETROIT: Entry list, schedule, TV info for this weekend

It’s the third career pole position for Palou and his first on a street course — a big advantage on a nine-turn, 1.645-mile track that is expected to be calamitous over 100 laps Sunday (3 p.m. ET, NBC).

“It’s going to be a tough day for sure,” Palou told NBC Sports’ Marty Snider. “It feels good we’ve had a great car since the beginning, and it was just about maximizing. They did a great strategy on tires and everything. We need to finish it (Sunday).

“I got off a lot in practice. We wanted to see where the limit was, and we found it. It’s a crazy track. I think it’s too tight for Indy cars and too short as well, but we’ll make it happen.”

QUALIFYING RESULTS: Click here for Detroit GP qualifying speeds | Round 1, Group 1 | Round 1, Group 2 | Round 2 l Round 3

The narrow quarters (originally listed as a 1.7-mile track, its distance shrunk by a couple hundred feet when measured Friday) already were causing problems in qualifying.

Colton Herta, who has four career poles on street courses, qualified 24th after failing to advance from the first round because of damage to his No. 26 Dallara-Honda. It’s the worst starting spot in an IndyCar street course race for Herta (and the second-worst of his career on the heels of qualifying 25th for the GMR Grand Prix three weeks ago).

Andretti Autosport teammate Kyle Kirkwood also found misfortune in the second round, damaging the left front of his No. 27 Dallara-Honda despite light wall contact.

“I’m disappointed for the crew because that was a pole-winning car,” Kirkwood told NBC Sports’ Kevin Lee. “Man, I barely touched the wall. I touched it way harder in all the practices, and it’s just like the angle at which the wall was right there, it caught the point and just ripped the front off the car.

“If the wall was rounded, that wouldn’t have happened. That’s just unfortunate for the guys, but it’s my mistake. It’s hard enough to get around this place let alone race around it. We’ll see how it goes.”

Many IndyCar drivers are expecting it to go badly, which isn’t uncommon for a new street layout. The inaugural Music City Grand Prix in Nashville, Tennessee, was the biggest crashfest of the 2021 season with 33 of 80 laps run under caution plus two red flags.

It could be worse at Detroit, which is the shortest track on the IndyCar circuit. It also features the series’ only split pit lane (with cars pitting on opposite sides and blending into a single-lane exit), a 0.9-mile straightaway and a hairpin third turn that is considered the best passing zone.

“If there’s one day you need to be lucky in the year, it’s tomorrow,” Grosjean told NBC Sports’ Dave Burns. “A lot is going to happen, and it’s being in the right time at the right place.”

Said Dixon: “Expect probably a lot of unexpected things to happen. We’ll try and get through it. I think it’ll be similar to Nashville and maybe the last man standing is the one who gets the victory.”

With the field at 27 cars, Palou estimated the length of the course leaves a gap of about 2.4 seconds between each car, which he preferred would be double. During practice Friday, there were six red flags and 19 local yellows as teams tried to sort out the tricky and tight layout.

“I don’t know what the perfect distance is, but I would say adding 30 seconds to a track or 20 seconds would help a lot,” said Palou, one of many drivers who also said the streets were too bumpy despite work to grind down some surfaces. “We have a lot of cars. It’s crazy. It’s really good for the series, for the racing. But when it comes to practice, and we have 10 red flags, 25 yellows, it’s traffic all the time.”

It seems certain to be a memorable reimagining of the Detroit GP, which was moved downtown by IndyCar owner Roger Penske after a 30-year run at the Belle Isle course a few miles north.

McLaughlin, who drives for Team Penske, believes the race will be very similar to Nashville, but “it’s just going to be up to us with the etiquette of the drivers to figure it out along the way. I think there’s going to be a lot of passes, opportunities.

“With the track, there’s been a lot of noise I’ve seen on Twitter, from other drivers and stuff,” McLaughlin said. “At the end of the day, this is a new track, new complex. I think what everyone has done to get this going, the vibe is awesome. Belle Isle was getting old. We had to do it.

“First-year problems, it’s always going to happen. It’s just going to get better from here. The racetrack for the drivers is a blast. We don’t even know how it races yet. Everyone is making conclusions already. They probably just need to relax and wait for (Sunday).”

Here’s the IndyCar starting lineup for Sunday’s Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix (qualifying position, car number in parentheses, driver, engine and speed):

ROW 1

1. (10) Alex Palou, Honda, 1 minute, 1.8592 seconds (95.734 mph)
2. (3) Scott McLaughlin, Chevrolet, 1:02.1592 (95.271)

ROW 2

3. (28) Romain Grosjean, Honda, 1:02.2896 (95.072)
4. (9) Scott Dixon, Honda, 1:02.4272 (94.862)

ROW 3

5. (2) Josef Newgarden, Chevrolet, 1:02.5223 (94.718)
6. (8) Marcus Ericsson, Honda, 1:02.6184 (94.573)

ROW 4

7. (12) Will Power, Chevrolet, 1:02.1817 (95.237)
8. (60) Simon Pagenaud, Honda, 1:02.1860 (95.230)

ROW 5

9. (6) Felix Rosenqvist, Chevrolet, 1:02.1937 (95.219)
10. (5) Pato O’Ward, Chevrolet, 1:02.2564 (95.123)

ROW 6

11. (11) Marcus Armstrong, Honda, 1:02.2958 (95.063)
12. (27) Kyle Kirkwood, Honda, 1:04.6075 (91.661)

ROW 7

13. (7) Alexander Rossi, Chevrolet, 1:02.5714 (94.644)
14. (21) Rinus VeeKay, Chevrolet, 1:02.1911 (95.223)

ROW 8

15. (20) Conor Daly, Chevrolet, 1:02.9522 (94.071)
16. (77) Callum Ilott, Chevrolet, 1:02.2644 (95.111)

ROW 9

17. (29) Devlin DeFrancesco, Honda, 1:03.0017 (93.997)
18. (45) Christian Lundgaard, Honda, 1:02.6495 (94.526)

ROW 10

19. (55) Benjamin Pedersen, Chevrolet, 1:03.1599 (93.762)
20. (78) Agustin Canapino, Chevrolet, 1:02.9071 (94.139)

ROW 11

21. (18) David Malukas, Honda, 1:03.2126 (93.684)
22. (14) Santino Ferrucci, Chevrolet, 1:02.9589 (94.061)

ROW 12

23. (06) Helio Castroneves, Honda, 1:03.3879 (93.425)
24. (26) Colton Herta, Honda, 1:03.4165 (93.383)

ROW 13

25. (30) Jack Harvey, Honda, 1:03.7728 (92.861)
26. (51) Sting Ray Robb, Honda, 1:03.7496 (92.895)

ROW 14

27. (15) Graham Rahal, Honda, 1:03.8663 (92.725)