Ganassi team among favorites for another Indy win

INDIANAPOLIS — Mike Hull knows exactly why Chip Ganassi wins championships and big races like the Indianapolis 500.

“A long time ago, when Chip did everything he could to get me to come to work for him — and I was kind of young and dumb then — he said, ‘I will get you what you need to win. You work on the other part,’ ” said Hull, now Target Chip Ganassi Racing’s managing director.

The team owner has never gone back on his word and Hull has found ways to get his cars to Victory Lane with an uncanny consistency.

Hull joined Ganassi’s team in 1996 and has helped lead it to four championships in the now-defunct CART Series, two IndyCar Series titles, two Grand-Am sports car championships, three victories in the Daytona 24-Hour race and two Indianapolis 500 wins.

The team has returned to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway this month with Scott Dixon and Dario Franchitti, winners of the last two IndyCar titles and the last two Indy 500s.

“The first thing you need to have success (is) the guys that drive your race cars,” Hull said earlier this week as his team worked toward Saturday’s Indy Pole Day. “You can’t take a race driver that doesn’t have the ability and put him or her … on the best race team and meet your expectations.”

Hull said the drivers must also be single-minded.

“The common denominator that they have to this day is they don’t have outside interests,” he said. “They’re only interested in one thing: working together to win more races. And that’s what has marked us over the years with the two-driver combinations that we have had here.”

Almost everyone involved with the Ganassi team was surprised last summer when Dan Wheldon, who had joined the Ganassi team after winning the Indy 500 and the series title with Andretti Green Racing in 2005, decided to leave at the end of the season for a ride with Panther Racing.

Franchitti, who won his championship and Indy 500 in 2007 with AGR, had left IndyCar to try his hand at driving in NASCAR for Ganassi. But the stock car effort never found enough sponsorship and the money ran out in July, leaving Franchitti’s racing future in limbo.

But with Wheldon leaving, Ganassi had the perfect answer.

“Where would I have gone to find somebody better than Dario to fill that spot?” Ganassi said earlier this season. “It was just the right fit.”

And Dixon, already a good friend, was thrilled to have Franchitti return.

“Dario is a good guy and a great racer,” Dixon said. “You don’t have to like your teammates, but it helps if you can get along and share information and share the good stuff and the bad stuff. With Dario, it’s all good. We have different styles in the race car, but we can really bounce things off each other and get something out of it.”

Although Franchitti insists he enjoyed his time in NASCAR and was making strides in figuring out the big, boxy cars, he can’t hide his joy at being back in the IndyCar Series, and particularly being back at the Brickyard.

“I tried to kid myself that I wasn’t missing it,” the Scot said. “But I did find myself every day (last) May sitting in front of the computer watching the track feed, watching the lap times, speaking to Scott, speaking to Tony (Kanaan) on the phone and keeping abreast of what was going on. It was tough.

“But this is as good a situation as you could find. Being teamed with Scott is good for both of us. It’s made me raise my game already and it pushes me really hard. And I push him up to another level, too. It’s a good fight, good fun.”

Franchitti is already a winner, having taken the checkered flag at Long Beach in his second race since returning to the open-wheel series.

Meanwhile, Dixon got off to a miserable start in his title defense, finishing 15th and 16th in the street races at St. Petersburg and Long Beach. But the New Zealander got things turned around two week ago, winning on the oval at Kansas.

Both Ganassi drivers are expected to be among the favorites heading into the May 24 Indy race. But past performance doesn’t always mean much here.

“It’s a blank slate,” Franchitti said. “You’ve done well here in the past, (but) it’s not a guarantee of success this year. You’ve got to prove yourself again.

“And having a good month is only half the battle. You’ve got to show up on race day with the fast car that puts you in a position to win the race. Then you’ve got to do everything right over that whole day to get it done, and you’ve got to have some luck as well.”

Hull, who also directed Juan Pablo Montoya’s win here for Ganassi in 2000, knows it takes all of that and more to swig the winner’s milk at Indy.

“You pinch yourself when you come here because you need to remind yourself how important it is to race here,” Hull said. “You really never know what’s going to happen, and you get really down if you have a bad day. But a win here is like no other, and this is still the best place in the world to race.”