Dixon, Kanaan upbeat over Honda prospects for Indy 500

Dixon and Kanaan finished sixth and seventh in last year’s Verizon IndyCar Series championship, in the team’s third and final year using Chevrolet engines. And although Honda scored only two wins compared with Chevrolet’s 14, both drivers believe the HPD’s superspeedway aerokit is superior.

“I think we have a lot better chance than we had last year, put it this way,” said 2013 Indy 500 winner Kanaan. “I think their package for Indianapolis proved the past three years that it was the package to have.

“For me especially, it's very promising [but] it doesn't mean anything because I lost races with the best car there so many times! But it's definitely a good starting point.”

Dixon, who won the “500” back in 2008, said: “I'd like to think that, outside of last year, we always have a pretty good shot at Indy. But I think Hondas were very, very strong at Pocono and the Indy 500.

I'm sure that came into thoughts of making the decision for [Ganassi’s] switch.

“There's two things that we set goals for, and that's to win the championship and win the Indianapolis 500.”

Nonetheless, both drivers are expecting the road/street course kit to prove a challenge, especially given the team’s lack of familiarity with the Honda

“For sure, it's a completely different aero kit,” said Kanaan. “Completely different numbers and aerodynamics, front wing, rear wing. So yes, it is a big learning curve. We're flat-out, outside the track, trying to understand that because our setups were all made for the Chevy aero kit, and we're just having to relearn everything.”

Added Dixon: “Maybe the tracks that we have coming up first are going to be sort of eye-openers. Street courses and maybe some short ovals –  they could be our tougher ones.

“If you look at statistics and the data that you have every weekend at these tracks, and segment times, you know exactly where the deficits are. It's not like we went into something not knowing the areas we need to improve, but I think through the winter we've found some good gains. Whether it's enough at some places, we know where the weaknesses are… You always think you know a bit about the competition, but then when reality strikes, there are areas that you maybe didn't understand as well.”

Dixon added that the switch from Chevrolet to Honda wasn’t the only issues being addressed by Ganassi during the offseason.

“Since the transition happened [there have been] lots of meetings, trying to understand what we need to improve on, but with such a bad season for us in '16, it was definitely a good year to sit down, sort of look back and understand in a lot of areas where we were not as efficient, making a lot more mistakes than we should as a team.”


He said the team are “hopefully getting back to a lot of the basics and doing them better, which I think will help us with consistency and performance throughout the year.”