MONTEREY, Calif. – It was almost exactly a year ago that Chip Ganassi realized Alex Palou might reverse course and return to his IndyCar team.
After Palou won by more than 30 seconds at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca – capping his tumultuous 2022 season marred by a contract dispute with Chip Ganassi Racing that reached the courts in a lawsuit – he and Ganassi had a conversation before leaving the track.
The productive talk that he had with Palou after the Sept. 11, 2022 finale was encouraging enough for Ganassi to pull aside managing director Mike Hull to let his top lieutenant know that there was a chance of retaining the superstar despite an extremely contentious summer.
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“I said, ‘I don’t think that guy’s necessarily gone,’ ” Ganassi told a small group of reporters Friday in his team’s VIP hospitality area. “And let’s just leave it at that.”
Since a July 12, 2022 social media post, Palou had been expected to leave Ganassi for Arrow McLaren – first in this season and then (after agreeing through arbitration to honor a final option year at Ganassi) in 2024.
But last month, Palou informed McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown that he wouldn’t be joining the team, and Ganassi confirmed to NBC Sports’ Kevin Lee that Palou would return to the No. 10 Dallara-Honda last Sunday after the star clinched his second NTT IndyCar Series championship in three years.
Last year, Palou and Ganassi went weeks without speaking to each other.
Wednesday, Palou said his relationship with the team owner never has been better, and Ganassi affirmed that Friday.
So is all the lingering bitterness and ill will from the saga now settled?
“In my eyes, it is,” Ganassi said.
What about the lawsuit that Palou faces in an U.K. commercial court from McLaren Racing?
“I’ve said all I want to say about that,” Ganassi said.
He did delve into more details about his 2024 driver lineup, which will add Marcus Armstrong (who already was running road and street courses for Ganassi this season) and Linus Lundqvist full time to join Palou and six-time series champion Scott Dixon.
Lundqvist surprisingly was caught on the sidelines this season despite a six-figure scholarship from winning the 2022 Indy NXT championship, but he never fell out of Ganassi’s line of sight – especially after an impressive IndyCar debut (turning the fastest laps at Nashville and the Indianapolis road course after replacing injured Simon Pagenaud for Meyer Shank Racing).
“I’m not going to tell you how we got Linus,” Ganassi said. “I’ll just say we’ve been in contact with Linus for a while. It didn’t just happen in a day. We didn’t have a spot for him. I get calls from a lot of drivers, and I have to tell them we don’t have spots.
“He stayed on our radar, not because of his tenaciousness, and just because of his performance. There are a lot of drivers that deserve rides at the top level of the sport in any series.”
Lundqvist will fill the void left by 2022 Indy 500 winner Marcus Ericsson, who has signed a multiyear deal with Andretti Autosport starting next season.
“We like Marcus; I like him,” Ganassi said. “I want him to stay. He’s a hard-working guy. Who worked harder after an Indy 500 win than he did? We liked him. We wanted to keep him.
“The biggest thing going against him, he had everyone telling him he was the No. 3 driver, and he wasn’t. He wasn’t the No. 3 driver. But when you have teammates like Dixon and Palou, and I think he felt some pressure about that, and he could be a star on a lot of other teams, and he probably will be. I’m sorry to see him go.”
Ericsson had been lobbying Ganassi for a contract extension since the preseason, but the team owner said he didn’t have the sponsorship in hand to put a deal on the table until shortly before Ericsson signed with Andretti in mid-August.
“I tried to keep him, believe me,” Ganassi said. “I never gave somebody such a larger offer that they declined. That’s a first.
“I didn’t have the money when he wanted a big offer back in February or March or something, and he was getting other people calling him. And I’m like, ‘I want to keep you. I’m working on it.’ But I didn’t have it then. When I finally had it, it was too late. It’s that simple. I’m not in a position to be giving drivers offers to be nicely paid without having a sponsor on a car.”
So did Andretti and deep-pocketed co-owner Dan Towriss have an advantage?
“I don’t want to talk about other teams,” Ganassi said. “I don’t know what their deal is. I can guess at it.
“But it doesn’t make it harder. What we like to do is win races and win championships. I think if you focus on that, everything else takes care of itself. That’s what we try to do. That’s what we do. It’s simple. I tell you guys all the time, that’s all we do.”