Yahoo Autos Team orders or not among IndyCar title contenders?
Will team orders come into effect this weekend at the Hy-Vee Milwaukee doubleheader for the two main championship contenders? It’s asking a lot for Saturday’s 250-lap NTT IndyCar Series race, but it’s more possible once we get to Sunday’s 250-lapper, the penultimate race of the season.
Chip Ganassi Racing’s Alex Palou in the No. 10 Honda has led the championship for nine of the 14 races run in 2024, including the last seven — since Laguna Seca in June — and has 54 points over Team Penske’s Will Power in the No. 12 Chevy. Palou’s teammate Scott Dixon was in the title conversation until the last race, and now sits 101 points behind Palou.
There’s almost no scenario where Dixon would be able to overcome that big of a deficit in three races, but nonetheless, the team isn’t ready to ask the six-time champion to fall back and become Palou’s tail gunner.
“We’ve never had team orders,” CGR managing director Mike Hull told RACER. “We’ve always left the drivers to have some practical sense about it. We have two 250-lap races, so if we get down to lap 248 of laps, and something has to happen, the drivers can figure it out. But it’s a one-mile flat oval and I don’t think that we can plan on who’s going to do what to whom until we get down to well after the last stop. I can’t imagine that Penske would do it any differently, nor would anybody else do it any differently.”
With a maximum of 162 points available starting at Milwaukee 1, Dixon isn’t completely out of the title conversation with his 101-point gap, but it would take a miracle for him to get back into the game. Power’s teammate Scott McLaughlin, in fourth with a 88-point deficit to Palou, is in a similar situation.
Penske’s Josef Newgarden, in seventh with a giant 131-point shortfall, would need three straight miracles to join the championship battle, but that doesn’t mean he and McLaughlin will fall in behind Power on Saturday. As Hull noted, a lot of laps need to be turned before strategy calls to rally an entire team behind the two leading title candidates are made, but Power would welcome the help and encourages the Penske outfit to support its strongest competitor.
“I think if we have the cars to win, and we want to win the championship, yes, that’s probably what we should do with three to go,” Power said. “We should probably be looking at how can we get the 12 car in the best possible position. Really, that’s our only chance. We’ve got three really good drivers — four really if you include (A.J. Foyt Racing’s) Santino (Ferrucci) — that are capable of running at the front that can take up a lot of positions. If I’m the head of that group and we win the race, that starts to make things look possible.”
If the McLaughlins and Dixons and Newgardens are in a deeper championship hole once Saturday night’s race is done, team orders could become a more formal matter within Ganassi and Penske. Hull is also wary of asking Palou’s teammates to race with an agenda.
“If you don’t race the way you normally have raced all year, if you don’t have that mindset, the odds of you having the same result are pretty slim to start with,” he said. “That’s really how we’ve always looked at it, and it hasn’t mattered how many drivers we have.”
The other strategy for Ganassi to consider — which doesn’t exactly work for Penske with Power’s sizable 54-point gap to Palou — is to have their non-contenders play offense rather than defense.
“If Dixon wins the race over Will Power, he takes points away from Will,” Hull added. “If they’re together at the end of the race, and Scott would be in a position to win, and Will’s in a position to be second, that’s the best thing in the world for us to do if Alex isn’t leading. That’s if you’re trying to look at it strategically.
“Penske has three cars. They’re going to try to take points away from everybody they can, let’s face it, to try to try to help themselves, because the three of them are still in it. There’s two of them in a position to be able to move up in the championship. And why wouldn’t Dixon want to do the same? Those are the main thoughts about it.”
