INDYCAR MEDIA CONFERENCE

August 26, 2025

Chip Ganassi

Press Conference

THE MODERATOR: Thanks for joining us today. It is really hard to believe the final race of the 2025 NTT INDYCAR SERIES season comes up this weekend. Nashville Superspeedway once again hosting the championship finale.

Alex Palou clinched the championship with two races remaining this season. First time we've seen that in 23 years. Heck of a run for Alex, without question. Historic in nature. Just the fourth driver to three-peat as champion. His eight wins in a season ties him for fourth most in the all time list. The sixth driver in series history to have four or more championships.

As a team, Chip Ganassi Racing continues to celebrate their 17th INDYCAR SERIES championship, which of course is now tied for most in series history. As you know, Chip's team has been a fixture in the sport for more than 35 years, winning at all levels. Pretty good for a Duquesne grad, I would say. With that, Chip joins us today.

Chip, you've certainly had time to reflect on the season still with one race remaining. How special has this season been for you personally?

CHIP GANASSI: Well, it's very rewarding personally. Obviously to have a driver like that under your roof is a great thing. You pair a great driver with a great group of people, great engine, great tires, great chassis, like I said a group of people that know what they're doing when it comes to race strategy and screwing cars together and what have you, you end up with a pretty good package.

We obviously knew going into the season we thought we had a good package. Quite frankly, none of us could have dreamed this type of year really. I think you would have thought I was a little boisterous or whatever had I predicted this in the beginning of the year.

I did say at the beginning of the year we're just tapping Alex's talent. We may have scratched the surface. I think unfortunately for everyone else, I don't think he's hit the ceiling, to give you a few phrases there.

THE MODERATOR: Seems to me like he gets better and better each and every week and season. You tied Penske for championships. That's a heck of a run.

CHIP GANASSI: Dave, this is all I do. I don't have any other businesses. I wish I did sometimes. No, this is all I do (smiling). That's all I want to do.

I love racing. I love being at the front. I love all forms of racing. I can appreciate every form. Over the years, like you said, we've been involved in many. I love the business. Our team is not overloaded with money, but we get the most out of the money we spend. We're not the most well-funded team out there.

I got a great group of people that know how to get the most out of what they work with. We have a lot of Swiss Army knives around the race shop that we get the most out of our people. I'm really proud of them.

This is another championship for them.

THE MODERATOR: The partnerships you have, obviously PNC Bank, DHL, these are companies that joined on not only at the right time but an important time for this race team.

CHIP GANASSI: Right.

THE MODERATOR: We'll open it up for questions.

Q. Fortunate to grow up out here in the Bay Area where we have some dynasties. Football dynasty with the 49ers. Loved the Steelers, Pirates. Know those from a dynasty standpoint. You matched Penske with the 17 titles. But looking at other sports, Hendrick has 14 championships, UConn women's basketball 12. You have reached a point where you've got some numbers where we need to look at what you've done and say that these are real impressive not just in racing, North American sports in general. Can you speak to that side of the situation. You guys have created a bit of a dynastic thing of your own. It's got to mean something to you.

CHIP GANASSI: Yeah, I think it means a little bit. I think first of all, growing up in Pittsburgh, hearing stories of the 1960 home run with Bill Mazeroski in the bottom of the ninth in Game 7. Everything from that to the Super Steelers of the '70s.

You grew up around Pittsburgh, you were expected to win. It wasn't about just putting a team out there. You're expected to win in this town. That's kind of how I grew up.

Then you overlay that with me getting involved in racing. I've often said that it's just as hard to be at the back as it is at the front, so you might as well be at the front. You've got to work really, really hard either place. You probably have to work harder when you're at the back than when you're at the front.

There will be plenty of time that I'll speak to my grandkids one day about what it was like back in the day to win a bunch of championships and everything. I hate to say this, but the way we look at it is we're focused on Nashville. We're a little bit pissed off about Milwaukee, so... That's all I can tell you. We're disappointed we didn't win in Milwaukee.

Q. Your one word on comment on pit lane on Sunday of 'shit', that pretty much spoke to the prevailing attitude.

CHIP GANASSI: Right.

Q. One of the unique things about how your team as accomplished its championships, very few instances of a one-time champion. Jimmy Vasser got things kicked off in '96, Zanardi multiple. Montoya got his one in '99. For the most part your championships have been won where a driver gets two or three or more. Dario, Dixon, Alex now, the original Alex Zanardi. Is it the consistency among the crew and personnel that has built this?

CHIP GANASSI: I got to be honest with you, I never had that question before. It makes me think a little bit.

I don't know what is the reason. I don't know. We obviously have a driver that understands what makes the car work. We have a group of people that understand what makes the car work.

I've got to be honest with you, too. I think you can look at not each championship, but certainly the few of them here and there, I'm not blind to the fact, I should say, that some of my strongest competitors are in disarray right now. That's part of it.

I mean, part of our success - I'm not throwing anybody under the bus - but part of our success is other teams are having some challenges right now. But that's part of it. It's part of it. It's part of the game, yeah.

Q. A lot of people have questions about the Red Bull angle. Obviously with Honda preparing to kick the tires, looking towards their future, do they want to go stockcar racing, are you completely out of the NASCAR charter business or do you talk with Honda and say maybe if NASCAR releases a couple of more charters, maybe we can get back in that business together? Are you open to that at all?

CHIP GANASSI: Am I open to it? I wouldn't say yes or no. I mean, I can say this, I've never had that conversation with Honda, never had that conversation with NASCAR. I'm smart enough to say I would never say never.

Q. I was thinking of the Red Bull interest. You look at what Shane has done in NASCAR this year, when you have an elite road racer with a car that has a lot more similarity than ever before, how aware are you as a company that if you were in that space again, take that guy and do the same things you tried to do with Dario before, maybe he can win three or four Cup races. Have you considered it from a Chip Ganassi Racing-NASCAR standpoint of what he could do?

CHIP GANASSI: You're on to something good there. The answer is yes. The formula changed since I was there. It's a formula that lends itself to the kind of racing and engineering that we do, that we're good at. The answer to that is yes.

I'll try to remember the second part of that.

It lends itself to that. But I've not had any of those discussions or given it much thought really. Again, I can see where you could plug in a guy like SVG and have some success. I got plenty of those guys.

Q. I'll get the question out of the way. There are reports that Red Bull is interested in Alex. Your thoughts?

CHIP GANASSI: I'm glad we're getting this out of the way early (smiling).

I read that myself. There was nobody quoted in there. I talk to Palou. Palou said he's never talked to anybody, doesn't know anything about it. I talked to his management. They know nothing about it. I know nothing about it.

I think it's a click bait story. Somebody needs to brush up their investigative journalism.

Q. You've stuck with Alex. You fought for him.

CHIP GANASSI: Sure.

Q. You're still fighting for him. I suppose everything that you guys have accomplished together and everything that you've gone through together, you don't want to lose him, correct?

CHIP GANASSI: No. I mean, of course I don't want to lose him. Who wants to lose somebody good? Where you going with that?

Q. I'm hoping you can reflect.

CHIP GANASSI: He had an opportunity to leave and he decided to stay. I don't know how many times I have to say that. Everybody can see that, I think, yeah.

Q. You've had great drivers. This guy has won four of five. That's pretty special. That's Jimmie, Lewis Hamilton, Michael Schumacher. How does a driver do that? How does a team and a driver achieve this and just hit on it and become so superior to the rest of the field?

CHIP GANASSI: I mean, if you take out the obvious things like talent and ability and good engineering and whatever with all these people, I'd like to think in our team we work a little harder at giving drivers what they need.

That might be different for Palou than it is Dixon, or different than Kyffin. Different people need different things. We're not etched in granite with every single thing we do on the team. We personalize whether it's the setups or treatment of people. Everyone's not the same.

I'd like to think we do a good job of getting the most out of our people from top to bottom, from the drivers all the through the organization. It's because I think I take the time to talk to these people. I'd like to think I do anyway.

As I said earlier, this is what I do seven days a week. I work hard at it. My team works hard at it. That's what we're trying to do.

I don't have any other way to explain it. I talk to you 25 times a year. When you call me, I'm working at the business, I'm in the business. I'm working at it, yeah.

Q. You like winners.

CHIP GANASSI: I like winners, too (smiling).

Q. When you signed Alex in the 2020 off-season, he'd only had one season, he wasn't particularly established in his INDYCAR career. Now he's a four-time champion. Did you ever see that potential with Alex when you signed him? What did you see in 2020 to know he was the guy that would lead your future?

CHIP GANASSI: I've said this before. The thing that stood out to us, really it's the ultimate question you ask yourself in this particular sport of INDYCAR racing, the first and foremost question you have to ask yourself is, Does the guy like Indianapolis? I don't care who you bring there, some guys take to it and some don't.

When he was with Dale Coyne, he was pitted right next to us in the race. They had terrible pit stops. They still finished fourth in the race. Said to me that kid likes this place. That's what we look for, first and foremost: Can he get himself around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway? If you like that, that's a big start.

Hey, we've seen plenty of guys that are great drivers that haven't really figured it out there yet. So that was originally what we saw.

To say that did we see four championships in five years in him, absolutely not. You would have thought I was off my rocker if I said that in 2020.

Q. Looking at Alex now after the four championships, where do you rank him with some of the INDYCAR greats? Looking forward to the future, how many championships do you think he could win?

CHIP GANASSI: Again, that's like you look at quarterbacks in the NFL and you say, Well, gee, where does Joe Montana, Dan Marino, Terry Bradshaw, Tom Brady, who's the best quarterback? Well, these guys, they're all in different eras, different teams around them. Who's the best?

That's the great thing about sports, we're never going to know the answers to those things. Head-to-head. Hey, for all these guys, the car's different, the tire's different, the engines are different, the weight transfer is different. Everything about Palou's championship push here the last four or five years, Vasser and Zanardi in the '90s, they're 180 degrees different.

You have a team that's adapted to that over time and engineering that's been able to change. If you don't like change, you're not going to like the INDYCAR business. Cars change from time to time.

You say it's the same car. Bullshit it's the same car. It's not the same car. We've had everything from the hybrid tossed upon us to harder tires, not-so-good brakes. All these things add up to a really difficult car to drive these days. Completely different than it was in the '90s.

Q. Kyffin Simpson, how impressed have you been with him?

CHIP GANASSI: Very good. Very good. We have to get him going on the ovals a little bit better. I think we're okay at Indianapolis. Boy, we need some help on short ovals. We have to do some heavy work over the off-season to work on that.

Q. I know last season you loaned Marcus Armstrong out to Meyer Shank Racing. Is he still involved in the ranks of Chip Ganassi Racing stables?

CHIP GANASSI: Absolutely. He's a member of our team, yeah.

THE MODERATOR: Chip, I love the analogy, Dan Marino versus others, Montana versus Manning.

CHIP GANASSI: That's the argument of sports all the time: Who's the best? Who knows. We'll be arguing that till the end of time.

THE MODERATOR: Michael Jordan versus LeBron. Goes on and on.

Q. We talk about all of this history that Alex and the 10 team have hit this year or are approaching or tied. Is there any aspect of his season that particularly has caught your eye or stood out to you as one of the more impressive things they've succeeded at or maybe ways in which you will remember this year for that group?

CHIP GANASSI: I would say the short oval performance, the Iowa and Milwaukee performance. A year ago, we were out to lunch. That will stand out as something. We were just okay there in past years. I mean, obviously Indianapolis. I don't want to brush over that lightly.

I mean, yeah, if you look at our short oval performance, I think that we're onto some things there that we're pretty happy about.

We've improved our street racing a little bit. I would say that's probably number two. We've always been kind of okay on the natural road courses, yeah.

Q. I think a post from your team's social account that pointed out it had been 15 years since anyone won the Indy 500 and the championship in the same season. The folks who win the 500 each year, we think of them as some of the greats. Seems interesting it has been that long since Dario.

CHIP GANASSI: I wouldn't have guessed that. That seems a little long to me.

Q. It has been that long since the best driver on that day in May has also been the best driver across the entire season. What do you make of knowing how rare that is and has been the last decade and a half? What do you feel that significance is, that this team rose to the occasion time in, time out?

CHIP GANASSI: When we win a race, back at the race shop, we do some things. We have a luncheon, talk about the win and whatever. Just recently we had a show of hands about how many people have ever won the Indy 500, how many people have been involved in a team that won the championship. I was surprised at the number of people that hands were raised, that it was their first Indy 500 or their first championship.

I took a little extra time in the meeting to explain, Don't take this stuff for granted because it doesn't happen that often. It looks easy, but it's not.

You can tell me how many times we won the Indy 500. I can tell you how many times we've lost it, okay? These things don't happen often, and they don't happen matter-of-factly. It takes a lot of work on a lot of people's part and a lot of luck.

We've been blessed with that this year so far. We want to keep it going.

Q. The broadcast team, the practice broadcasts at Milwaukee, asked you about the prospect, as you guys win this dominant championship five of the last six, the prospect of going into this off-season, ensuring that you hang on to everyone on that team. Every team in this paddock would love to have the engineers and mechanics that have helped bring this championship to Chip Ganassi Racing.

CHIP GANASSI: Sure.

Q. You've talked before about how many employees you've had in your organization that have been there so many years, that makes up a large amount of your organization. As you've gone into this process before, what do you feel has allowed you and what do you hope will allow Chip Ganassi Racing to continue to withstand some of the battles inside the paddock of trying to poach your guys away?

CHIP GANASSI: That's a good question.

We try to give our people what they need. I mean, I don't think we pay the most money. You have to like to win. There's plenty of people that have left our team. A lot of them come back after. They go, Geez, I didn't know what that meant winning all those races and what it's like when you don't. I've heard that story more than 10 times, so...

I don't know. You have to have a will to win and a will to be a part of the team. A lot of teams say they're a team, but they sure don't look like it to me. I don't know. I can't worry about everybody else's team. I have to worry about my own.

I try to do the best job for our people. It's all I know how to do. It's all I know what to do. I try to treat everybody right, treat everybody like I want to be treated. I don't know.

Q. I want to ask directly if you have any expectation other than having Alex Palou racing in the No. 10DHL Honda next year for your INDYCAR team?

CHIP GANASSI: No other expectation.

Q. You talked about the values of the team. That starts at the top. Where did you learn your values? Was it your dad? An upbringing? Somewhere along the lines that you've learned this style to translate over to a successful business?

CHIP GANASSI: That's a good question.

You spend a lot of your time in life, in your 20s and 30s, of learning, whether it's in school or in college or whatever. I had this architect friend of mine tell me one time, You get to a point in life where you're not emulating everyone else, you're emulating yourself now. That's who you become one day.

I'd like to think I've taken a lot from a lot of people. I took a lot from my father. I took a lot from great relationships I've had with people at Target. I've taken parts of Roger Penske. I learned a lot from Mario Andretti.

I've been fortunate over the years to come in contact with a lot of great people. When you're in contact with a lot of great people, those things rub off on you.

Joe Montana. Like having Jimmie Johnson on the team for a couple years. There's little things of each and every one of these successful people that I've been around over the years that rub off on you.

I guess that's a combination of all those is what makes up this championship team.

Q. Back to the Formula 1 stuff, but in a general way. Do you think that the Formula 1 is the biggest threat for you and Alex? You are living a fairy tale. Everyone is going well. Alex is happy. You have a champion for five, seven years. The dream of European driver is always Formula 1. Maybe that will come in the future for him. You probably would have to fight for him. Do you see this as a threat?

CHIP GANASSI: Look, let me say this. Everybody wants a driver that everybody else wants to have. That means you have something that's really valuable, okay?

Do I think Formula 1's the biggest threat? You know what I think the biggest threat is, the biggest threat is ourselves, each of us. Each of us is our biggest threat, okay?

I work to create the best possible environment for our people. It's the same for our drivers. I work to give them the best possible environment. That's all I know how to do. It seems to be working.

Like I said, Alex had an opportunity to leave and he didn't. I don't know what else to tell you. I take him at his word when he says he likes it here and he's having a great time.

Q. Obviously we hear this towards the end of every INDYCAR season, talking about potential format changes, Playoffs. Can you reiterate your position as a team owner on any talk about Playoffs or championship format changes?

CHIP GANASSI: I called up Herb Simon. I say, Herb, when you hire Caitlin Clark for the WNBA team, you bring her on the team, do you want to change all the rules there? Did they change the rules when Joe Montana won four Super Bowls? Did they change the rules with the Yankees when the Yankees had the kind of run they had there years back? I don't know.

I also think you look at people that have changed the rules to Playoff format, you have just as many people that are against it, a lot of people that are against it.

I'm not throwing down on NASCAR or anything. I just don't think that's the history of the sport. I think you have to protect the history a little bit.

Look at baseball. They're the prime example of not changing anything.

I don't know. I think that's the history of the sport. I think we have to preserve the history.

Q. I was up at your shop earlier this morning. I look at the guys on the 10 car. 30 years, Ricky Davis. Julian Robertson has been there for over 30 years, one of your first guys that worked for you. Barry Wanser has been there forever. It really seems that keeping these guys together, even on other cars, No. 9 has had Mike Hull and the engineering staff. How big of a role does all of that play in the tremendous domination that the 10 car's enjoyed the last couple of years?

CHIP GANASSI: We went for a lot of years where the 10 car didn't have any success. But having said that, you're stating the obvious that there's a lot of speed in tenure. I've said that before, I'll say it again. Having these guys around, understanding how we work, how we get things done, again how to work with each other, it all plays together to make a team.

It takes a team to win these days. It takes everybody and everything to do it the way we do it. I don't know how other teams do it. Way we do it, it takes everybody and everything.

Having those guys around with those years of experience unquestionably adds to our success from time to time.

Q. Julian Robertson also wanted to point out having Dario to work with the drivers on the team, what a tremendous asset.

CHIP GANASSI: No question.

Q. In a lot of ways, it's like a hidden secret.

CHIP GANASSI: Yeah, call Dario what you want, the sporting director. They have these fancy names nowadays. I just thought he was a good guy to talk to the other drivers, help them out a little bit. Seems to be working, yeah.

Q. I want to ask about Milwaukee. Other than the end result, which wasn't what you wanted, talk about the experience of the race and how you felt about the venue and the crowd.

CHIP GANASSI: Yeah, looked like a great crowd. I recognize those grandstands from a place called Chicago Motor Speedway. I think I bought those grandstands once.

No, I think they've obviously done a great job there. They've obviously resurrected a historical event on the calendar. Seems to be running better. I'm glad to be there.

Q. It seems like it's a good track for the drivers. They enjoy the experience of racing there.

CHIP GANASSI: I think they do. I don't know that I want a steady diet of short tracks. I think to sprinkle a few in here and there is okay, yeah.

Q. As you go to Nashville, focus is there, when do you take a step back and look at the entirety of the season, really the full accomplishment?

CHIP GANASSI: Yeah, I mean, we begin to do that in the off-season. Obviously we're focused right now on Nashville. We want to go win that race. We'll talk about the championship certainly in off-season, celebrate it the right way. I couldn't be more proud of my team. I couldn't be more proud of Palou.

Let me point out one thing I pointed out the other day. It wasn't that long ago in motor racing, I remember in 1997 or '8 with Zanardi, we had won the championship before the end of the year. We went to Australia was the last race of the season in there somewhere. I remember our engineer Morris Nunn was amazed that Zanardi had the ability to want to go out and win even though he'd already won the championship.

For young people today, that seems like an obvious thing maybe, but it wasn't that many years ago that it wasn't so obvious. Teams at the end of the year, they almost pulled their cars off the track because they didn't want to crash them at the end of the year when there were no points to gain or no championship to win.

You have that on one end to today where we have Alex. I walked up to him on Friday night at Milwaukee. I said, What do you think about this weekend?

He said, What do I think about it? I think we want to win.

That's a great thing for a guy to say after winning a championship already. I think there's a lot to be said for that. It's not a new phenomenon for us, but it's certainly something that not that many years ago was a different take, if you will.

Q. Alex has been synonymous this season with some of the greats. He's up there with Scott Dixon, Mario Andretti, et cetera. He won the championship. His next goal was to close down the season at least with a double-digit win. Now that Alex is really close to tying up with Mario Andretti's nine-win streak, how do you assess his finish and his name up there with some of the INDYCAR greats? How do you view the trajectory of his journey so far?

CHIP GANASSI: Yes, certainly in modern times, his name's right there, right there with everybody certainly in modern times, whether it's Dixon, Zanardi, Vasser, our guys, and champions of other ones.

Again, I don't know how you compare to Mario, okay? Mario to me is still a great champion. Everyone wants to look and say, These guys won that many races, they won this or that.

One of the things that still stands out to me with Mario that I have a lot of respect for was his versatility, whether winning Daytona, Pikes Peak, all these different things he won, sprint car races, dirt car races.

It goes back to our earlier conversation, you can only compare these guys in the years they're in to other great drivers they're competing directly against. When you start skipping over decades of rule changes and car changes...

Remember, I think it's interesting to point out, it wasn't until the 1980s that they even closed the pits on a yellow flag in INDYCAR racing. That's a huge difference that racing makes, that the competitors make. You have to factor all that in when you talk about number of wins that a driver has.

Hey, I just feel fortunate to be in the sport. I feel fortunate to know a lot of champions, have known a lot of champions. I like what they represent, what they all represent, what all the champions represent to me and to people like Alex. They all have an understanding of that.

You'll never be able to compare how Alex stacks up against AJ Foyt or Mario or Parnelli, any of these guys. We'll never know. We can always talk about it. That's the great thing about sports. That's what makes bench racing so much fun.

Q. I heard you were talking about Alex on short ovals. From the outside it definitely looks like Alex has taken a significant step on short ovals. Have you noticed any drastic changes in him or has it just been small gains? Where else do you think he can improve, the potential for him to get better?

CHIP GANASSI: Boy, I don't know. Let's see, there were about two or three questions there.

Could I see any areas he can improve? Boy, I don't know. I'm the last guy to tell him where he needs to improve. He seems to be doing a good job of that himself.

In terms of when I look back on the year, yeah, obviously the short ovals were big. Indianapolis was big. I remember the talk in the beginning of the year was, Yeah, Palou is great, he won these championships, but he hasn't won on an oval. Dispelled that rumor this year, that poor fact, so...

THE MODERATOR: A sign of a real competitor, when someone doesn't tell him what he needs to work on, he already knows.

CHIP GANASSI: He knows.

Q. The theme has always been at Ganassi 'one team, one focus, one team'. Looking at this year and looking at the years leading to this year, how important has the Dixon factor been in helping Alex achieve some of what he's actually achieved? Dixon is a team player.

CHIP GANASSI: Yeah, no question. No question that Scott's helped Palou's career. No question. They sit in the same room. They talk about the same setups. Obviously I don't think they drive exactly the same car.

I can tell you that Alex will be the first to tell you that he learned a lot from Scott Dixon, and vice versa, yeah. Great teammates.

Q. Looking at that going into this final race, how significant is it to try and keep Dixon as high up in that championship status as you can, but not necessarily give Alex missing out on the chance of getting that extra win?

CHIP GANASSI: Good question.

Yeah, I don't know. I can tell you this. I can tell you this. Palou is going to be there to win the race. Dixon is going to be there to win the race. If it comes down to the end of the race, I can tell you that I'm not going to play God and tell which one to go where, okay? I think that's very dangerous to do.

I just tell them rule number one is don't hit each other, and rule number two, don't forget rule number one.

Yeah, we'd like to keep Dixon as high up in the points as we can. We'd also like to see Palou get a record of some sort. That would be a nice feather in our cap.

We're just here to win the race with whoever wins it. Kyffin can win it, as well.

Q. You are maybe more than a boss for Alex, Alex told to me. If Alex were to move to Formula 1 one day, do you think he would be as happy as he is in this team and in this series?

CHIP GANASSI: I don't know. I would hope so. I would hope so. I mean, I think Alex is more like a brother to me than anything else. Like I said earlier, I take him for his word what he says to me.

I mean, I don't know that the draw there is what it used to be when we were growing up. There's two or three coveted seats there. Outside of that, I wouldn't want to see him go to be a number two driver anywhere.

I don't stop people from doing those kind of things. Yeah, I focus on what we do. I mean, I think it's not too long... Every time I get a call from a Formula 1 driver, I don't call the press up and say, I got a phone call from somebody, they want to come drive INDYCARs. We get calls all the time from Formula 1 drivers.

They go this way, that way. I don't think it's as interesting a thing as it used to be, the draw one way or the other for that matter. I think they're both very specialized anymore. I don't know how you go from winning the biggest race in the world to one that's not. I don't know.

Q. You've spoken about how difficult it is to compare Alex to previous champions. How have the emotions and the feelings of his and your successes compared to what you've experienced before?

CHIP GANASSI: I'm sorry, how my emotions?

Q. How have your emotions and the feelings of his and your successes compared to what you've experienced before?

CHIP GANASSI: Yeah, I mean, I think back to when I was a kid, I just wanted to race cars. You start racing cars, you start having success, you want to have more success, so you work harder at it.

But my emotions today for winning races are more than they used to be because I think now, at my age, I appreciate them even more than maybe I did when I was in my 20s and 30s. Yeah, I appreciate them even more, so... I guess my emotions would follow that.

Q. In a hypothetical world, where Alex does depart and make the move to Formula 1, how would you see him doing?

CHIP GANASSI: I don't want to speak. You know what, I have enough trouble running my business every day in the real world that I can't speak to the hypothetical world.

Q. With the recent success for you and the team, what do you think the next few years will look like?

CHIP GANASSI: Like I said earlier, he hasn't hit the ceiling yet. You'd have to say who would be the odds-on favorite for next year's Indy 500 at this point? If you go to Las Vegas and look at the odds for the 2026 Indy 500, I haven't seen them, but I would bet that Palou is the favorite already.

Q. In Portland you said that it's the people that work for you that help you be successful.

CHIP GANASSI: Right.

Q. One individual within your team, Jason York, was inducted in the Californian Motorsport Hall of Fame recently. What does that mean to you as a boss to have one of your engineers inducted into a Hall of Fame?

CHIP GANASSI: It's like having your children recognized in a Hall of Fame. It's no different. It's the same thing. I mean, it's huge. It's huge to have them recognized in the sport, being obviously voted in by people outside my immediate circle. That's nothing but a feather in our team's hat, another feather in our team's hat.

A lot of times those type of accolades go unnoticed to the wider press. I'm glad you brought that up.

THE MODERATOR: You can't win championships without great people, Chip. All of us that cover this sport know a lot of the people that have been around your organization for years and years. Congratulations on not only hiring these great folks, but all the success you've had here in 2025. This is the most robust video news conference we've had all season. Congratulations on that.

CHIP GANASSI: Thank you, Dave.

THE MODERATOR: Safe travels. We'll see you in Nashville.

CHIP GANASSI: See you in Nashville.