“Once in a generation.”
Hey folks, Dre back at it again with the other half of another DRR Double Bill edition. And in this edition, we’re getting into the back half of IndyCar’s 2026 season as their crew heads to Mid-Ohio for the Honda Indy 200, and a weekend that will be remembered for one of the biggest driver transfer stories in IndyCar history. Let’s talk about it.
Oh, and Pato O’Ward won too. That happened. More on that later.
Scott Dixon Leaves Ganassi
No, really. This isn’t a joke. After 24 years together in North American open-wheel racing, Scott Dixon is leaving Chip Ganassi Racing to head to McLaren in 2027.
People didn’t buy it. I sure as hell didn’t. Jenna Fryer was the first to spitball it on her newly independent Substack. Marshall Pruett struggled through his usual Racer.com silly season articles and danced around the idea on his Podcast, only putting his name on it when the news was virtually official. This didn’t feel real, until it very much did.
I’m not going to be the person to write you a Scott Dixon retrospective. I’ve not been in this game and I could never do it justice. But as a decade old fan from the outside who got assimilated in, even I know that Dixon was a juggernaut. A machine who has six different ways he could beat you. The Raw Numbers are insane:
388 Starts (427 if you include his 39 in Champ Car), 58 Wins, 143 Podiums, 32 Pole Positions, an Indy 500 win, and 6 Astor Cups (2003, 2008, 2013, 2015, 2018, 2020).
That 58 win count is good for second on the all-time list behind AJ Foyt. But for me, it’s not even the sheer number. It’s how he won. 23 of his seasons have at least one victory. 21 of them have been consecutive. He could beat you with raw speed. He could beat you on strategy, on an oval, a road course, or a street track with his excellent strategist Mike Hull.
He was known as the fuel saving god, who could lift and coast at a crazy rate and still remain fast, pulling the rug out from under his opposition like at Long Beach a couple of years ago. There were days like the spin and win at Indianapolis too, proof that you couldn’t take your eye off him, making alternate strategies pay off.
I’ve joked about it so many times, that a race could happen, you didn’t even mention Dixon by name, and as if by magic, he’s fifth after seemingly doing nothing all day. It’s that genius that’s led to six Astor Cup titles, the second most of anyone ever. Maybe it’s a losing argument, but if you called Dixon the greatest to ever do it, I don’t think you’d be laughed out of the room – That’s the demand he’s respected. Even Alex Palou, the greatest of the modern age, said he wouldn’t be the demonic racer he is today without him.
But that’s what makes this all so surprising. Dixon and CGR is an iconic pairing. From the decade he was in the red Target car, to the more recent orange and blue of PNC Bank, we all thought Dixon was going to be a CGR lifer. Chip offered a man who turns 46 in a fortnight’s time a multi-year contract, likely finishing off the “golden handcuffs” career-long pairing. But Dixon made the decision to leave, apparently in tears doing so, to head to McLaren.
Why McLaren? Why now?
Well, McLaren’s always wanted a headline talent to spearhead their team since moving into the series full-time. Pato O’Ward has been their guy almost from Day 1 and has moulded himself into the most well-balanced perennial contender in IndyCar, a marketer’s wet dream and one of the most outspoken ambassadors in IndyCar. Alex Palou chickened out of being the next guy, and they lost faith in David Malukas far too quickly. Dixon and McLaren have flirted with each other in years past, but now is the time that McLaren has chosen to go all-in. They want the 2027 Triple Crown across their Motorsporting portfolio. A Monaco GP win with the F1 team, finally breaking their duck at the Indy 500, and most ambitiously, a Le Mans win on debut with the McLaren hypercar programme.
Now, the odds of that are really unlikely. McLaren are almost certainly not going to open their time in the World Endurance Championship with a Le Mans win, they lack the experience of their competitors, they have an LMdH and that typically isn’t as strong as an LMH, and even if it was that great out of the box, the ACO would probably whack it with a Beyonce-style baseball bat, with “20 Kilos to Toyota” engraved in the inside.
For me, this lineup screams “We’re all in for the 500” and not the Astor Cup. I’ve been endorsing Christian Lundgaard a bit for the last… going on three years now, but it was for valid reasons. The last 18 months have proven that to me, he’s the best road and street course driver in IndyCar who hasn’t owned a coffee shop. The reason he’s being cut is his oval form. Lundgaard was 13th on oval points in 2025, and is currently 16th so far this season. He’s been second on road and street courses in that same timeframe. There’s been very little terms of mitigation in that time either. It’s been a weakness of his from the start, we just gave him a pass because he started his career at… RLL. *shivers*
If I’m building a 500-specialist team for Indianapolis in May, Pato O’Ward is about the best name available on the board for his consistency (Six Top 6 finishes in eight attempts), Felix Roseqvist as this year’s reigning champion and sneakily been in the elite in terms of speed at the raceway for a good few seasons now, and Scott Dixon, who has continually flirted with winning the race again for a good 15 years now (Ask his wife.)
For me right now, Christian Lundgaard is one of about three people who has enough upside to give Palou something to think about, and dumping him is a clear statement of intent as to what McLaren wants to be going forward. Shocker, the CEO being a marketing man would pull them towards the golden carrot.
So what next?
The big question here is – Who replaces Dixon in the legendary #9 car? Lundgaard’s the best guy on the board here and I don’t think it’s particularly close here either. And CGR’s philosophy is far more balanced in terms of trying to win on all-fronts. Who would have guessed that Marcus Ericsson would end up as an elite 500 threat for multiple seasons? Or that Palou would eventually do the same when he first joined half a decade ago? For me, it’s a no-brainer… but I would also accept Rinus Veekay here, if for no other reason than I think he’s underrated in all facets of IndyCar (And another 500 speed specialist).
If not, I think MSR is a fantastic runner-up prize. Marcus Armstrong, who’s been a Top 10 level driver since joining is on a new deal, and with the team likely to have two free seats in the next couple of years, it could be an excellent landing spot for someone who needs a step-up. I suspect Caio Collet, having a solid rookie season at AJ Foyt could be that driver. We’ll see.
Still, when you’re Scott Dixon and moving away from CGR to McLaren is such a big deal, even the Formula 1 boys club lean on it for easy social clout, you’re already a legend, and I’ll be very curious to see what Dixon does in a different shade of Orange. And given it’s a multi-year deal, it could mean Dixon as a full-timer in his Age 48 season. Man.
Wouldn’t It Be Funny if Lundgaard Won This Weekend?
Ooo, so close. First of all, let’s get the funny out of the way – After nearly 50 days in ownership of IndyCar’s P1 sticker book, Alex Palou finally coughed up P1. In fact, he failed to even make the Fast 6 for the first time this season. He had the pace in Round 1 that would have comfortably made it into the final round but just… failed to execute. Yeah weird, I know.
In said final round, McLaren ended up scoring a 1-2 on the front row with Christian Lundgaard on pole ahead of teammate Pato O’Ward. Funnily enough, when Jack Harvey poked at Lundgaard’s rumoured and impending free agency, he said that he “knew what he could do”. I think that’s what the kids call “Auramaxxing” these days.
In the race itself, Lundgaard was able to hold his position. Strategy wise, this was always going to be a pretty straight-forward race. Soft tyres were absolutely not doing 30 laps, one because they were done in 12-15, and secondly because a full-tank of fuel was 27. So, three-stopper with the one mandatory Alternate tyre stint it was. The leading three of Lundgaard, Pato and David Malukas all started on the harder primary tyre as they started to pull away from the rest. Pato was the first to test the undercut, and it turns out that the warm-up needed from the tyres cancelled out the extra pace gain from it.
So Pato had to do it the old fashioned way, and during his second stint, he took advantage of Lundgaard going wide at the early hairpin and losing time, to pass Lundgaard over the hill complex to take the lead on Lap 42 of 90. In fairness, Lundgaard never had a lead of more than two seconds and both lead McLaren’s were very evenly matched, but handling traffic is a massive part of Mid-Ohio. It’s a front runners track and given a full speed lap was only 67 seconds, traffic plays a huge role on a circuit where it’s even tougher than usual to pass.
Lundgaard tried the same undercut tactics, but it was really all he could do given McLaren matched tyre strategies with O’Ward. Lundgaard’s only hope was traffic, and Pato just didn’t blink enroute to victory in mildly entertaining circumstances. (Look, I’m not going to lie to you readers, this was not a classic and 70% of this race was one big friggin’ stalemate).
I’ll give Pato this, he’s a good Road/Street guy on a good day, but he came alive at Mid-Ohio for the second time in three years. Last time in 2024, it was bullying Alex Palou around into a tyre-management race and he won. This time, it was a game of pressure and he took advantage of the one mistake Lundgaard made all weekend. Can’t deny it was good shit.
As for Alex Palou, he made a brilliant early pass on Will Power, and jumped Christian Rasmussen and David Malukas in the final round of stops, but fifth was the best result he could manage, with Rinus Veekay having one of his best drives in IndyCar by leaping up to fourth early on and staying there. It’s quickly becoming a five-horse race to the title:
Alex Palou – 404, Kyle Kirkwood (-56), Christian Lundgaard (-65), David Malukas (-66), Pato O’Ward (-94)
Pato has clung on for dear life through a boatload of Top 5’s but it’s wild that this was his first podium of the season. It’s even wilder that one of the men in that block is a free agent at the end of the season.
The Lightning Round
Small other note from all this – Nolan Siegel is also not returning to McLaren. Actually feel a little bad for him as he’s driven a fair bit better since the Month of May. Maybe a return to where he started at Juncos would be a lower-expectation and more fitting home for him rather than Tony Kaanan’s open call for Top 10’s compared to his two title challengers…
I’m annoyed at Will “Billy” Buxton. First up, we have to talk about him as a broadcaster here. His call of the race was the worst of his traits. This wasn’t a classic race by any means, but the determination to try and force excitement in a dull affair by saying “Lundgaard’s cut the gap in half!!!!!!1!”, when he just… didn’t. It’s an attempt to try and false engineer hype is incredibly annoying. I appreciate the fact he brings a lot of energy a la Leigh Diffey (We were spoiled with him in the box), but the audience is smart enough to not be lied to about what they’re watching. It’s not the first time he’s done this as a play-by-play commentator and I think he got a pass because of his great call of the Rosenqvist/Malukas finish at the 500.
And then, pretending like a huge announcement was coming on Twitter, when you already repeatedly hammered home the Dixon to McLaren story already in front of an audience of around 1.5 million is just annoying and unnecessary. I get it, you want to play off the uneducated fan and flex your racing knowledge, but no-one likes to be teased unless it’s in a bedroom, not on a smartphone.
I love that Scott Dixon was the first man on Lap 7 to come in hoping to make the alternative strategy work… and there was no cautions for him to capitalise on. As has been said before, I think we’re far more likely to see caution-free races with these hybrids. Tyre wear is greater due to the added weight, it’s harder to follow and pass under dirty air, cars are more spread out and as a result, you’re less likely to have a crash, the most likely cause for said caution. There’s a reason we had that unreal streak in 2025 of cautionless running.
Scott McLaughlin’s cool suit died on Lap 3. In Mid-Ohio. In July. Good lord. No wonder he was 16th.
The Verdict: 4.5/10 (Meh) – No, thanks. This just didn’t hit, unfortunately. McLaren never looked like their 1-2 was being threatened. We had some decent action early on when Kyle Kirkwood, Rinus Veekay and Alex Palou were jostling for position, but after that, we flatlined for enjoyment. Sometimes when the caution doesn’t land, a key part of what makes IndyCar, IndyCar, you get one of these. See you in Nashville (After the World Cup Final of course!)
