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By David Malsher-Lopez - Apr 5, 2026, 8:32 AM ET

Looking back on Ganassi’s first IndyCar championship, 30 years on

Thirty years ago, Jimmy Vasser was in the early throes of a triumphant IndyCar campaign – his first and last, Chip Ganassi Racing’s first of 17… so far. RACER reminisces with Vasser, his race engineer Julian Robertson, CGR’s managing director of the time, Tom Anderson, and Mike Hull, then team manager but MD since 2001.

Jimmy Vasser has nothing to prove these days. As a driver, he was an IndyCar champion. As an Indy car team co-owner – he was the “V” in PKV/KV/KVSH Racing – he won several races including the Indianapolis 500. And as a team co-owner with James “Sulli” Sullivan in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship with Lexus, he has seen the Vasser Sullivan-run RC Fs score several triumphs, including a sweep of the GTD titles in 2023.

Thirty years ago, things were different for Vasser. He knew how good he was, but wasn’t sure others did. After finishing runner-up in the 1991 Formula Atlantic championship, he’d graduated to CART IndyCar racing with Hayhoe-Cole Racing, but the team was part-time for two years, and even when it went full-time in ’94, it was a one-car line-up. Vasser had no teammate with whom to share feedback, nor a yardstick by which others could quantify his ability.

But someone who had noticed a spark of promise was Chip Ganassi, who that same year had switched his team to the new Reynard chassis and scored two wins with Formula 1 exile Michael Andretti. Now for 1995, the latter was heading back to his natural home, Newman/Haas Racing, so Ganassi needed a new star…

RACER: When did Chip first indicate he was interested in you joining his team, and what convinced you?

Jimmy Vasser: Toward the end of the ’94 season, Chip contacted me. We’d learned that Conseco wasn’t going to continue sponsoring Hayhoe-Cole, the team I was with at the time, and then through the winter, the talks dragged on. I had an offer from Rick Galles, which was a big deal because he’d had a lot of success with Al Unser Jr. a couple of years earlier, but my team owner Jim Hayhoe was talking to Chip, and I was interested in that because of Michael Andretti’s recent success. Bryan Herta had already been signed to replace Michael, but Chip was keen to keep a two-car team, and Jim Hayhoe had STP sponsorship left over from his team’s deal, so he got me in the door at Ganassi.

We had reliability issues at the start of 1995, but we got a run of podiums mid-season. I was really starting to jell with Julian Robertson, my race engineer, and I could feel the whole Chip Ganassi Racing program starting to take off.

At the end of 1995, it seemed exceedingly bold to change both your engine supplier from Ford to Honda and your tire supplier, from Goodyear to Firestone. The combo of Reynard, Ford and Goodyear had just won the championship with Team Green and Jacques Villneuve, whereas Firestone had scored just two wins since its 20-year hiatus, and Honda had just a solitary win. What was the thinking behind two simultaneous transitions?

Mike Hull: It was about the people who were part of those organizations at the time. They were managing their technology and their passion for the technology, and their steps for long-term growth, and their ability to support a team in doing it. At that time, this team was a second citizen to some of the teams it was racing against in terms of the pecking order. Honda’s and Firestone’s passion and energy, and their methods of solving problems, were very similar to ours. So that blend between our three organizations seemed a really good fit. So was it a bold move? Not sure that’s the correct term. It was a move that represented where Chip Ganassi Racing was going next – and we took full advantage of it.

Tom Anderson: Myself, [veteran IndyCar and Formula 1 race engineer] Morris Nunn and Mike Hull, had observed the rate of progress that Patrick Racing had made with the Firestone development program, and what sold us on the Honda program was [late HPD director] Robert Clarke, who was extremely passionate and professional. He explained everything they’d gone through with Rahal-Hogan and Tasman Motorsports, and what they thought they could do. Collectively, we thought Honda looked ready. Obviously we were taking a chance by switching engine and tire supplier, but it worked out. Turned out it was the right thing to do at exactly the right time.

I should also point out that there was also a different chemistry in the room for ’96, because Chip had done a deal with [NFL legend] Joe Montana, and of course Alex Zanardi had arrived. He just had this incredible personality and it raised the level of everybody in the team. It put extraordinary pressure on Jimmy Vasser, and Jimmy rose to the occasion: he became another person in ’96, really dug deep and showed his talent.

Everyone motivated each other; Montana was excited, Chip was excited, and even Mike Hull – who’s a quiet motivator – had an influence on Jimmy. And Jim Hayhoe, who had run Jimmy before he joined us, was also there. It was a strong combination. Plus you had Rob Hill, crew chief on Zanardi’s car, Mo Nunn, Grant Weaver and Julian Robertson, Ricky Davis, Scott Harner, Tim Keene… They’re all still in racing – that’s how much they loved the job.
Mo Nunn (right) formed part of the strong brain trust that got the most out of Vasser (left). Getty Images

Julian Robertson: I think we knew Firestone was going to be good. Scott Pruett [Patrick Racing] and Andre Ribeiro [Tasman Motorsports] had each won a race on Firestones the previous season. And Pruett had scored several other top fives. Also, Patrick Racing used to stay on and do tire tests after a lot of the races – unlimited testing back then – so they were gaining knowledge very, very quickly. Also, Firestone kept it very simple from the outset, whereas I remember Goodyear seemed to have a lot of different tire compounds: every oval, it felt like we had a different compound at each corner of the car from anything we’d seen before. It’s hard to dial the car in when the tires are changing that much. By the time we had signed with Firestone, they just had a short-oval tire, a superspeedway tire, a road course tire and a street course tire, so that gave us good baselines from track to track. That was a lot more straightforward, because it meant we knew what we had going into the weekend and we’d set the cars up accordingly, and then just make tweaks depending on track conditions and temperatures.

And as for Honda, I mean – they’re just racers, aren’t they? It was super-cool to be developing motors with them. I remember at the Firebird road course in Phoenix, during early development, although I don’t recall the exact figures – say 12,500 rpm as maximum revs – they walked in one morning and said, ‘OK, you can run 13,500 now.’ Whoah! We had been treating it as a big deal when we were allowed an extra 100 rpm, and now we’re with a company that says we can go up another 1,000! So Honda were truly going for it.

Jimmy Vasser: The Ford had had some reliability problems, and it was clear that Honda were coming hard, taking it very seriously. And Firestone were doing a lot of testing, and we were to become their number one team, whereas Goodyear always leaned on Penske and Newman/Haas for their tests. I figured I’d get a lot of test miles with the Firestone switch, so I wasn’t worried about these decisions: I saw them as net positives.

 

Part 2
By David Malsher-Lopez - Apr 5, 2026, 8:32 AM ET

Looking back on Ganassi’s first IndyCar championship, 30 years on

Jimmy seems one of the underrated champions in IndyCar history. Had you already detected that if you gave him the right equipment, he was champion material?

Mike Hull: When I came to work for Chip in 1992, he wanted to build a race team that didn’t focus on one driver. At that time, in IndyCar, Formula 1, NASCAR, whatever the series, there always seemed to be a primary and a secondary driver. Chip was of that Pittsburgh mindset that teams are flat landscapes where everyone is treated equally and everyone has to share unselfishly. We had primary drivers – first Eddie Cheever, then Arie Luyendyk, then Michael Andretti – like everyone else. So when Michael chose to return to Newman/Haas, it was a blessing in disguise because it meant in 1995 we hired Bryan Herta and Jimmy Vasser and that laid the foundation for moving away from a single lead driver toward the standard shared system that we still have across all cars equally, more than 30 years later.

Jimmy did really well in 1995 compared with his teammate, but it built a foundation for where we went next. So in ’96, Jimmy was retained and we brought in Alex Zanardi. And Jimmy came out of the box and won four of the first six races and established the situation, and by him capitalizing early, it allowed Alex the time without any internal hierarchy to become a strength.

Jimmy came along at exactly the right time, and that timing element is something you cannot predict. So you try to create the team atmosphere to take advantage of drivers’ abilities at the right time in their careers. It’s not a secret that that build process was perfect, because Jimmy was the perfect guy for that new structure, because he’s such a team player.

He had enormous ability, much better than the average IndyCar driver. For example, he understood the dynamics of how a track changed, and understood what suited his drive style. And he had Julian Robertson as his race engineer. Julian had been a Lola guy who was sent to America, and as soon as we hired him in ’93, he was at work on the Reynard program. He and Jimmy worked really well together.

I was always interested in Jimmy because, like me, he was a Californian making his way through the ranks, and he worked really, really hard at it. He came from a car culture because of his dad’s racing.
Buoyed by the strong Reynard-Honda-Firestone package and the strong team around him, Vasser got off to a fast start and held on through a "June Swoon" to take the title. Getty Images

Julian Robertson: Chip obviously thought Jimmy might be good, and we started to get our groove in the middle of 1995 with a bunch of podiums. It was very helpful having the continuity coming into ’96 of Jimmy still being there, especially considering, like you say, we were changing engine manufacturer and tire manufacturer.

When we started testing with the new combination, I don’t think we dared to dream that it was the start of a championship campaign. There were too many unknowns, because what if another manufacturer had found a massive advantage? You can never tell. But obviously after the first few races we realized that we’d hit on something pretty special.

I think to do what Jimmy did against that level of competition – outside the team and also from his teammate – was great. He did a hell of a job. The champions are the ones who can drive fast naturally, so they can also think and pay attention to a lot of other stuff. Jimmy was one of them. Like most drivers of that caliber, he gave good feedback. He also seemed to really understand ovals and what’s best for a car on ovals, which is interesting from a guy who had his roots in road racing. I’ve always felt it was his feel and understanding of the cars, as much as his talent, that made him so fast on ovals.

We’d done a boat-load of testing, too… like if Honda wanted to run two engines for 600 miles, we’d do it. We’d go to Fontana [California Speedway] and spend several days there. Actually, I remember Jimmy really impressing Honda one time at Fontana, when he came in and said, “The engine’s about to blow,” and the engineers said, “No, there’s nothing on our data that suggests that.” Jimmy insisted, “I guarantee you, the engine’s about to let go,” so we took the time to put a new motor in his car in the middle of the day. Anyway, Honda took the engine back and pulled it apart and sure enough, it had been about to let go. A manufacturer normally doesn’t get to see their engine at that point, 30 seconds before it’s about to blow: they just see the end result, so they were impressed with that and I’m sure whatever they found probably helped them for the next engine development.

Jimmy had a strange-shaped season, winning four of the first six races and then only having one more podium finish, despite remaining competitive. Was there a particular reason for that? Was he just trying to protect a points lead?

Julian Robertson: No, not until the last three races, I’d say. After the first six races, we were still trying to win every race: you can’t cruise for two-thirds of a season and expect to win the championship. You have to race for everything, but keep the big picture in your head too. We had a “June Swoon” as we named it at the time, where it was tough for a few races.

Jimmy Vasser: I crashed hard in practice at Detroit [Round 8], and the first thing I remember seeing afterward was my arm moving in circles in front of my face and I couldn’t control it. Really weird. I’d damaged my spine, as well. I ended up qualifying near the back, got up into the points but then on the very last lap, I started experiencing vertigo and barely made it around.

We then went from Detroit to test at Mid-Ohio and I felt funky but not too bad. Then I got in, reached the end of pit lane and at only 50 mph, I got vertigo again – couldn’t feel the car, the world was turning upside down around me. So I went to Indianapolis to see Dr. [Terry] Trammell and he discovered that my Detroit crash had dislodged the crystals in my ear which left me off-balance.

Luckily there were 10 more days before Portland and the drug that Trammell gave me was starting to take effect. I qualified third there, but in the race I felt vertigo again, it started raining and I spun off and lost laps. That was my only finish outside the points that year.

And then you came back in a big way at Cleveland…

 

Jimmy Vasser: Yeah, I stuck it on pole, but that was a strange one. After first practice on Friday, I was s**t and I think Alex was P1. He looked at me and said, “There’s nothing wrong with your car, Jimmy: your problem is, you’re driving like a wanker!” We were getting along great by then, so he said it with a smile on his face, and I playfully said, “F**k you!” But man, when I went out for Friday qualifying, I guess I was thinking about what he said, and I was mad. I set pole time that day, laid down a time four-tenths quicker than Alex. What was weird was that Cleveland was one of those tracks that really rubbered up, so Saturday’s times were almost always quicker, but the next day, I couldn’t get near that time and Alex fell short, too, so I had pole. Alex said to me, “Well that’s the last time I piss you off!”

Unfortunately we messed up our strategy in the race and scored just a few points. We were nowhere in Toronto, took another pole at Michigan but my car was so loose on race day and got a couple of punctures, so I lost laps to the leaders.

Then I finished second at Mid-Ohio which made my lead over Al Unser Jr. and Michael around 20 points, so I backed off a little just to make sure I completed the job over the last three rounds and I clinched with a conservative fourth place at the finale in Laguna Seca.

These days, Chip Ganassi Racing is seen as the establishment through both success and longevity. Back then, did you feel more like a maverick band of brothers trying to take down the likes of Penske, Newman/Haas, and so on?

Mike Hull: We were a group of very free-spirited people, no question. We were probably a little bit on the edge in terms of how we supported each other compared with how we are today. IndyCar racing was not a nine-to-five; it was 24/7. You had to have two race cars for each driver and they had to be prepared identically. You had to be prepared to run two cars equally on a daily basis at any point in time, so you had to have people make sure they were both kept up to spec. Between sessions, each car had to be updated to whatever the next spec would be, fresh motors went in every night, and the track sessions were lengthy. So a working day could see you up very early in the morning and working through until well after midnight, and that included what you did in the race shop during the week. And then you went racing at the weekend.

Back then, testing was unlimited, too, so Jimmy Vasser, Alex Zanardi and then Juan Montoya had almost a season’s-worth of miles under their belts before their first seasons with us even began! The season ran late into October, you had new cars immediately, you built them, you’d camp out at a place like Sebring and go testing for a week. We’d be constantly developing the car and then going across the street to John Gunn’s fabrication shop to build product for the next day. So you needed a cohesive group of people who got along with each other and who never saw their pillows, and that was the kind of people we had. In that regard, we weren’t so different from other top teams. We just weren’t yet established as a top team.

When we started racing, we were in the same race as Penske or Newman/Haas, no question about that, but we had to make the step from being in the same race to actually racing with them. And that was our goal, that was what we worked toward. And we took it very personally whenever we let ourselves down. That’s what built us as a team. Jimmy fitted that model extremely well – he was us. Zanardi, too, was us. It was easy to work the long hours for drivers like them.

Jimmy Vasser: I remember the team spirit and atmosphere as great. My relationship with Alex… It didn’t start off bad, but he came over with his guard up, because in European racing your teammate is your major enemy. But fairly early on, he warmed to me and that probably wasn’t easy for him because I came out of the box with several wins. But he was immediately looking strong, so he had a spring in his step, too, because he knew it was only a matter of time before he was winning races as well. Sure enough, he got three wins in the second half of the year. And we know what happened after that.

Julian Robertson: I don’t know if we considered ourselves maverick or upstarts, but we knew we had great crew members, great drivers, and as the team got bigger it got better. Sometimes as a team expands, it starts to miss the details and starts dropping the ball. Whereas we just kept building on strong foundations because Chip and Tom [Anderson] were calling the right shots.

Tom Anderson: It was a great atmosphere. Jimmy and Alex had different styles in the car – they never ran the same setups because their driving techniques were totally different. But they would learn things from each other, and Morris Nunn and Julian would also share everything, and there was never any animosity if one guy did better than the other, not between drivers, engineers nor crew members. No one hid anything from anyone. I remember it being very much as one-for-all, and all-for-one. Myself, Mike Hull, Rob Hill and Grant Weaver all made sure that everyone knew we were working for the common good of the team.
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By David Malsher-Lopez - Apr 5, 2026, 8:32 AM ET

Looking back on Ganassi’s first IndyCar championship, 30 years on

That dedication to duty from the Ganassi crews maybe explains why Jimmy finished every race and only once outside the points!

Mike Hull: Between them, Jimmy and Alex won seven races that year. And when you do that, it means you’re also taking away points from your strongest rivals at almost half of the races. Jimmy helped us build the baseline of the model that changed the way we operate.

Chip deserves all the credit for creating a team full of people who walk in the door every day with the enthusiasm they had on the first day, eyes wide open, fresh approach to solving the problem, realizing that your competition at the very least can study and copy what you do. So you need to be different in certain areas of your business model in order to remain competitive, and come home from the race feeling like you may never win another unless you work hard. And then be unselfish, share everything, because when you do that, your process quickly expands in the right direction. It can be hard to do that because racing is such a competitive and carnivorous sport.

Julian Robertson: We went through a lot together that year. When you go from scoring podiums, to winning the first race to suddenly becoming championship leader with four wins, it really forces you to jell together pretty quick and pretty well. And obviously our former driver Michael Andretti was coming at us fast with Newman/Haas, and Al Unser Jr. [Team Penske] also had a shot at the championship. Those were two of the best who were trying to catch us, driving for two of the best teams ever, so the pressure was on and we felt it, but that also is what bonded us all, I think.

You were doing a lot of testing, as much as your biggest rivals, but did you have similar budgets to theirs?

Tom Anderson: Target certainly believed that Chip would do anything to win, and that’s what they were interested in – winning. But they didn’t give us carte blanche; there certainly was a budget, but they believed we’d spend it in the right way. We’ve all seen teams who are loaded with money – too much – and it starts to hurt the program rather than help it. There are too many other distractions. If you can balance the four things – budget, time, team chemistry and the talent – then you’re going to have a pretty good season.

 

Vasser and Chip Ganassi celebrate their first championships. Getty Images

After the title was clinched, did it feel like a one-off, or did it feel like the start of sustained success for the team?

Julian Robertson: You never know… but I didn’t consider it was possible for any team to win four championships in a row. I’m not sure it had ever been done before. Of course Alex Zanardi was brilliant – although I felt Jimmy drove better in ’97 and ’98 than he did in his championship year, but it didn’t fall right for him.

Even though we were very competitive, I never felt like our advantage was huge. It’s interesting that IndyCar has never had Balance of Performance yet back then, there were multiple engine manufacturers, tire suppliers and chassis manufacturers who came up with pretty similar outcomes, performance-wise. They’d all have different strengths at different tracks. So we were never confident that we had everyone covered, so the four championships in four years was really special.

Chip had just laid the foundations of a great team, and that’s when I thought, ‘Yeah, we could go a long way.’

Two titles went to Zanardi, one to his replacement Juan Pablo Montoya. With hindsight, what are your thoughts about that 1997-99 period when you scored several race wins but couldn’t retake the championship?

Jimmy Vasser: My form definitely fluctuated. There were times when I just wasn’t as quick as my teammates. In my defense, I’d say I had pretty strong teammates! After my championship, Zanardi just killed everyone in ’97 and I got a bunch of podiums but only one win. That was annoying because I should have got at least one more, but when Greg Moore’s engine blew at Fontana with 10 laps to go, I assumed there was going to be a yellow – it was all fire and brimstone! – so I backed off, but the caution never came and Mark Blundell got around me. Still, I got third in the championship.

Then in 1998, I regained some momentum, but I had a driving style that was harder on fuel mileage and harder on tires, and I think Firestone had made their tires slightly softer that year, so that hurt me. But I was responsible for our testing on the short ovals where we’d sucked before, and I’m proud because we improved there and I won Nazareth and Milwaukee, and then got my Fontana win at the end of the year.

Maybe I should have worked harder to adapt when I saw my form going up and down. I was kinda nowhere in that first year when Montoya arrived in ’99. Then I got better in our second year together, 2000, when Chip switched to Lola and Toyota and all the teams were running Firestones.

I don’t know, man, I wish I could have explained my form. But I’ll always be grateful to Chip for the opportunity, and that my best year coincided with Ganassi hitting its stride in ’96. It was an exciting time. And fulfilling.

• The original version of this story appears in the current issue of RACER Magazine, No. 339, The Technology Issue. CLICK HERE for more details of the issue.
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