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.