Alex Palou happy with Ganassi-Shank alliance as INDYCAR sees teams collaborate

When Pato O’Ward was comparing the strength of the Arrow McLaren organization to others on the INDYCAR grid last month at Thermal, he made a little quip:

"Four Ganassis are always at the front," he said. "I know there's only right now two Ganassis that are usually at the front, but the Shanks count."

The power of the new Chip Ganassi Racing-Meyer Shank Racing relationship could continue to grow. And it could be on display this weekend at the Grand Prix of Long Beach. 

INDYCAR has two prominent alliances: The Ganassi-Shank relationship, which started this year after Shank ended an alliance with Andretti Global, and the Team Penske-A.J. Foyt Racing alliance that started in August 2023.

Both of those relationships turn the three-car programs of Ganassi and Penske into potentially five-car programs when it comes to the sharing of information. When Ganassi went from five cars to three this season (veterans Scott Dixon and Alex Palou and second-year driver Kyffin Simpson remained), some of the group that worked with Marcus Armstrong went with Armstrong — who is still under contract with Ganassi — to Shank.

Foyt newcomer David Malukas has a Penske engineer assigned to his car, and while he has said he has a multi-year contract with Foyt, the prevailing undercurrent is that if he succeeds, he could be a Penske driver in the future. 

The Foyt-Penske relationship was a big talking point last May when both organizations were strong.

"We have had good cars here at Foyt, and part of our alliance for us is we struggled on road and street [but] we were good in the speedway," Foyt driver Santino Ferrucci said last May. "That's where Penske kind of wanted to make up some ground. … It was a very helpful relationship for us."

The Ganassi-Shank relationship this year had the ingredients to be strong because Felix Rosenqvist had also previously driven for Ganassi, so both Shank drivers are familiar with Ganassi processes and key personnel.

"They’re very consistent with their race engineering, which is what I interact with the most," Rosenqvist said. "The fundamental core of the team is the same ... I know most of them so it seems pretty seamless."

The biggest advantage can come in testing. 

Meyer Shank drivers did the test last month at Barber Motorsports Park and then Ganassi did the test at the Indianapolis road course. Both Foyt and Penske teams did the test at Barber, but then only Foyt teams did the test on the Indianapolis road course.

"For sure, it’s something that we want to use," Rosenqvist said about making sure they have all the tests covered. "The fact that we can split up is clever usage of our test days. We do everything together, but if we can split up the test, it is a good way to go. Hopefully we learn something from them from Indy GP [test]."

The Ganassi-Shank relationship also made for a convenient relationship when it comes to Michael Shank's sports car teams. Both Palou and Dixon drove for Shank at the Rolex 24 at Daytona with Dixon — a teammate on the same car where Rosenqvist was one of the drivers.

The drivers have good chemistry and that adds to the engineering information share.

"It helps to have a technical partnership where you can share and you can talk," Palou said. "It’s a different team but the engineering side is very supported by CGR. So we are free to share data, information and everything.

"Unfortunately, they had a terrible taste at Barber [where Rosenqvist crashed] so there was not much to learn. Being able to continue the relationship with Armstrong — I know if something works for him, I can trust it and I can follow and for Felix as well."

Technical relationships are not rare in motorsports, and Ganassi had experience with them in NASCAR.

"When you say a technical alliance, that's like saying, ‘I have a relationship with somebody.’ Just saying you have a relationship with somebody could mean 1,000 things," Ganassi said.

"So a technical relationship is the same thing. It's not a cookie-cutter thing. It’s different for everyone. So I think Mike Shank is happy with it. … It goes both ways. The information flows not all this way or all that way. We’ll see. Maybe we will be both good or both bad."

Ganassi said that matter-of-factly, indicating that sometimes too much information or too much collaboration isn’t always the best thing.

Andretti driver Kyle Kirkwood said his team has not felt the loss of the alliance with Shank over the first couple weeks of the season. He said when they split tests last year, the Meyer Shank car information was difficult to make relevant to the Andretti cars and drivers.

"I would say more often than not, having so many cars under one umbrella confused us," Kirkwood said. "Even though you have so much information from running that many cars, sometimes it gets a little too confusing, especially when you have as many different dynamics among the drivers in how they want to have things."

The key would be to use the additional data from another team if a driver from a different team is struggling.

"We don't feel like we're missing anything is the simple answer," Kirkwood said. "But at the same time, it is nice to have that information, especially if you're running out of information to look at. But I don't think that is the case at the moment."

Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR and INDYCAR for FOX Sports. He has spent decades covering motorsports, including over 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass.