A difficult 2021 season is driving Scott Dixon to make a strong charge for the 2022 title.
Dixon claimed a single race win through the 2021 season to finish runner up in the title fight, while teammate Alex Palou took three wins and five podiums.
Some results were out of the six-time champions control with poorly timed safety cars, mechanical issues and slow pit stops, all hampering what could otherwise have been promising results.
The Kiwi recently spoke to Autosport about his struggles through the 2021 season.
“I think when you’re in the team and you’re in the environment, you can clearly see some of the situations that you can do a better job at or try and find some fixes for it.” Dixon said.
“And sometimes it’s just not your year – whatever dice you roll, it doesn’t work out, and we had that definitely several times [in 2021] on strategy, where it looked pretty straightforward what we were doing, and ultimately whether a caution fell or whatever, it was the wrong thing to do.
“Not to take anything away from what other contenders did throughout the season, I think there’s always an easy way to look back on how you could have changed things slightly and had a much better season. But everybody has those stories.
“I think losing sometimes gives you that little bit more fight to try and turn that around, and that definitely hasn’t gone anywhere, that’s for sure.”
Dixon particularly struggled on low-grip tracks
“I think the team does a very good job of analysis,” said Dixon
“We kind of knew even before the season was over there was one specific tyre and kind of track that was tougher for me.
“In low-grip situations it was very easy to saturate the front tyre and then kind of dial the car out of the window.
“Luckily enough, two of my teammates were probably a little more adjusted to that.
“Having good teammates to be able to see how it’s done I think is definitely a good step in the right direction, but trying to apply that is something difficult, too.
“There’s always something that you can pick at. The tyre changes again this year for those specific circuits, and then some of those circuits – Road America and Laguna Seca – will be different kinds of circuits after this season, with being repaved, so they’ll go back to a pretty high-grip situation.”
The 2022 Indycar season will get underway at St Petersberg February 27.
Main image: Joe Skibinski