Scott Dixon in the No. 9 Chip Ganassi Racing Honda during IndyCar practice at the Milwaukee Mile in 2024

Scott Dixon: Six IndyCar Titles, 59 Wins and One Last Chase at Ganassi

August 06, 2026

Welcome to the Happy Hour Racing IndyCar Driver Spotlight - where we pull one driver into the garage, look under the hood at their career, and tell you what makes them tick. This week: the number 9.

The Short Version

Scott Dixon is a six-time IndyCar champion, the 2008 Indianapolis 500 winner, and the owner of 59 career victories, more than anyone in the sport except A.J. Foyt. He has driven the No. 9 for Chip Ganassi Racing since 2003, which is the longest run any driver has had with the team. This season is his last one there, because in 2027 he moves to Arrow McLaren. If you only know one thing about him, know this: nobody in IndyCar has been fast for longer.

From Auckland to the Front of the Field

Dixon was born July 22, 1980 in Brisbane, Australia, to New Zealand parents who had moved there looking for work. The family came back to Auckland about a decade later, and he grew up in Manurewa and went to James Cook High School. His mom and dad both raced, so the sport was in the house from the start.

He climbed fast. New Zealand Formula Vee as a teenager, Formula Ford titles in 1995 and 1996, the Australian Drivers' Championship in 1998, then the Indy Lights title in 2000. In 2001 he moved up to CART with PacWest and won at Nazareth in only his third start, which made him the youngest winner of a major American open-wheel race at 20 years, 9 months and 14 days old. PacWest folded during 2002 and Chip Ganassi picked him up midseason. That turned out to be a 25-year handshake.

The Ganassi Years and Six Championships

Ganassi moved to the IndyCar Series for 2003, and Dixon won the very first race he entered, at Homestead. He won the championship that same year, in his first season in the series. That is a start almost nobody gets.

Five more titles followed in 2008, 2013, 2015, 2018 and 2020. Only Foyt, with seven, has more. The 2015 one was the strangest of the group, because Dixon finished the year tied on points with Juan Pablo Montoya and took the title on the tiebreaker, three wins to two.

What holds all of it together is not raw speed on Saturday. Dixon has always been a better racer than qualifier, and his teammate Alex Palou has said the thing Dixon does better than anyone is get everything out of a car over a full stint, a full race and a full season. Dixon has said the patience came from having no money as a kid, when one mistake meant a broken car his family could not replace.

Scott Dixon takes a victory lap in the No. 9 car after winning the 2008 Indianapolis 500 — Dixon on his victory lap after winning the 2008 Indianapolis 500, still the only Indy win of his career. (Photo: Chuck Carroll, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

The Moments That Made Him

The 2008 Indianapolis 500 is the one on the mantle. He started from pole, led 115 laps, and won the biggest race in the world in a year he also won the championship. He has taken five Indy 500 poles in all, in 2008, 2015, 2017, 2021 and 2022, second only to Rick Mears and his six, but that 2008 win is still his only trip to the milk bottle.

The other side of the coin came a year earlier at Chicagoland, where he ran out of fuel on the final lap while leading and lost the championship with it. He turned that lesson into a weapon. Two of his best modern wins, Long Beach and Detroit in 2024, were both fuel-saving jobs where he stretched a stint past what anyone thought was possible and drove away from a race he had no business winning.

The nickname is The Iceman, and it fits. He does not yell on the radio and he does not make the same mistake twice.

Scott Dixon doing Scott Dixon things
— NTT INDYCAR SERIES (@IndyCar) August 5, 2026

By the Numbers

Here is the career so far. Every figure below is an official IndyCar career total entering the Portland round with six races left in the 2026 season.

Scott Dixon's IndyCar career by the numbers. Original Happy Hour Racing graphic, data from IndyCar official statistics.

Where He Is Right Now

2026 has been the hard kind of season. Through 12 starts Dixon sits 11th in the standings on 236 points with no wins, no poles, one top-five finish and five top-10s. Qualifying has been the problem all year, and starting deep in the field takes away the strategy room he usually turns into results.

That matters more than usual, because a win in 2026 would be his 60th, and it would make him only the second driver in the sport's history to reach 60, behind Foyt on 67. It would also extend the two streak records above. Six races are left, and Dixon has won at most of the places still on the calendar.

The bigger news came on July 6, when Arrow McLaren confirmed that Dixon and 2026 Indianapolis 500 winner Felix Rosenqvist will join Pato O'Ward there in 2027. Dixon turned down a multi-year offer to stay at Ganassi. He said the group had "kind of plateaued a bit," and pointed to something else too: as a New Zealander, driving for the team Bruce McLaren built means something. He is 46, and he is starting over.

Off the Track

Dixon married Emma Davies, a former British and Welsh 800-meter champion and television presenter, in February 2008. They have three children and live in Indianapolis. He backs Ganassi's Women in Motorsport program, and he has said plainly that being a girl dad is why.

New Zealand has kept score too. He was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2009, a Companion in 2019, and in the 2026 New Year Honours he was appointed a Knight Companion, so he is now Sir Scott Dixon. He went into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in March 2024 and was voted into the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Hall of Fame in February 2026. Indianapolis declared September 24, 2018 Scott Dixon Day. There is even a 2018 documentary about him called Born Racer.

Fun Stats

A few numbers worth keeping. He holds the all-time IndyCar record for career podium finishes, passing Mario Andretti with his 142nd in 2024. He holds the record for most consecutive starts, and in 2025 he set the all-time record for series starts. Away from open-wheel he has won the 24 Hours of Daytona three times, in 2006, 2015 and 2020, and Petit Le Mans twice. He also never raced in Formula 1, which is why Autosport once put him on a list of the 50 best drivers who never got there.

The Bottom Line

Six titles and 59 wins are the headline, but the real Dixon stat is the boring one: 23 different seasons with a win, across three decades of rule changes, engine formulas and teammates. He just keeps showing up fast.