|
Ron Dixon: NZ's Talent Scout and Promoter Extraordinaire |
|
|
|
July 21. Yes, the Ron Dixon we are talking about is the father of
the IRL’s Target Chip Ganassi Racing’s 2003 IndyCar Champion, New
Zealander Scott Dixon. During this year’s IRL race season you can
expect to see Ron in the pits or garage area. No, he’s not there
to watch Scott, although as a father he does that from time to
time. But if you walk away from where the Indy cars are and go
find the Pro Series cars, that is more likely where you should look for
Ron Dixon. If you seek out Brian Stewart Racing and its driver,
New Zealander Wade Cunningham, that’s probably where you will find Ron.
Ron is in the United States on a fascinating and interesting
mission. You might say that he is representing and promoting the
country of New Zealand in the field of open wheel racing.
We first met Ron at the Phoenix IRL race weekend last March. In
the course of the conversation, after talking about Scott, we brought
up the names of three great past New Zealand race drivers who had made
world famous names for themselves; Bruce McLaren, Denny Hulme and Chris
Amon.
Yes, Ron acknowledged, the small country of New Zealand is justifiably
proud of those names, but he said, that was more than about three
decades ago. And just as there was some great driving talent from
NZ back in the ‘60’s and 70’s, there are, Ron believes, some equally
great talents there today. The issue has been that they are not
internationally known, and they are still in New Zealand. So, Ron
has taken upon himself the mission and goal of again putting some New
Zealand drivers on the world’s biggest open wheel racing stages.
Having been highly involved in managing Scott’s career gives Ron
credibility right off the bat, but a little bit more about his
background. Ron understands the racing world. He has been a
driver, as has his wife, Scott’s mother, a track owner, a team owner
and manager, and, of course, there is his involvement with Scott’s
career. [More about the Scott part later.] Today, a major reason
you see Wade Cunningham driving in the Pro Series is Ron Dixon!
What about Ron the person? First off, you will find that he has a
great passion for what he is doing, and is happy to talk about
that. Second, he is focused, he’s candid, he’s direct and he gets
right to the points he would like to make. Third, he has high
goals, standards and expectations. And fourth, like is the case
with most New Zealanders, you can’t but really like Ron. It’s
almost like, where do I sign up.
Rather than our telling you more about Ron we’d like to have him do that so you can get a sense of knowing him better also.
Ron sums up his short term objective by saying, “We’re trying to get a
couple of top drivers out of New Zealand up here in the Pro
Series. Of course, Wade Cunningham is the first who is
here. The other thing is we’re trying to get a couple of drivers
out of the U.S .and Canada back down there [to New Zealand] over our
summer period, which doesn’t clash with your season here. Our
series runs over about a six weeks period in January and February.
Also, we can run cars down there much cheaper than up here.” 
Ron went on to make the point that New Zealand still has an
international Grand Prix standing and that Americans would be surprised
by the number of tracks and the remarkable amount of open wheel racing
that goes on in New Zealand.
We asked Ron how he selected Wade Cunningham from the pool of young
driving talent in New Zealand. “It actually goes back to Scott a little
bit. I understood him, having been involved with him from day
one. He was always focused and we could see that in him. I
think that’s what I looked for in Wade and drivers like that. I
wanted to find somebody like Wade who could go to Europe and decide
he’s going to stay there till he wins the World Go-kart Championship,
because the chance of winning that is pretty slim.” [Photo, Lt - Rt: Ron Dixon, Wade Cummingham, Doug Zister]
“Drivers like that are the type that will get there [to the world
stage] in my opinion. They are willing to pack up their normal
life styles to the degree that there’s really nothing else in their
lives. Wade’s one of those. And he doesn’t expect to get to the
top in five minutes. There are a lot of young drivers who think
they’re the greatest and therefore they just go from class to class,
but they never make it. We see a lot of those types.
But what we saw in Wade was different. He’s focused, he went to Europe,
and then he went to the U.S.”
“We’ve planned everything with Wade as a two year program in the
Infiniti Pro Series. The big thing is to finish as high as he can
this year and to learn as we go along. He’s really good on that,
learning from the engineers, mechanics, team manager; the people who
really mean a lot.”
We were curious about how Ron was able to help arrange a ride for Wade
with the Canadian team of Brian Stewart Racing. His explanation
provides a great example and insight of how things sometimes work in
the world of open wheel racing.
“That was through Mo Larsen, who is a Kiwi, and his daughter, Teena,
who were with Brian Stewart Racing when Scott was racing here in Indy
Lights. That’s how we really got to know Brian. But Brian and I
were in competition in those days. Early on I remember in one
race Scott and their driver had a coming together, and Scott came off
with the better end of it. Brian wasn’t too happy and told us in
no uncertain terms what he thought of it. But I respected him for
that, and I just liked him and his approach. To me, Brian and his
team were really focused on racing and we just sort of built a
relationship each time we came up here, kept in touch with him and
always talked with him.”
“Brian also has a great staff. Doug Hoy, the team manager, is
very, very good at what he does, and I also leave the driver coaching
up to him. There is Doug Zister, the chief engineer, Dave
Metcalf, the chief mechanic, who has raced cars and is a practical guy,
and Harvey Sweezie, who is a mechanic. There is a core of guys
that have been with Brian for a long time. They are good.
And then there is Mo Larsen and Teena. They go back to day one on
Indy Lights with Brian. They are all cool.”
“For the past two or three years I had been always saying I wanted to
get some good drivers up here from New Zealand, because New Zealand has
some incredibly good drivers who just need to be given the
opportunity. We talked about it and finally last year I got out
of the business I was in and I just focused on that and here we are.”
We wanted to know how Scott had made the jump from Indy Lights to
ChampCars [then called CART] and then to Ganassi Racing, as Ron had
been Scott’s personal manager.
“Scott was fortunate with the [Indy Light] management around him after
getting here to the U.S [in 1999] and driving for Johansson
Motorsports. – Johansson having been in ChampCars and IndyCars in those
days, as well as F1 and things like that. So they were the right
people.” [Photo, Lt-Rt: Teena Larsen, Wade, Ron Dixon]
“We were then fortunate that the next year [2000] he raced for a
ChampCar team in Indy Lights, PacWest, and their deal was that if he
won the championship, and this and that, that was all in his contract,
they would guarantee him a ChampCar ride.” [Scott won six of
twelve races and the 2000 Dayton Indy Lights Championship.]
“That gave him the opening that if he impressed people enough in the
short time he was with PacWest he could move up. [In 2001, Scott became
the youngest driver to win in any major open wheel series race with a
victory at Nazareth. He also won the CART Rookie of the Year
Award.] He impressed people enough at Toyota and Ganassi to
pack him on forward [during the 2002 season] and the rest has
followed.”
So in the case of Wade Cunningham, how does Ron build on his experience
with Scott, given that things change and sometimes history does not
repeat itself?
“The biggest fault a lot of people make is to try to move up too
fast. If you look at Wade he’s out of Go-karts and had limited
experience in the Formula Ford F2000 Series here in 2004 in
America. Then he went back home and raced the Formula Toyota
Series in January of this year, but he can’t jump too quick.
You’ve got to plan everything you do. I think the biggest mistake
most drivers make is they get disappointed because they have a bad
first season. The first season is your learning season. As
far as whether you win a championship… go back to Scott. The
first season was an exception, he won the New Zealand Formula Vee
championship, but then in the Formula Fords we went two years and won
the championship the second year.”
“That’s what we’re trying to do with Wade - plan it. Just don’t
jump into it because with the people you’ve got behind you [putting up
sponsorship money], you want to have a business plan. You’ve got
to show a proper plan; this is what we’re aiming for, there’s where
we’re going, these are our goals. If you can exceed these goals
the program looks even better. And that’s what we’re doing with
Wade is to properly plan it; two seasons to finish the Pro Series
level.”
“This is an apprenticeship to the IRL or to where the opportunities
arise. The opportunities are limited, you know, but if you look
at the top series and the top guys in those series, they all come out
of, not so much Infiniti Pro, because it’s a new series, but out of
Indy Lights. That’s incredible, but it is because it is the
apprenticeship they do. And then we’ve just got to wait for the
openings and hope there is something there.”
“After the second year is the hard third year because you’ve got to see
if you can make that step with a lesser team, because it’s more
affordable, or a top team. But that step at the end of the second
year program is going to be very, very hard. If you come out of
the Pro Series with a championship, first guy to do 190 mph at the
Speedway, first guy to do this, do that, it looks good in front of the
top teams. We’re talking to teams already. Just subtly, you
know, being around them and keeping our ears and eyes open.
Should we hear that such and such won’t be going ….or it’s the last
year for… we’ve got to make the best of those openings. So we’re
talking about next year. And we’ve got some pretty good prospects
and people and companies.”  Photo Credit: Harv Sweezie, BSR
The Pro Series season is now half over. Wade Cunningham is the
Series points leader. He has the most podium finishes,
five. He has led two races. He is the only Pro driver to
have finished every lap of the seven Pro races to date. Not a bad
start for a rookie. Not a bad rookie driver choice by Ron
Dixon. How does Ron, whose business is Dixon Promotions, feel
about all of this? “I think Wade’s going to do it and be
there. I don’t think it’s going to be too long before you’ll see
Wade competing in the 500, and that’s going to be awesome!” Right
now, the end of the second year 2006 season for Wade is still a ways
off and there is still more for Wade to learn. [Photo, Lf-Rt: Ron Dixon, Matthew Hamilton]
Is Ron just waiting? No. He’s moving ahead with his broader
plan. Last month he brought 21 year old Matthew Hamilton, a New
Zealand multiple national kart champion, to the United States for an
IRL Pro test drive at the Nashville Superspeedway. Matthew, who
won one of the rounds of the New Zealand Toyota Racing Series earlier
this year, tested in one of the Brian Stewart Racing Pro cars.
What was that Ron said about two NZ drivers in the Pro Series next year?
Ron Dixon is one of the many dedicated, passionate and committed people
who are making the IRL Mendards Infiniti Pro Series one of the most
exciting and significant series in open wheel racing.
fromthetrack.com thinks that there is a lot of future talent headed for
the IndyCar Series because of people like Ron. To Ron Dixon we
want to say thanks for coming to America and the IRL!
To find more of the influence of Ron Dixon go to: www.cunninghammotorsport.com and www.scottdixon.com
|
Number of comments (0) - Add your comments to this article: |
IPS Archive