ESPN IndyCar

It's a good thing Chip Ganassi diversified in recent years, because last year his flagship open-wheel operation failed to produce a victory for the first time since 1995.

That winless streak, however, is likely to end soon as one of modern racing's biggest movers and shakers fields a reinvigorated three-car IndyCar Series attack in 2005.

Ganassi Racing won four straight Champ Car titles from 1996-99 and added an Indianapolis 500 triumph in a one-off run by Juan Pablo Montoya in 2000. After gradually ramping up an IndyCar effort throughout 2001-02, Ganassi dropped his Champ Car program to focus on IndyCars in 2003, and he was rewarded by Dixon's five wins on the way to the series crown.

But Ganassi's team, along with anyone else not powered by Honda, found race wins elusive in '04.

Now Ryan Briscoe, a 21-year-old Australian Formula One hopeful, joins the returning driver duo of Darren Manning and '03 IndyCar champion Scott Dixon. Ganassi and his managing director Mike Hull are hoping that additional feedback from the drivers plus additional horsepower from Toyota will add up to a winning combination.

"I don't think adding a third car is the big news -- we're augmenting the two we have," said Ganassi, who added a third Champ Car for Dixon in the middle of the '02 season when PWR Racing shut its doors. "We think we have a pretty strong team to begin with and a third car is going to make us stronger. Ryan has gotten the mechanics excited, and those are the guys that are hard to get a rise out of."

Ganassi said the expansion was not driven by the trend toward multi-car teams in the IndyCar Series, the prime example being Andretti Green Racing with its four-car lineup. Rahal Letterman Racing has also expanded to three cars this year.

"There are advantages and disadvantages from a business and a workload point of view," Ganassi said. "But at the end of the day, what's important to us is to be at the front, whether it's with two cars, three cars or six cars. It's not entirely new for us to run three cars, but it is in this series. We're looking forward to it."

Added Hull: "It's a lot easier than it would have been five years ago because there was a lot more testing then. This is a heck of an opportunity for us to learn a lot at the places that we race. It's simply up to us to manage it."

The only change Ganassi made before the '04 season was to swap Tomas Scheckter for Manning. While the Englishman acquitted himself well in his first year in the series, the year was an unmitigated disaster for Dixon. Following a second place finish at Phoenix in the second race, it all went downhill for the defending series champion, bottoming out with a pair of crashes at Milwaukee that caused him to miss a start.

Dixon also had to deal with a mid-season flirtation with the Williams F1 team. Still young enough for F1 at 24, Dixon impressed the team in two spring tests, but didn't get the nod for a race or test seat.

"There was a hell of a lot going on, at the start of the year especially, with IROC racing, Grand-Am racing, the IRL races, then F1 testing and trying to fly back and forth to do IRL races," Dixon said. "It was way too much and by the Japan IRL race I had definitely slowed down a lot. I was exhausted, and I didn't start that weekend too well with crashing a car in the first practice. From then on, including the 500, we just didn't have the speed. It was very frustrating.

"This year I think we're just focusing on the IRL, apart from the 24 hours of Daytona. We dropped the IROC and all that stuff. It's going to be an interesting year and I think just by spending more time on what we're doing and focusing, it should be better."

Dixon is also looking forward to adding Briscoe to the mix.

"It's superb," he said of the move to three cars. "So far the only time that you sort of look at it differently is in terms of, 'Will it affect the current program you already have?' But in the past, even when I was the additional or third guy at Ganassi's in CART, they did a good job. They make you feel welcome. Ryan is a great guy and it's great to see him be part of it and I think it's going to work out well and make our team a lot stronger."

Manning notched a pair of fourth place finishes in '04, but he also earned a reputation as a tricky driver to run side-by-side with, critical in the close quarters of IndyCar oval racing.

"I had very limited oval experience with this type of racing car but I got up to speed pretty quickly," Manning said. "Obviously it wasn't the season that Chip and Team Target were used to. I think I left a little bit on the table at the end of the season and hopefully a lot more performance from Toyota will let us start the season on a high note."

With sharp road course skills from his recent role as a test driver for the Toyota F1 team, Briscoe turned heads by running the fastest time in the first day of IndyCar road course testing at Homestead-Miami Speedway. He has also quickly gotten up to speed on the two ovals where he has turned laps in preparation for his rookie campaign.

"It's fantastic having the opportunity with Chip Ganassi Racing," Briscoe said. "It's an amazing team with great people and I seem to be adapting well to the car on the road course.

"I don't know really what to expect for the ovals. I'm sure it will take some practice, and hopefully I will adapt to it without a problem. It will probably take a bit of time to build up some confidence because the speeds are very high. I've been watching a lot of videos of the races and it's definitely different to anything I've ever done before."

Of course the key for Ganassi -- and Penske Racing and Cheever Racing -- is how much progress Toyota has made. Signs were there in the latter half of 2004 that Toyota was quietly on the comeback trail.

"From what we've seen, the new engine straight out of the box has done a pretty good job," Dixon said. "Toyota are pushing extremely hard and they have a lot of people on the program. It's great to see the enthusiasm over there again.

"Last year, Toyota had some [computer] mapping that we could use for qualifying and that definitely helped as some of us did have some poles and got to the front. They have been able to build that into these new engines to make it so it would be reliable enough to do a full race distance. So this year hopefully we can qualify well and race well like we did in 2003."

If that happens, Ganassi will be back where he expects to be -- on top.

John Oreovicz covers open-wheel racing for National Speed Sport News and ESPN.com.