Fort Worth, Texas ? Chip Ganassi’s second full season in the Indy Racing League was tougher than it appeared.

It began in March with a victory by Target/Chip Ganassi Racing driver Scott Dixon in Homestead, Fla., and ended Sunday at Texas Motor Speedway with Dixon finishing second to Gil de Ferran in the season finale to wrap up the IndyCar Series championship.

“I said to Scott up on the podium, the win in (Homestead) seems like 10 years ago,” Ganassi said. “It’s a long, difficult season.”

The depth and intensity of the competition in the 8-year-old open-wheel racing series was something Ganassi, in the sport for more than two decades as a driver and then a team owner in open-wheels and stock cars, hadn’t counted on before running full-time with Jeff Ward in 2002.

Ward did win one race, but his 14th-place finish in the points wasn’t what Ganassi was looking for.

The owner came back in 2003 with a two-car effort headed by Dixon, and severed his longtime association with the rival CART series to concentrate on the IRL.

“It was a new challenge for us to understand the competitive nature of the (IRL) series, what really week in and week out (takes place),” said Ganassi, whose powerhouse team won an unprecedented four straight championships (1996-99) in CART. Ganassi also won the IRL showcase Indianapolis 500 in 2000 with Juan Montoya.

Chip Ganassi looks over a car in the pits in Monterey, Calif., in this file photo. Ganassi says, despite success, racing on the IRL circuit has been a tough challenge.

Ganassi found out quickly just how tough IRL is.

“You go to a test and you’re fast, and you’re faster than someone else at the test, and you feel pretty good about it,” Ganassi said. “Then, you go back for the race and find out that little tenth or two that you had on the other guy doesn’t mean anything.”

The IRL, with Toyota and Honda coming in to challenge Chevrolet with all new engines, went into the Texas race with five of its 22 drivers still in the running for the championship.

In a 16-race season, there were seven pole winners and nine race winners, led by Dixon, two-time series champion Sam Hornish Jr., and de Ferran with three victories apiece.

There were nine races in 2003 with a margin of victory of less than a second, including Hornish’s 0.0099-second win over Dixon last month at Chicagoland Speedway. Bryan Herta was third in that race, 0.0100 seconds — about three feet — behind, the closest three-way finish in league history.