Dixon lies fifth in the championship after the first five rounds of the season and only 34 points off the lead, but has yet to finish higher than fifth in a race.
He had to come back from a lap down after running out of fuel in last weekend’s Grand Prix of Indianapolis to finish a season’s worst tenth, while team-mate and defending champion Alex Palou sits second in points after a trio of podium finishes.
Reflecting on his season to date, Dixon said: “It’s been pretty horrendous, I think, in some circumstances.
“Honestly some were pretty big mistakes that we did as a group that should have never happened. That’s probably two of them.
“And then I think we got into a bit of a weird snowball effect here on the road course [last weekend]. Honestly, we just changed way too much stuff, and when you do that, you just miss the balance, and with how tight the competition is right now, then you’re going to be out to lunch – and we definitely were.
“I think the cars race really well. We’ve had really strong races when you look at the competition of the field. It’s just really been the qualifying effort where we’ve either made mistakes or got ourselves into a bit of trouble.”
But the 2008 Indy winner clocked second fastest speed in second practice on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway oval on Tuesday and was fastest in the morning session as all four of his team-mates finished the day in the top 10.
Scott Dixon, Chip Ganassi Racing Honda
Photo by: IndyCar Series
Four-time Indy 500 pole-winner Dixon said that the remedy to his troubles would be “to reset, calm down and get back to it”, and explained that he’d enjoyed his opening day of running at IMS.
Reflecting on his day, the Kiwi said: “We’ve always got more stuff to test than actual getting on the car and running it, but the good thing is with five strong cars, we’ve been able to move through it pretty quickly.
“Some are ‘driver feel’, so you want to check them yourself just to make sure it’s how you would like it.
“I think as the week progresses, we’ll get through the meat of it, and I think for all of us it’s really about running in traffic, as we saw the majority of people do today.
Last year it was interesting to see when people switched to qual trims – like we had a lot on Thursday, which was kind of bizarre, so we’ll keep an eye on that.
“The car feels strong, but always room to improve.”
He later added: “Nice to shift gears here at the Speedway, and I expect that to continue once we leave here, as well.”