History on Dixon’s side
‘‘You’re in it until you’re not. That’s the point – you’re never out of it until you are, so we’ll keep digging.’’ Scott Dixon
Scott Dixon’s fighting qualities make him the driver to beat as the 2022 IndyCar championship nears the home straight.
The hectic season takes a week off before resuming in Madison, Illinois, on August 21.
Dixon was at his fighting best to take the chequered flag in Nashville last Monday, with the 53rd victory of his career lifting him to second in the championship race, only six points behind Australian Will Power.
There are only three races left and history suggests Dixon is the driver to beat as he looks to equal AJ Foyt’s seven titles.
Dixon is on a charge, having scored 51 points more than his main rivals over the past five races. It continues his history of title charges over the back end of seasons. Only in 2020 when he won the first three races was Dixon dominant from the start.
‘‘All the other championships were really big comebacks in the second half,’’ Dixon said as he savoured another championship shot on the back of his Nashville heroics.
‘‘Trust me, we don’t try to do that. We try to do it like ‘20 where we start strong and lead the championship from the start.
‘‘I don’t know. If we could put a finger on that, then we would work out both ends of the championship. But it’s tough, man. I think it goes back more to how the team functions. They just never give up, and I think when they get into situations where they can grasp on to it and hang on to it and make it possible, then they lift, man.
‘‘You’re in it until you’re not,’’ added Dixon, noting he trailed
Juan Pablo Montoya by 48 points with three races remaining in his 2015 championship season.
‘‘That’s the point – you’re never out of it until you are, so we’ll keep digging.’’
At Nashville, Dixon came out top of a race punctuated by 10 stoppages, and he was a victim himself as a heavy hit to his rear end left his car badly damaged and his race and championship chances hanging by a thread after 26 of 80 laps. Somehow he recovered with the 42-year-old using all his experience to get his car home first.
Dixon got to the pits with a flat rear tyre and his crew discovered bent suspension and significant under-floor damage. They tore away a large chunk of the car’s floor which race engineer Chris Simmons estimated costing Dixon about 180kg of downforce. They desperately adjusted his front wing to rebalance the car.
It wasn’t perfect, but it gave Dixon hope as they engineered a masterful race strategy that also relied on doses of good luck as chaos reigned with cars regularly being eliminated in accidents.
‘‘The car was bent and broken,’’ Dixon said. ‘‘But for us, I think strategy-wise to take no tyres on that last stop [lap 50] was probably the key. We were able to jump [three cars] and have enough fuel to get to the end, but it was very difficult to drive.
‘‘The car just had no grip. Each time we had a restart, I was just praying for another accident!
Some of those came, some of them didn’t. Another lap with [Scott] McLaughlin [runner-up for Penske], it would have been extremely tough to hold him off. He was just super fast, and I think just in a better situation.’’
The Nashville win seemed unlikely. Poor qualifying saw him start 14th and he was last after his major incident required so much work in the pits. But that brought out the best in Dixon.
It was the seventh time in 14 races this season he has gained at least eight official positions from the start of the race.
That’s the sport of consistency that makes him a major force in this late charge.
He has only finished outside of the top 10 once – with his heartbreaking pit lane penalty at the Indy 500 seeing him record a 21st finish.
His run of results in 2022 reads: 8, 5, 6, 5, 10, 21, 3, 9, 5, 1, 5, 4, 8, 1.