Dixon leaves Road America with win
Scott Dixon ran through the reasons his Sunday drive was particularly gratifying.
The four-time Verizon IndyCar Series champion had been airborne, upside down and backward in the last month alone. He had finished second three times this year without a victory before he broke through in the Kohler Grand Prix.
The 36-year-old New Zealander had fallen in love with Road America when he first raced on its 4-mile mix of rolling hills and challenging turns more than 15 years ago, but for a variety of reasons he’d never been to victory lane.
For a while, Dixon didn’t even know if he’d take the green flag, much less the checkered, as his Chip Ganassi Racing crew thrashed on race morning to cure two fuel pressure problems.
And, he crashed an anticipated Team Penske party in dramatic fashion.
“They looked pretty disappointed,” Dixon said with a smirk.
“They’re always the team you’ve got to beat. Champion-
ship fights, they’re the ones that are going to come down to it. Especially with their lineup right now, four very strong cars, as you can see with qualifying, makes it very difficult to get one out.”
Although Team Penske drivers swept positions 1-4 in practice Friday and qualifying Saturday, they had to settle for 2-5 in the race after Dixon jumped Josef Newgarden on a midrace restart and kept him behind him on another.
Newgarden came up 0.5779 of a second short of Dixon’s Honda as the checkered flag waved, followed by his Penske Chevrolet mates Helio Castroneves, Simon Pagenaud and Will Power.
Charlie Kimball, one of Dixon’s teammates, finished sixth, and Ed Jones was best in class — the non- Ganassi/Penske class — with a seventh place that was the rookie’s best result since third in the Indianapolis 500.
“I was hoping it was our turn to get a little bit of luck go our way,” said Dixon, whose performance this season had been overshadowed by a frightening flight at the Indianapolis 500.
“We’ve had some great speed this year. I think we could have won Barber (Motorsports Park). We could have won Long Beach. We could have won St. Pete. Texas, how it had been playing out ( before a late crash), I think we would have either finished first or second.
“You look at it one way, yes, we’ve had good speed, we’ve had some good results. But then we’ve let two or three or four races get away, as well.”
With Sunday’s result, Dixon has at least one victory in 13 consecutive seasons and now a 41st victory in Indy-car racing, fourth on the all-time list. He is one shy of tying Michael Andretti for third.
Dixon is one of the few drivers who was around when the old CART circuit raced at Road America 15 years ago. An eightyear hiatus for premier openwheel cars ended last season with the arrival of the Verizon IndyCar Series.
In three starts at Road America, Dixon hadn’t led a lap, but Sunday he was out front for a race-high 24 of 55 laps.
The move of the race came on a restart after Takuma Sato’s crash. The leaders had just pitted, and Dixon had the grippier red-sidewall alternate tires, while leader Newgarden was on the black primaries.
Dixon got a great run up the hill past the start/finish line — his Honda providing better torque in the lower gears — and boldly drove around on the outside through the right-hand Turn 1 with 25 laps to go.
“We made the right strategy for us with the way the race was unfolding,” Newgarden said. “We had a good lead.
“The caution didn’t fall our way. You can’t predict that stuff. It hurts when it comes at the wrong time.”
Dixon built a lead of more than four seconds and was up by 1.6 when Tony Kanaan crashed to bring out the final caution. Dixon kept Newgarden behind him throughout the seven-lap run to the finish but admitted he wasn’t “super confident” when the stint began.
“You know, I thought we had pretty decent speed,” Dixon said. “It was going to be tough. I knew once (the gap) plateaued after four or five laps, we were looking OK.”
Despite the fact that Dixon came into the weekend winless, he did arrive with the points lead.
When he left, his edge was 379-345 over Pagenaud after 10 of 17 races.
“You know, these championships are never easy to win,” Dixon said. “The competition is through the roof.
“You just got to keep knocking on the door and hopefully it’s going to open.”
Then, as Dixon showed, you drive on through.
Mikhail Aleshin, who missed Friday practices after visa issues in France where he competed in last weekend’s 24 Hours of Le Mans, finished 10th.
Castroneves was treated for dehydration after the race and did not attend the news conference. A representative for Team Penske said he was suffering from a little cramping.