Indycar: Dixon extends his lead
The Chip Ganassi Racing star nearly doubled his points lead as his rivals made costly errors
Scott Dixon appeared to be the most likely winner of last Sunday’s race at Toronto even when he was running second behind last-gasp polesitter Josef Newgarden. Following a major front wing adjustment at his first stop, when the frontrunners switched from the softer alternate Firestones to the tougher but less grippy primaries, he was stalking the lead Penske, waiting to pounce. Maybe he’d have made a move on track, maybe he’d have gone a lap or two longer before making his second and final stop.
But if there was something inexorable about the four-time champion’s progress and an inevitability about his victory, his major opponents would have been smart to minimise the damage in terms of championship points. Instead, they made the same kinds of errors that their less accomplished colleagues traditionally make around the 1.786-mile street course at Exhibition Place. Dixon came into the weekend leading the championship by 33 points; he departed 62 points to the good.
His nearest opponent after the previous Iowa race was Newgarden, and the defending champion kept up his momentum with a swashbuckling run to pole position on Saturday. Earlier drizzle had all but disappeared from the racing line around a track where the front straight had been resurfaced, thereby removing some of the more spectacular bumps in the braking zone at Turn 1. Elsewhere the track suffered its usual virulent strain of road acne.
Dixon and one of Newgarden’s teammates, Will Power, were left kicking themselves for running over the cement patches that dried less rapidly than asphalt. Dixon had a crucial tail-out moment that he believed cost him the couple of tenths that would have earned him pole, while Power turned in across a cement patch and felt the front tyres wash out wide.
Still they would line up second and fourth, respectively, ahead of the Honda-powered Andretti Autosport cars of Alexander Rossi and Ryan Hunter-reay. Thus the top five in
the championship were contained in the first three rows – it looked like there would be a battle to relish.
From the start, Newgarden held off Dixon, while on the run to the first corner, Power flicked across the track to the inside of Pagenaud to claim what would have been third, had not Hunter-reay zoomed around the outside of both of them. Rossi and the Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing machine of Takuma Sato would also demote Pagenaud and, further around the lap, Rossi tried to make a move on Power. When it was rebuffed, he lost momentum and ceded fifth place to Sato. Behind Pagenaud, Schmidt Peterson Motorsports duo Robert Wickens and James Hinchcliffe rubbed wheels on the opening lap, allowing the hard-charging Marco Andretti to split them.
So far, so good – drivers were behaving well, and so the top runners switched to fuel save mode, running between one and two seconds apart. Rossi, unable to make progress from sixth place, was called in on lap 18. Hunter-reay went four laps longer, Dixon and Newgarden five laps, Power six laps. Two super-quick laps from Power, a beautifully orchestrated pitstop from the #12 crew, and Hunter-reay’s time-sapping encounter with Spencer Pigot (Ed Carpenter Racing) – who was long-stinting on the primary tyres – helped Power move easily into third place after his stop. Now it was time to catch Newgarden and Dixon.
Except Power blew it. Coming through Turn 11, the final turn onto the pit straight, the Penske slipped on the rubber tyre marbles. Power’s subsequent impact with the wall, while not a hard hit, seemed to go on for some time and was enough to break his right-rear toelink. Hunter-reay was swiftly past, so too was Sato.
Rossi tried to do the same, but he misjudged his closing rate on the limping Penske, and clipped his front wing off on the tail of the car. Bizarrely, when the pair arrived at Turn 3, they each made up a place because there was Hunter-reay in
the tyre wall, with his engine stalled, having locked his brakes as he went from 170mph down to 40mph.
Refiring the #28 DHL car would require the safety team and so out came the first caution of the day. When the pits opened, RHR, Power and Rossi were among those who rushed in for repairs – the Andretti cars for new front wings, the Penske for right-rear suspension repairs. This put Power a lap down, even under caution.
When the green flag flew at the end of lap 32, as the field negotiated the final twisting complex, Newgarden got on the gas to try and escape from Dixon’s challenge. Now it was his turn to hit the marbles and slide into the Turn 11 wall.
Dixon, scarcely believing his luck, went into the lead, while Wickens took full advantage of those wrong-footed by Newgarden’s faux pas. He crossed the start/finish line in fifth, yet was outbraking Pagenaud for second place into Turn 1 just over a lap later. Behind them were Sato, Hinchcliffe, Andretti and Tony Kanaan in his Chevrolet-powered AJ Foyt Racing car.
A little further behind these, however, there was simply carnage. Graham Rahal ran into the back of Max Chilton’s Carlin entry, which seemed to trigger a chain reaction event that involved Sebastien Bourdais, along with Rossi and Hunter-reay. Rossi came to a dead stop on the inside line and was struck and jacked into the air by his unsighted team-mate. Meanwhile, Power, who had rejoined at the tail of the field, was distracted by the sight of the chaos, saw no way through and slid nose-first into the tyre barrier. Out came the caution again, in came Rossi and Hunter-reay for yet more nose wings, and Power did likewise.
Power was now two laps down. Later he would be the only driver to crack the 60-second barrier on race day, which earned him an extra point for fastest lap.
Team-mate Newgarden, having had his car thoroughly checked over, would – like Rossi – be able to rejoin at the tail end of the lead lap. Hunter-reay, having had two snafus, was one lap down.
A two-lap yellow for Rene Binder’s spun-and-stalled Juncos Racing car came at half distance – way too early for anyone to think of using the moment to duck into the pits to make a second and final stop. Up front, Dixon pulled out a comfortable 2.5s margin over Wickens, who in turn was unthreatened by Pagenaud, while Andretti had won a long automotive punch-up with Sato to wrest fourth place from his former team-mate.
When the second pitstops rolled around, Wickens was serviced two laps before Pagenaud, but made a mistake on his out-lap. Pagenaud, meanwhile, confessed later that he had made an error on his in-lap. The result was that Pagenaud just about escaped the pitlane speed limit area in front of the warm-tyred SPM machine, but wisely chose a defensive and central line into the Turn 1 brake zone. Due to his cold tyres, however, the 2016 champion had to slow a little more than Wickens was expecting, and maroon nose made sharp contact with black attenuator, thankfully without hurt to either machine.
The pair then shot off down the long drag to Turn 3, Pagenaud protecting the inside
line and Wickens getting around one-third of a car’s length ahead. But as he turned in on the longer and more slippery outside line, Wickens appeared to give Pagenaud very little room. The Frenchman stayed alongside and, upset at being squeezed, unwound his steering to run his rival wide, where Wickens had to back off or hit a wall. Pagenaud was into second.
This little battle had enabled Dixon to stretch his lead to seven seconds, but Pagenaud worked hard to reduce this – a quest in which he was aided by Hunterreay holding up the leader. He was back on the lead lap, but praying for a lucky yellow that would allow him to get the wavearound to the tail of the field for a restart.
By the time Hunter-reay gave up this dream and made his final stop, Dixon’s lead was down to 1.4s, but he discouraged Pagenaud by pulling half a second in successive laps. The battle was won.
During the closing stages Hinchcliffe – who had been driving with cock-eyed suspension ever since he had a brush with Sato – was trying to fend off Charlie Kimball’s Carlin car (see sidebar) to retain fifth place. He will have been gratified to see Sato join the list of Turn 11 casualties in the last 20 laps (unfortunately that list also included Pigot), and even happier to pick up fourth place on the penultimate lap. A disbelieving Andretti had to pit for a splashand-dash that dropped him six places to 10th.
The late drama overshadowed one of the best drives of the weekend. Conor Daly, on a trial run in place of Gabby Chaves at Harding Racing, qualified in the top 12 in the damp conditions, and avoided race day carnage to come home 13th and on the lead lap. He deserved to feel very proud.
By way of contrast, as they trailed in eighth, ninth, 16th and 18th respectively, Rossi, Newgarden, Hunter-reay and Power were left ruing what might have been. Dixon is surely a tough enough adversary without gifting him hefty points advantages.