Dixon’s 3rd title caps rally

FONTANA, Calif. — Scott Dixon won his first championship at 23, too young to appreciate what he’d accomplished in his first full season with Chip Ganassi Racing and their first year competing in the IndyCar Series.

The next title five seasons later capped one of those years you only dream about: Dixon won six races, the Indianapolis 500, married his wife, Emma, and topped it all off with his second championship.

Then Dario Franchitti returned to IndyCar, as his teammate at Ganassi, and Dixon became an also-ran. He won 10 races over the next three years, but lost the championship every time to his new teammate. Franchitti won three consecutive titles from 2009 to 2011, and picked up two more Indy 500 wins in that span, beating Dixon in 2012 as the two swapped the lead with each other 11 times in the final 47 laps.

But Dixon, who will go down as one of the greatest drivers in American open-wheel history when his career comes to a close, was never out of the hunt. Not even this season, when he was not part of the championship picture at the halfway mark.

Dixon completed a remarkable rally Saturday night to win his third championship — five years after his last title, and 10 years after his first — and marveled at how different each journey had been.

“The first one, I think I was young, just didn’t really understand what I had won. My perspective when I was 22 or 23 of what I actually did to what I understand now is totally different,” he said. “And ’08 was a dream year. Got married, won the Indy 500 and the championship. Pretty hard to beat that.

“This year I think has been far different, just in the fact midseason we didn’t think we had a shot at the championship.”

Winless after the 10th race of the season, Dixon’s 16th-place finish at Iowa had dropped him to seventh in the standings.

Two weeks after that Iowa race, Dixon broke through at Pocono for his first victory of the year.