Dixon on a hot streak

Scott Dixon still hadn’t led a lap all season when he left Indianapolis last month. Now with two wins in a span of eight days, the four-time IndyCar Series champ heads into the back half of the season as the points leader. Both previous times he won at Texas, like he just did for a third time with a dominating performance, Dixon also won the season title.

“That’s a positive,” Dixon said after his win late Saturday at the 1½-mile Texas oval, a week after the No. 9 Chip Ganassi Racing car also went to Victory Lane in the first race of the Detroit doubleheader. After leading the last 119 laps at Texas in the middle race of the 17event IndyCar series — with eight before and eight after — Dixon took the points lead from Will Power, who fell to third. Alexander Rossi moved up a spot to second.

Dixon also broke a tie with Michael Andretti for thirdmost wins in Indy-car history with his 43rd career victory, now behind only A.J. Foyt’s 67 and Mario Andretti’s 52. Dixon, the 37-year-old from New Zealand, started in CART in 2001 and debuted in IndyCar two years later with his first season championship.

While Power and Ed Carpenter, the top two finishers in the Indianapolis 500, were called for avoidable contact with rookies in separate incidents that knocked them out at Texas, there were no issues at all for Dixon.

F1: Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel won the Canadian Grand Prix after leading the race from the pole to the checkered flag. Vettel took a one-point lead over Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton in the Formula One standings and picked up his second career victory at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve and the first for Ferrari in Montreal since Michael Schumacher won three from 2002-04. Valtteri Bottas was second in his Mercedes, about six seconds back. Max Verstap- pen was third and the other Red Bull car, that of Daniel Ricciardo, was fourth. Hamilton, who came into the weekend leading the championship standings, came in fifth.

It’s Vettel’s 50th career win and his third of the season.