On Lap 29 of the Big Machine Music City Grand Prix, Scott Dixon was running last after a penalty for the emergency service of his wounded car in a closed pit.
Fast-forward 51 laps, and Dixon was celebrating his 53rd career INDYCAR SERIES victory – breaking a tie with Mario Andretti for second on the all-time list – in an improbable triumph Sunday on the streets of Nashville.
Dixon earned his second victory of the season in the No. 9 PNC Bank Chip Ganassi Racing Honda and pulled to within six points of NTT INDYCAR SERIES championship leader Will Power with just three races remaining. Dixon is trying to match the series record of seven titles held by A.J. Foyt, who also leads with 67 career victories.
Left visibly disappointed after qualifying in 14th, the Sunday morning warm-up saw Dixon prove he was fast on both the primary and alternate Firestones to head the time charts.
He passed three cars at the start of the race, lost a spot, and then ran over debris from a chain-reaction shunt caused by Graham Rahal’s collision with the back of Pato O’Ward on Lap 26.
The accident debris damaged the floor of the Chip Ganassi Racing-Honda and punctured a tire. But Dixon dug deep and scrambled through the field, which kept getting condensed by more caution periods.
After the red flag waved for another shunt, when Josef Newgarden bounced Romain Grosjean into the wall, Dixon endured a 1.5-lap sprint to the checkered flag on old tires, holding off the fast charging and undamaged Penske-Chevrolet of polesitter Scott McLaughlin to win by .2 seconds.
“The tough thing about the weekend was knowing that the PNC Bank #9 was super fast; we proved that in the warm-up,” Dixon told NBC Sports.
Kudos to the team. We had a big crash there that took half the floor off, so we had to take four turns of the front wing out. We had no grip. And then I think we did 45-50 laps on that last set of tires, so at the last stop we didn’t even take tires. “
“Oh man, Nashville is so awesome! I was really worried about Scott [McLaughlin] because I knew he’d take a chance – he kind of has to with the standings at the moment – and he was super-fast on fresher tires, so I was a sitting duck. A lap or two more would’ve been really tough to do. “
McClaughlin makes it a Kiwi 1-2
McLaughlin, who suffered a slow pitstop that dropped him to 15th, was asked how much more time he needed to earn his third win of the season.
“One lap, we were side by side across the finish line. We were 15th on that last pit exchange. I just had an awesome restart and the car was fast. It was unreal.
“I just fell short at the end but congrats to Scotty, I always dreamed about racing him until the end. I had a lot of fun, and that’s why I’ve come to IndyCar racing. This is the best racing in the world.
“Great weekend, great for the points and we’ll just keep pushing in the last three races of the year.”
With three rounds remaining in the championship, six-time champion Dixon is currently only six points behind Indycar championship leader and 2014 champion Will Power, while McLaughlin is 58 back.
