For the first time in the 2020 season, the NTT IndyCar Series fired up their engines at Texas Motor Speedway with the Genesys 300 without fans. The season was supposed to kick off in March at Long Beach. However, due to COVID-19 and states shutting down, IndyCar had to postpone its season, including the biggest race of the year the Indianapolis 500, which has been rescheduled for August 23rd.
Defending champion Joseph Newgarden won the pole, and alongside him was Scott Dixon. The only car not to start the race was Takuma Sato, who crashed while qualifying and could not make it out of tech.
Newgarden and Dixon led the field to the green flag to start the race. Newgarden led the first 32 laps before Dixon overtook him for the lead. Dixon would lead until the first caution came out at lap 38 when rookie drivers Rinus VeeKay and Alex Palou car’s collided on the backstretch.
Under caution, the cars headed to pit road where Dixon came out with the lead. Tony Kannan was caught speeding and had to start in the rear of the field.
Dixon led from the restart on lap 45 until lap 77 when the second caution came out for debris. The lead lap cars pitted, and Joseph Newgarden came out as the new leader. Newgarden led the field back to green on lap 86. Newgarden and Dixon were in a battle for the lead. Ultimately, Dixon would get the lead back from Newgarden on lap 91 and never looked back.
Newgarden would drop to fourth after being passed by Felix Rosenqvist and Simon Pagenaud. As Dixon pulled away, there were some other great position battles, including Charlie Kimball getting by Newgarden for the fourth position.
The third caution would come out on lap 191 as Felix Rosenqvist made contact with the turn two wall. Dixon would pull away from the rest of the field as the race got back underway with three laps to go. Dixon would cruise on to victory while the fourth caution would fly when Charlie Kimball hit the inside wall on the backstretch. Dixon was over four seconds ahead of second-place finisher Simon Pagenaud.
The rest of the top ten finishers were Joseph Newgarden third, Zach Veach fourth, Ed Carpenter fifth, Connor Daily sixth, Colton Herta seventh, Ryan Hunter-Reay eighth, Oliver Askew ninth, and Tony Kannan tenth. There were five lead changes and four cautions for 24 laps.
The NTT IndyCar Series won’t return until July 4th for the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Road Course race one.
