Scott Dixon decimates the field to win in St. Louis

The NTT IndyCar Series concluded a wild weekend at World Wide Technology Raceway on Sunday afternoon in Madison, Illinois, for the final oval race of the season. Mother Nature impacted IndyCar’s schedule on Saturday with qualifying being moved to Sunday morning.

Scott McLaughlin won the pole but he was issued a nine-grid penalty for an unapproved engine change and started tenth. Josef Newgarden and Pato O’Ward were on the front row when the green flag waved.

Shortly after the green flag, Ed Carpenter ran into the back of Benjamin Pederson at Turn 1 which brought out the first caution. Carpenter was given a 30-second stop-and-go penalty. The race would go back to green on the tenth lap.

Josef Newgarden dominated the early portion of the race. On lap 62, he made a pit stop with Will Power taking the lead. Power led four laps before pitting on lap 65 and Newgarden resumed the lead. He led until lap 102 when he made his second pit stop with Colton Herta taking the lead.

Herta led ten laps before making a pit stop with Scott Dixon taking the lead. During the scheduled pit stops, Takuma Sato got into the marbles high at Turn 2 before hitting the wall which led to the second caution of the race. Chaos erupted on pit road.

Augustin Canapino tried to leave pit road before he bumped David Malukas’s right rear tire changer, who was in the process of changing Malukas’s tire and he let Canapino know he was not happy. Canapino’s team pulled him back so he could exit his pit box.

Marcus Ericsson went to pit road and his crew forgot to tighten the left rear tire which caused him to stop at Will Power’s pit box. His crew was able to tighten the left rear before restarting his car and off he went.

The race restarted on lap 135. Scott Dixon was still the leader and he got a great jump. In the back, Josef Newgarden and Pato O’Ward made contact into Turn 3. The NBC crew had O’Ward’s radio up for a bit and he was not too happy with Newgarden.

Scott Dixon’s car was strong. His crew chief deserves a lot of credit in this race. Many teams went with a five-pit strategy, and they went with a three-pit strategy. The Honda engines are known for great fuel mileage and it showed here. Dixon made his last stop on lap 196 with Pato O’Ward taking the lead.

Pato O’Ward, Colton Herta, and Alexander Rossi had pitted earlier in the race and tried to stretch their fuel mileage in hopes of another caution to come out but it never came. All three of those drivers eventually pitted and Dixon went back to the lead.

With 48 laps to go, Joseph Newgarden tried to push his luck to catch Dixon but he got into the marbles high at Turn 2 before hitting the wall. He broke the right rear toe which ended his day. As a result, he is now out of contention for the championship.

Up front, Dixon and the rest of the lead lap cars were dealing with lapped-down traffic. The lapped-down cars were not moving to the side and let the leaders pass. Dixon and company had to fight those guys to get by them. This is something IndyCar needs to fix ahead of next year. We’ve seen too many guys multiple laps down not moving to the side when they are out of contention.   

Dixon obliterated the rest of the field. When he crossed the finish line for his second straight win, he beat Pato O’Ward by 22.2256 seconds. There were only three cars that finished on the lead lap. Dixon is now 74 points behind Alex Palou for the championship lead with two races left in the season.

“It’s all these guys, man. Chip steers the ship. We took a pretty good grid penalty today. We had to go the alternate route, and it worked out perfectly,” said Dixon. “This team was perfect. They gave me the (fuel) number I needed to be getting, so massive thank you to everybody on the PNC Bank No. 9 crew.”

“Scott Dixon did Scott Dixon today. When they were telling me on the radio the 9 car is trying to make it to the end, he’s going to make it until the end,” said Pato O’Ward. “I was happy with the strategy today; I was happy with my car. But, yeah … Scott Dixon.”

The NTT IndyCar Series head to Portland International Raceway next Sunday at 3 pm on NBC. Subscribe to Fubo to watch all of the 2023 NTT IndyCar Series season. Purchase tickets for all IndyCar races today on StubHub and Viagogo.

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