Toronto IndyCar: Dixon scores 52nd win, matches Mario Andretti

From the start, polesitter Herta was unthreatened, while Dixon swept across from the outside to ensure Newgarden couldn’t sneak up from third to claim second. Newgarden checked his momentum and that allowed Alexander Rossi around his outside to try and claim third, but Newgarden had put the matter beyond dispute by the end of the lap. Scott McLaughlin, his teammate, passed David Malukas for fifth, but there was even worse luck for the other Dale Coyne Racing-Honda, that of Takuma Sato who was shoved into the wall at the Turn 1 kerfuffle, and limped his very broken car back to the pits. The debris left behind obliged Race Control to throw the full-course caution.

Following the Lap 4 restart Felix Rosenqvist demoted Malukas down to seventh, while Power had already taken advantage of his alternate tires to move into 12^th, from 16^th on the grid, but rather than burn up all his push to pass trying to stay ahead of Romain Grosjean who he’d passed on the opening lap, he let the Frenchman back past on Lap 11 and pitted next time by to grab primaries. Defending champion Alex Palou, who had started 22^nd, had pitted a couple of laps earlier to take on primaries and such had been his pace, the undercut ensured Power emerged behind him. To avoid the risk of getting jumped should a yellow fall, the leaders rapidly started pulling in, Newgarden remaining ahead of Rossi but now split by rookie Malukas. Herta and McLaughlin stopped on Lap 19, a lap after Dixon and found himself being outbraked by the six-time champion into Turn 1, to effectively take the lead. Behind them, Newgarden and now Rossi were ahead of Malukas, while Rosenqvist had turned in fast enough laps at the end of his stint to emerge ahead of McLaughlin and hold off the Penske driver.

However, Dixon wasn’t yet in the lead, for Graham Rahal, Rinus VeeKay, Pato O’Ward, Jimmie Johnson and Conor Daly had risked running a long first stint on their primaries to try and make a net gain.

Rahal finally pitted from the lead on Lap 25, emerging in 14^th which would become 10^th once his fellow long runners stopped. Further back, Power was only 19^th, and not even threatening the Andretti cars of DeFrancesco and Grosjean ahead.

On Lap 30, Rosenqvist moved ahead of Malukas and onto the tail of future Arrow McLaren SP driver, Rossi, who was applying the pressure to Newgarden while the Penske driver stayed bottled up behind the yet-to-stop Daly.

O’Ward finally stopped on Lap 32, leaving Dixon out front with a 2.5sec lead over Herta, the pair of them in a race of their own as 14sec behind them, Daly continued to hold up a train of cars led by Newgarden, Rossi and Rosenqvist. Finally Daly uncorked the bottle on Lap 36 and pitted.

Not that Newgarden then made any notable progress thereafter because he was in fuel-save mode having been one of the early stoppers. On Lap 43, just past half distance in this 85-lap race, Dixon was 2.3sec ahead of Herta, with Newgarden still 14sec back, with Rossi and Rosenqvist 2sec further back disputing fourth.

That dispute ended in tears on Lap 45, just as Rosenqvist was encouraged by his strategist to make the pass. At Turn 3, the AMSP driver flicked to the inside of the future AMSP driver, and he was fully alongside as they exited the turn but as Rosenqvist floored the throttle his car slid sideways and the contact sent the Andretti car hard into the wall. Race Control would say the attempt was legit and so there was no penalty for the AMSP driver.

The drivers wended their way into the tortuous pitlane, and Newgarden suffered a horrible stop as he stopped too far from his crew, and the refueler struggled to get the nozzle engaged nad Newgarden was down to 11^th.. With VeeKay and Daly having stayed out front after their late stops, Ed Carpenter Racing-Chevrolet had a 1-2 – VeeKay on reds, Daly on blacks – ahead of Dixon, Herta, Rosenqvist, McLaughlin, Rahal, Pagenaud, Ericsson and Palou. Following the restart, Newgarden lost out further to Christian Lundgaard and O’Ward.

Up (almost) at the front, Herta was now fully able to stay in Dixon’s wake, but then the yellow flew for debris at Turn 1 – concrete debris, caused by the track breaking up – compressed the field once more.

Following the Lap 59 restart, Ericsson had a couple of wheel banging moments with teammate Ericsson over eighth place but failed to make a move stick. He only had to wait a few seconds to gain eighth anyway, because the yellow had to be thrown once more due to Kirkwood and Johnson coming together at the back of the field and stalling. That yellow saw VeeKay duck into the pits, but because the field had to go so slow through the incident scene, the Dutch driver was able to emerge in 13^th despite the field being bunched together.

The next restart came at the end of Lap 66, with 19 laps to go, and into Turn 1, Rahal muscled down the inside of McLaughlin to snatch fourth and the Penske driver got out on the marbles through Turn 2 and lost places to Ericsson, Palou, Lundgaard and Pagenaud. On Lap 69, Pagenaud passed Lundgaard for seventh. Another Penske driver, however, moved forward, getting ahead of O’Ward and Malukas to grab 10^th.

Up front, Dixon pulled away from Herta who was having to watch his mirrors for Rosenqvist. Some 1.7sec back, Rahal was fending off the Ericsson vs Palou battle.

In the final 10 laps, Palou eased off from the back of Ericsson, allowing the championship leader to focus on trying to find a way past Rahal. Three seconds further up the road, Rosenqvist’s efforts to get around Herta redoubled, but he couldn’t quite get it done, and he fell half a second short. Ahead of them Dixon scored his first win of the year, after leading 40 of the 85 laps, and ensuring he has now scored at least one win in 18 seasons.

Rahal was great fourth ahead of Ericsson, while Palou can be proud of his charge from 22^nd to sixth place, the highest finishing driver of those who had never seen Toronto before this weekend.

Lundgaard was a fine eighth ahead of Penske drivers McLaughlin and Newgarden who completed the Top 10.

 

P	No	Name	Laps	Diff	LapTime	Gap	Pits	LPit	P2P	FL	FTime	Led	ST	FSpeed	Elapsed	Engine	Tire	Points	Team
1	9	Scott Dixon	85	LAP 85	1:03.8807			47	21	7	1:01.1679	40	2	105.114	1:38:45.3087	Honda	P	307	Chip Ganassi Racing
2	26	Colton Herta	85	0.8106	1:02.6700	0.8106		47	7	7	1:01.0586	17	1	105.302	1:38:46.1193	Honda	P	254	Andretti Autosport w/Curb-Agajanian
3	7	Felix Rosenqvist	85	1.3490	1:02.7245	0.5384		47	52	71	1:01.3229	1	8	104.848	1:38:46.6577	Chevy	P	244	Arrow McLaren SP
4	15	Graham Rahal	85	4.4830	1:02.7602	3.1340		47	9	71	1:01.3204	6	14	104.853	1:38:49.7917	Honda	P	210	Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing
5	8	Marcus Ericsson	85	5.1260	1:02.6309	0.6430		47	3	74	1:01.3480		9	104.805	1:38:50.4347	Honda	P	351	Chip Ganassi Racing
6	10	Alex Palou	85	6.3629	1:02.8107	1.2369		47	8	14	1:01.0652		22	105.291	1:38:51.6716	Honda	P	314	Chip Ganassi Racing
7	60	Simon Pagenaud	85	8.7398	1:02.7858	2.3769		47	0	14	1:01.2317		18	105.004	1:38:54.0485	Honda	P	243	Meyer Shank Racing
8	30	Christian Lundgaard	85	9.3820	1:02.6679	0.6422		47	6	23	1:01.4171		10	104.687	1:38:54.6907	Honda	P	183	Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing
9	3	Scott McLaughlin	85	10.2868	1:02.7583	0.9048		47	30	7	1:01.5358		6	104.486	1:38:55.5955	Chevy	P	274	Team Penske
10	2	Josef Newgarden	85	10.6561	1:02.4074	0.3693		47	21	9	1:01.0478		3	105.321	1:38:55.9648	Chevy	P	307	Team Penske
11	5	Pato O'Ward	85	12.4284	1:02.2233	1.7723		47	0	30	1:01.2446	3	15	104.982	1:38:57.7371	Chevy	P	276	Arrow McLaren SP
12	18	David Malukas	85	13.3711	1:02.6180	0.9427		47	0	15	1:00.8307		5	105.697	1:38:58.6798	Honda	P	163	Dale Coyne Racing with HMD
13	21	Rinus VeeKay	85	18.2715	1:04.3229	4.9004		61	0	20	1:01.6240	18	20	104.336	1:39:03.5802	Chevy	A	211	Ed Carpenter Racing
14	77	Callum Ilott	85	18.4471	1:04.1092	0.1756		47	8	15	1:01.1427		7	105.157	1:39:03.7558	Chevy	P	113	Juncos Hollinger Racing
15	12	Will Power	85	19.0185	1:04.2832	0.5714		47	9	29	1:01.7039		16	104.201	1:39:04.3272	Chevy	P	316	Team Penske
16	28	Romain Grosjean	85	19.7939	1:03.5235	0.7754		56	70	25	1:01.3942		11	104.727	1:39:05.1026	Honda	A	197	Andretti Autosport
17	06	Helio Castroneves	85	20.3903	1:03.5046	0.5964		47	19	29	1:01.4278		17	104.669	1:39:05.6990	Honda	P	173	Meyer Shank Racing
18	29	Devlin DeFrancesco	85	21.2042	1:03.2999	0.8139		47	0	31	1:01.5537		12	104.455	1:39:06.5129	Honda	P	111	Andretti Steinbrenner Autosport
19	45	Jack Harvey	85	21.9470	1:03.0824	0.7428		48	49	18	1:01.5459		13	104.468	1:39:07.2557	Honda	P	126	Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing
20	20	Conor Daly	85	24.2445	1:03.0911	2.2975		56	52	40	1:01.8227		25	104.001	1:39:09.5532	Chevy	P	198	Ed Carpenter Racing
21	48	Jimmie Johnson	73	4 LAPS	1:03.1515	4 LAPS		61	77	38	1:01.9631		21	103.765	1:29:52.1576	Honda	P	108	Chip Ganassi Racing
22	14	Kyle Kirkwood	58	Contact	1:22.4964	0.2638		56	64	36	1:01.9474		24	103.791	1:06:38.0424	Chevy	P	106	AJ Foyt Enterprises
23	27	Alexander Rossi	44	Contact	1:02.0552	1.8580		16	60	9	1:01.3121		4	104.867	47:26.7265	Honda	P	236	Andretti Autosport
24	4	Dalton Kellett	30	Mechanical	1:02.1369	25.3087		24	85	29	1:01.9926		23	103.716	33:37.2855	Chevy	P	76	AJ Foyt Enterprises
25	51	Takuma Sato	---	Contact	1:16.2983	0.2544		0	200	--	1:16.2983		19	84.269	1.7838	Honda	P	154	Dale Coyne Racing w/RWR