WORLD OF SPORT
Dixon pipped team-mate
Rosenqvist by just 0.0934sHunter-Reay charged from
10th on the grid to take thirdABBOTT38 AUTOSPORT.COM 1 AUGUST 2019INDYCAR
MID-OHIO (USA)
28 JULY
ROUND 12/16It’s no surprise when Scott Dixon wins
at Mid-Ohio, but his sixth victory here
was the culmination of one of the finest
IndyCar races held on this 2.258-mile
road course. And with championship leader
Josef Newgarden finishing the race in a
sandtrap, Dixon has moved to within 62
marks of the points lead. With four races
to go, he’s still the outsider. But he started
this race as an outsider for glory and yet
triumphed because Chip Ganassi Racing
trumped Penske tactically, and because the
five-time champion executed perfectly.
Will Power produced the lap of the season
to grab his 57th career pole, 0.37 seconds
ahead of Alexander Rossi, who confirmed at
the weekend that he’d signed a multi-year
deal to stay in Michael Andretti’s team.
Power’s Penske team-mates Newgarden and
Simon Pagenaud were left 0.63s and 0.74s
adrift, yet still able to lock out the second
row. Sebastien Bourdais of Dale Coyne
Racing with Vasser-Sullivan was fifth, while
Felix Rosenqvist was the only GanassiALL PHOTOGRAPHYrepresentative in the Firestone Fast Six.
Dixon, who had struggled to keep pace
with the track’s evolving grip level over
the course of the weekend, lined up eighth.
Unlike their main rivals, Ganassi race
engineers Chris Simmons (Dixon) and Julian
Robertson (Rosenqvist) decided to start
their cars on Firestone’s harder black-
sidewalled primary tyres, theorising that
the softer ‘reds’ would take less punishment
later in the race, once the track surface had
rubbered up. They also decided to split fuel
strategies: Dixon, a master of fuel saving,
would make two stops, while Rosenqvist
would charge harder and make three.
A similar decision was made at Penske:
its fuel miser, Power, would run two stops,
Newgarden and Pagenaud three. Rossi, who
had won Mid-Ohio last year using a two-
stop strategy, would try to reproduce that
magic. His problem as a Honda driver was
that Chevrolet has made a big ‘step’ – more
power and torque and Honda-matching
fuel mileage on road/street courses.
Power led Rossi from the start,
Newgarden tucked in behind them and
fourth-placed Pagenaud resisted a challenge
from Rosenqvist, who then fell back behind
Bourdais, but just ahead of Dixon.Pagenaud and Newgarden stopped on laps
12 and 14 respectively, allowing Rosenqvist
and Dixon to swiftly move in on Rossi, who
was struggling to keep his Firestone reds
intact. He lost second and then third on
consecutive laps, and would pit early by
two-stopper standards, on lap 26.
By then, the Ganassi pair had not only
closed on Power but Rosenqvist had dived
past for the lead at Turn 4, before pitting
three laps later for a set of red compound
tyres. Power and Dixon, committed to two
stops, then came in, with Power rejoining
still ahead but on black tyres, while Dixon
was on reds. After some wheel-banging
moments through Turn 4, Power bowed
to the inevitable and Dixon moved ahead.
This pair advanced to first and second at
the halfway point when the three-stoppers
made their second trip to the pits, but now
the first of these was Rosenqvist because
Newgarden, who’d been leading, suffered
a refuelling problem that dropped him
behind Power, Rossi and Rossi’s team-
mate Ryan Hunter-Reay, up from row five.
Rosenqvist had charged hard on reds,
stopped on lap 45, and was now on new(ish)
blacks; he reeled in Power, who relinquished
second on lap 54 after the pair had run
side-by-side through four successive turns.
Rosenqvist then took the lead when Dixon
made his second and final stop on lap 59.
Dixon emerged sixth, but Power’s second
stop left him briefly down in 12th, such
had been his pace deficit to Dixon while
the Ganassi driver had been using reds.
Once the three-stoppers came in for their
final service, Dixon moved back to the front,
while Rosenqvist’s pace had been such that
he dropped only to second after his final
L stop. Hunter-Reay and Newgarden,
EVITTDixon leads a Ganassi 1-2
despite late drama