Newgarden vaulted
up the order in pit
cycle to take secondRahal was third on the
road, but lost it to DixonGALS
TADLe
PAGE38 AUTOSPORT.COM 18 APRIL 2019RACE CENTRE INDYCAR LONG BEACH
Dixon, but by now he had driven most of
the front stretch running over the less-used
part of the race track, the line covered with
dust and tyre marbles – and still Dixon was
filling his left mirror. Approaching Turn 1,
Power braked late – almost impossibly so.
Briefly he considered turning into the
corner, thinking he might make it, but at the
last moment chose caution over valour and
slithered down the escape road. By the time
he’d booted the car around and rejoined, he
was down in eighth, behind not only Dixon
but also Rahal, Hunter-Reay, Pagenaud and
the second RLLR car of Barber Motorsports
Park winner Takuma Sato.
Newgarden in second place had nothing
for Rossi, the pair of them both now
running used primaries. By lap 40 Rossi’s
lead was out to 10s, and the Penske driver
was under pressure from Dixon, who in
turn was chased closely by Rahal and
Hunter-Reay, both now on fresh reds.
Hunter-Reay would have his chances of
improving his position undone by stopping
at the end of lap 54, leaving him 31 laps to
make it to the end without a splash of fuel.
RHR is quite experienced at saving fuel, but
he isn’t the best. And anyway, every driver
will tell you that to make substantial gains
fuel-mileage-wise requires the car to be
absolutely au point in terms of handling,
because it requires the driver to back off the
throttle earlier for a corner but also use less
braking, thereby carrying more rolling speed
through the corner. This was not Hunter-
Reay’s situation last Sunday.
Initially, however, he did gain from the
pitstop sequence because Dixon had a
horrible 18.5s stop when the fuel hose just
wouldn’t lock into the car’s buckeye. By the
time he emerged from the pits and the rest
of the cars had stopped, Dixon was down
in fifth, behind the still-dominant Rossi,
Newgarden, Rahal and Hunter-Reay, albeit
ahead of Pagenaud and Power, who’d jumped
ahead of Sato in the pitstop sequence.
The remaining laps played out with Rossi
initially keeping his lead over Newgarden
at between 10 and 11s, while Newgarden
never looked under threat from Rahal, who
had started the third stint on used redalternates and was beginning to feel too
much understeer as his fronts scrabbled
for grip. Yet Hunter-Reay was struggling
to meet his target fuel mileage, so he was
unable to gain on the RLLR machine ahead,
and into the final 15 of the race’s 85 laps
was instead having to watch the recovering
Dixon grow larger in his mirrors.
With three and a half laps to go Hunter-
Reay was slow exiting Turn 8 as he was
instructed by his team to switch to “full
emergency fuel-save mode”, and he politely
moved out of the way along the back
straight, realising it was futile to try torestrain Dixon for another three laps.
Thus Dixon had a clear run at Rahal over
the remaining five minutes of the race, and
he had preserved more push-to-pass boost
than his former team-mate. As they started
the last lap fighting for third place, the RLLR
driver used up his last P2P along the front
straight, leaving himself vulnerable to attack
from the Ganassi ace on the back straight,
between Turns 8 and 9.
Unfortunately, Rahal locked up his
right-front tyre as he slowed for the entry
to the right-hand Turn 8, but kept the car
under control, and moved to the right as
soon as he was onto the straight. This was
to try to force Dixon to go for the longer
route, on the left, once they braked for
Turn 9, another right-hander.
Dixon’s neater line through Turn 8 had
allowed him to gain on Rahal and they
moved simultaneously to the right before,
perhaps surprisingly, Dixon showed no
interest in flicking left to make the pass,
despite his better exit speed and push-to-
pass boost providing additional momentum.
Instead, the front wing of his car made
contact with the rear tyre of Rahal’s, thereby
killing that momentum. So when Rahal then
gradually moved to the middle of the track
down the back straight to ensure a more
optimal line through Turn 9, Dixon wasn’t
in a position to attempt to outbrake him on