Motorsport: Dixon in mix for IndyCars' final push

Scott Dixon says it's been a frustrating season so far but being behind the leader has pushed the team to dig deep and improvements have resulted. Photo / Photosport

The IndyCar championship would have to be one the closest fought series, if not the closest, in any form of motorsport. In the previous 14 races in 2017 there have been nine different winners in victory lane and the top eight drivers are covered by just 100 points.

Perennial championship contender and four-time IndyCar champion New Zealander Scott Dixon is yet again right there in the mix in second place on the leaderboard. For the past 12 years Dixon has notched up at least one win per season, and his former teammate Dario Franchitti, also a four-time champion, once told the Herald that to win a championship you had to go through Dixon.

"The championship has been really tight this year as it has for about the last 10 years where I think the last race has decided who will win [the title]," Dixon told the Weekend Herald.

"The racing is so close and it's hard to pick who's going to win on any weekend. Different tracks suit different cars so it's hard to know who's going to be fast until we start qualifying.

"There are five of us who are in a really good position to try for the championship as the others are a bit too far off.

"It'll be close though, but then again it always is."

The tenacity of Dixon is legendary among his fellow competitors and this year he has been mightily tested. In probably the worst season he's ever experienced since he started racing 30 years ago, Dixon has had to endure more dramas on and off the track that most people could contemplate, including being held up at gunpoint and maybe the biggest crash of his career.

"Man this has been a hard year. There was the holdup at the drive through with Dario and me, then the big crash at the Indy 500 where I broke my foot, being taken out at the next race and other stuff that's got in the way of getting good finishes.

"The foot's okay now and I've starting running again, but for a number of races it was really hard as I couldn't brake as hard as I could [left-foot braking] and I had to use my right foot.

"It's been a tough season and we lost so many points where we shouldn't have and we should actually have a decent points gap to the others now. It's annoying to be in second.

"It's been good in a funny sort of way for the team as we've all had to dig deep, come up with some new processes and improve things.

"The team has been fantastic and worked really hard, especially so when we had a new engine and aero package this year," said Dixon.

There are just three races left in the 2017 series, the first of which is this weekend at Gateway Motorsport Park not far from St Louis, Missouri. It's a relatively short oval track (two kilometres) that probably won't suit the Chip Ganassi Racing-prepared car and it'll just be a matter of hanging in there and getting the most out of the weekend - something that Dixon has became a master at.

Just make things even more challenging shell we say, Dixon is the meat in a pretty big Penske sandwich. Of the top five drivers he's the only non-Penske pilot, so there may not be a lot of help from his teammates Tony Kanaan, Max Chilton and Charlie Kimball.

"Oh man, this is probably the worst track for us. It's a short oval that we aren't too good on. We're going to have to work hard to be at the front and we'll have to take what we can and concentrate on the last two races [Watkins Glen and Sonoma] as they are road courses.

"The Glen should be good for us and I've had some good results there in the past, but we might struggle on the straights a bit.

"The Penske guys have got their cars working well and they'll all be a threat. Every year the run in to the end of the season gets tighter and tighter. We need to stay out of trouble, qualify well and get some good points," he said.