Motorsport: Scott Dixon falters on quest for sixth IndyCar title

After starting the season with three straight wins, he's finished 10th, 10th and ninth in the last three races. Photo / Photosport

Scott Dixon's quest for a sixth IndyCar title hit yet another snag this morning as he recorded his third disappointing finish in a row in the series.

Dixon, who once held a 120-point lead in the title race, finished ninth in the first of the double-header Harvest GP while his closest rival - reigning champion Josef Newgarden - claimed his third win of the season.

The result leaves the door open for Newgarden to claim back-to-back titles.

The two-time IndyCar champion pulled away from the rest of the field over the final 18 laps on Saturday to win by a margin of 14.2940 seconds over Alexander Rossi. With the Harvest GP win, Newgarden moved within 40 points of five-time series champ Dixon with two races remaining.

"It was a great day," Newgarden said. "It was what we needed. We said we had to have three perfect races to end the season and we did that in the first of those three races."

For Newgarden, it was a breakthrough moment, too.

The 29-year-old Tennessean fought valiantly for three team owners — Sarah Fisher, Ed Carpenter and now Roger Penske — to reach Indy's victory lane. It finally came with career win No. 17, out of the No. 2 starting spot, while leading a race-high 34 of 85 laps.

It wasn't as easy as it looked. First, he had to hold off Colton Herta, until Herta was on worn tires, and extended the lead when Rossi got caught up in lapped traffic.

"We've been in the top five here quite often over the last four or five years, it's just not lined up," Newgarden said. "I've had a couple of events like that and this has been one of them. I knew we'd figure it out and eventually it would come our way. Today was that day. We had a good car and we had nothing odd happen."

Meanwhile, Dixon never contended. He started 12th, got as high as fifth then slipped to ninth when worn tires sent him into the grass with two laps to go.

After starting the season with three straight wins, he's finished 10th, 10th and ninth in the last three races, putting his sixth series title in serious doubt.

He'll get a chance to start rebuilding his lead on Sunday when drivers return to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway's 14-turn, 2.439-mile road course for the second race on a doubleheader weekend. They'll finish the season October 25 at St. Petersburg.

Rossi thought he cold have put some pressure on Newgarden — if he hadn't been penalised.

"The penalty cost us a lot of time, track position and then really we were behind lapped cars out there," he said. "He (Newgarden) was on blacks, we were on reds. I'm not saying we would have won it, but you look at the race, there was a lot taken away from us."

Pole winner Rinus VeeKay, a rookie, was third. Herta wound up fourth.

- with AP