INDYCAR: Backstretch bends - not opening chicane - put Dixon out at Portland
by William Soquet / LASTCAR.info Staff Writer
PHOTO: Motorsport.com
Scott Dixon finished last for the 10th time in his NTT IndyCar Series career in Sunday’s BitNile.com Grand Prix of Portland when his #9 PNC Bank Honda crashed without completing a lap.
The finish came in Dixon’s 360th series start and was his first since Mid-Ohio, five races ago.
Across IndyCar Series history, it was the 11th for the #9, the 118th for Honda, and the 233rd due to a crash.
Though realistically out of the championship fight, Dixon has pretty much returned to form since his freak hybrid failure at Mid-Ohio. Dixon finished out the sprint to the summer break with a pair of fourth-place finishes at the Iowa doubleheader and was third at Toronto, leading a few laps in the race and moving up to third in points. While Gateway proved chaotic for the #9 – the car and driver started 19th and finished 11th – Dixon still figured to play a big role in the ‘best of the rest’ battle behind likely champion Alex Palou.
Whereas Portland usually falls in the part of the season where teams start pulling underperforming drivers, the grid seems to have sorted itself out for the stretch run of the season. The only three entry list changes from Gateway were planned efforts: Christian Rasmussen over the Ed Carpenter Racing’s #20 car, Toby Sowery taking his final start of the year in Dale Coyne Racing’s #51 car, and Rahal Letterman Lanigan preparing a fourth car for reserve driver Juri Vips. The extra entry for Vips pushed the entry list to 28 cars, perhaps a historic moment for IndyCar. Should the proposed charter system come to fruition as currently planned, capping spots in all non-Indianapolis 500 races at 27, this race may be the last in the foreseeable future that had more than 27 cars start a road course race.
True to form, Dixon started his weekend off strong, placing sixth on the combined speed chart for a split Practice 1, but slipped to 16th in Practice 2. Trailing the field in first practice was Conor Daly, whose Juncos Hollinger Racing entry struggled with mechanical gremlins, and trailing the field in the second practice was Sowery, just a hair off 26th-place Felix Rosenqvist. In qualifying, Dixon was the final transfer from Group 1 into the second round, beating Pietro Fittipaldi by .02 seconds. He then placed 11th in the second round. Daly and Jack Harvey brought up the rear of their respective groups in qualifying, although neither would start last. That spot fell to Kyffin Simpson, who qualified 26th but was assessed a six-spot grid penalty for using an extra engine.
Despite some minor scratches on the initial start, the field made it through the opening chicane sequence without major incident, clearing the main tension point for the race.
Dixon was the beneficiary of a couple of grid penalties as well, with Graham Rahal and Kyle Kirkwood dropping behind Dixon in the order. After a solid first complex of corners, Dixon took a defensive line into the right-hand Turn 7, but Kirkwood made a late move to the inside, forcing Dixon onto the curb on corner exit. As Dixon gathered up his car, he rejoined the racing line at a significantly slower pace for the fast left-right bends immediately after the corner. This forced Fittipaldi to take the curb for the right-hand bend, launching his car off the ground and into the side of Dixon. The impact took the wheel out of Dixon’s hands and sent him straight into the steel barrier on the turn’s outside, ending his race.
In a puzzling sequence, race control did not give Kirkwood a penalty for an unsafe pass (although there was no contact) while dishing out a penalty to Fittipaldi for avoidable contact (Dixon noted that he himself would not have penalized Fittipaldi in an interview after the crash). What started as a beacon of hope for a struggling Fittipaldi turned into yet another finish in the 20s, as no other cars dropped out of the race.
Following a series of events that drew comparisons to Paul Tracy - that is, spinning out and then rejoining the track not once but twice directly in front of other cars and paying the penalty for it - Romain Grosjean let a starting spot of fourth slip to a finishing position of 27th. Rasmussen, who had an off-track excursion in the middle of the race and then was the victim of one of Grosjean’s dangerous track re-entries, was 26th. Fittipaldi was 25th, a lap down after serving the penalty for avoidable contact with Dixon and another one for spinning Daly. Jack Harvey rounded out the Bottom Five.
LASTCAR STATISTICS
*Dixon now has sole possession of fifth place on the all-time LASTCAR driver standings for the IndyCar Series (1994-present).
*Four of Dixon’s last five last-place finishes have come from top-ten starts.
THE BOTTOM FIVE
28) #9-Scott Dixon / 0 laps / crash
27) #77-Romain Grosjean / 107 laps / running
26) #20-Christian Rasmussen / 108 laps / running
25) #30-Pietro Fittipaldi / 109 laps / running
24) #18-Jack Harvey / 109 laps / running
2024 LASTCAR INDYCAR SERIES MANUFACTURERS CHAMPIONSHIP
1st) Honda (8)
2nd) Chevrolet (6)
2024 LASTCAR INDYCAR SERIES OWNERS CHAMPIONSHIP
1st) Chip Ganassi Racing, Dale Coyne Racing, Ed Carpenter Racing (3)
2nd) A.J. Foyt Racing, Andretti Global, Juncos Hollinger Racing, Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing, Team Penske (1)
2024 LASTCAR INDYCAR SERIES DRIVERS CHAMPIONSHIP
