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David Malsher-Lopez

Toronto IndyCar: Dixon scores 52nd win, matches Mario Andretti

From the start, polesitter Herta was unthreatened, while Dixon swept across from the outside to ensure Newgarden couldn’t sneak up from third to claim second. Newgarden checked his momentum and that allowed Alexander Rossi around his outside to try and claim third, but Newgarden had put the matter beyond dispute by the end of the lap. Scott McLaughlin, his teammate, passed David Malukas for fifth, but there was even worse luck for the other Dale Coyne Racing-Honda, that of Takuma Sato who was shoved into the wall at the Turn 1 kerfuffle, and limped his very broken car back to the pits. The debris left behind obliged Race Control to throw the full-course caution.

Following the Lap 4 restart Felix Rosenqvist demoted Malukas down to seventh, while Power had already taken advantage of his alternate tires to move into 12th, from 16th on the grid, but rather than burn up all his push to pass trying to stay ahead of Romain Grosjean who he’d passed on the opening lap, he let the Frenchman back past on Lap 11 and pitted next time by to grab primaries. Defending champion Alex Palou, who had started 22nd, had pitted a couple of laps earlier to take on primaries and such had been his pace, the undercut ensured Power emerged behind him. To avoid the risk of getting jumped should a yellow fall, the leaders rapidly started pulling in, Newgarden remaining ahead of Rossi but now split by rookie Malukas. Herta and McLaughlin stopped on Lap 19, a lap after Dixon and found himself being outbraked by the six-time champion into Turn 1, to effectively take the lead. Behind them, Newgarden and now Rossi were ahead of Malukas, while Rosenqvist had turned in fast enough laps at the end of his stint to emerge ahead of McLaughlin and hold off the Penske driver.

However, Dixon wasn’t yet in the lead, for Graham Rahal, Rinus VeeKay, Pato O’Ward, Jimmie Johnson and Conor Daly had risked running a long first stint on their primaries to try and make a net gain.

Rahal finally pitted from the lead on Lap 25, emerging in 14th which would become 10th once his fellow long runners stopped. Further back, Power was only 19th, and not even threatening the Andretti cars of DeFrancesco and Grosjean ahead.

On Lap 30, Rosenqvist moved ahead of Malukas and onto the tail of future Arrow McLaren SP driver, Rossi, who was applying the pressure to Newgarden while the Penske driver stayed bottled up behind the yet-to-stop Daly.

O’Ward finally stopped on Lap 32, leaving Dixon out front with a 2.5sec lead over Herta, the pair of them in a race of their own as 14sec behind them, Daly continued to hold up a train of cars led by Newgarden, Rossi and Rosenqvist. Finally Daly uncorked the bottle on Lap 36 and pitted.

Not that Newgarden then made any notable progress thereafter because he was in fuel-save mode having been one of the early stoppers. On Lap 43, just past half distance in this 85-lap race, Dixon was 2.3sec ahead of Herta, with Newgarden still 14sec back, with Rossi and Rosenqvist 2sec further back disputing fourth.

That dispute ended in tears on Lap 45, just as Rosenqvist was encouraged by his strategist to make the pass. At Turn 3, the AMSP driver flicked to the inside of the future AMSP driver, and he was fully alongside as they exited the turn but as Rosenqvist floored the throttle his car slid sideways and the contact sent the Andretti car hard into the wall. Race Control would say the attempt was legit and so there was no penalty for the AMSP driver.

The drivers wended their way into the tortuous pitlane, and Newgarden suffered a horrible stop as he stopped too far from his crew, and the refueler struggled to get the nozzle engaged nad Newgarden was down to 11th.. With VeeKay and Daly having stayed out front after their late stops, Ed Carpenter Racing-Chevrolet had a 1-2 – VeeKay on reds, Daly on blacks – ahead of Dixon, Herta, Rosenqvist, McLaughlin, Rahal, Pagenaud, Ericsson and Palou. Following the restart, Newgarden lost out further to Christian Lundgaard and O’Ward.

Up (almost) at the front, Herta was now fully able to stay in Dixon’s wake, but then the yellow flew for debris at Turn 1 – concrete debris, caused by the track breaking up – compressed the field once more.

Following the Lap 59 restart, Ericsson had a couple of wheel banging moments with teammate Ericsson over eighth place but failed to make a move stick. He only had to wait a few seconds to gain eighth anyway, because the yellow had to be thrown once more due to Kirkwood and Johnson coming together at the back of the field and stalling. That yellow saw VeeKay duck into the pits, but because the field had to go so slow through the incident scene, the Dutch driver was able to emerge in 13th despite the field being bunched together.

The next restart came at the end of Lap 66, with 19 laps to go, and into Turn 1, Rahal muscled down the inside of McLaughlin to snatch fourth and the Penske driver got out on the marbles through Turn 2 and lost places to Ericsson, Palou, Lundgaard and Pagenaud. On Lap 69, Pagenaud passed Lundgaard for seventh. Another Penske driver, however, moved forward, getting ahead of O’Ward and Malukas to grab 10th.

Up front, Dixon pulled away from Herta who was having to watch his mirrors for Rosenqvist. Some 1.7sec back, Rahal was fending off the Ericsson vs Palou battle.

In the final 10 laps, Palou eased off from the back of Ericsson, allowing the championship leader to focus on trying to find a way past Rahal. Three seconds further up the road, Rosenqvist’s efforts to get around Herta redoubled, but he couldn’t quite get it done, and he fell half a second short. Ahead of them Dixon scored his first win of the year, after leading 40 of the 85 laps, and ensuring he has now scored at least one win in 18 seasons.

Rahal was great fourth ahead of Ericsson, while Palou can be proud of his charge from 22nd to sixth place, the highest finishing driver of those who had never seen Toronto before this weekend.

Lundgaard was a fine eighth ahead of Penske drivers McLaughlin and Newgarden who completed the Top 10.

 

P

No

Name

Laps

Diff

LapTime

Gap

Pits

LPit

P2P

FL

FTime

Led

ST

FSpeed

Elapsed

Engine

Tire

Points

Team

1

9

Scott Dixon

85

LAP 85

1:03.8807

   

47

21

7

1:01.1679

40

2

105.114

1:38:45.3087

Honda

P

307

Chip Ganassi Racing

2

26

Colton Herta

85

0.8106

1:02.6700

0.8106

 

47

7

7

1:01.0586

17

1

105.302

1:38:46.1193

Honda

P

254

Andretti Autosport w/Curb-Agajanian

3

7

Felix Rosenqvist

85

1.3490

1:02.7245

0.5384

 

47

52

71

1:01.3229

1

8

104.848

1:38:46.6577

Chevy

P

244

Arrow McLaren SP

4

15

Graham Rahal

85

4.4830

1:02.7602

3.1340

 

47

9

71

1:01.3204

6

14

104.853

1:38:49.7917

Honda

P

210

Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing

5

8

Marcus Ericsson

85

5.1260

1:02.6309

0.6430

 

47

3

74

1:01.3480

 

9

104.805

1:38:50.4347

Honda

P

351

Chip Ganassi Racing

6

10

Alex Palou

85

6.3629

1:02.8107

1.2369

 

47

8

14

1:01.0652

 

22

105.291

1:38:51.6716

Honda

P

314

Chip Ganassi Racing

7

60

Simon Pagenaud

85

8.7398

1:02.7858

2.3769

 

47

0

14

1:01.2317

 

18

105.004

1:38:54.0485

Honda

P

243

Meyer Shank Racing

8

30

Christian Lundgaard

85

9.3820

1:02.6679

0.6422

 

47

6

23

1:01.4171

 

10

104.687

1:38:54.6907

Honda

P

183

Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing

9

3

Scott McLaughlin

85

10.2868

1:02.7583

0.9048

 

47

30

7

1:01.5358

 

6

104.486

1:38:55.5955

Chevy

P

274

Team Penske

10

2

Josef Newgarden

85

10.6561

1:02.4074

0.3693

 

47

21

9

1:01.0478

 

3

105.321

1:38:55.9648

Chevy

P

307

Team Penske

11

5

Pato O'Ward

85

12.4284

1:02.2233

1.7723

 

47

0

30

1:01.2446

3

15

104.982

1:38:57.7371

Chevy

P

276

Arrow McLaren SP

12

18

David Malukas

85

13.3711

1:02.6180

0.9427

 

47

0

15

1:00.8307

 

5

105.697

1:38:58.6798

Honda

P

163

Dale Coyne Racing with HMD

13

21

Rinus VeeKay

85

18.2715

1:04.3229

4.9004

 

61

0

20

1:01.6240

18

20

104.336

1:39:03.5802

Chevy

A

211

Ed Carpenter Racing

14

77

Callum Ilott

85

18.4471

1:04.1092

0.1756

 

47

8

15

1:01.1427

 

7

105.157

1:39:03.7558

Chevy

P

113

Juncos Hollinger Racing

15

12

Will Power

85

19.0185

1:04.2832

0.5714

 

47

9

29

1:01.7039

 

16

104.201

1:39:04.3272

Chevy

P

316

Team Penske

16

28

Romain Grosjean

85

19.7939

1:03.5235

0.7754

 

56

70

25

1:01.3942

 

11

104.727

1:39:05.1026

Honda

A

197

Andretti Autosport

17

06

Helio Castroneves

85

20.3903

1:03.5046

0.5964

 

47

19

29

1:01.4278

 

17

104.669

1:39:05.6990

Honda

P

173

Meyer Shank Racing

18

29

Devlin DeFrancesco

85

21.2042

1:03.2999

0.8139

 

47

0

31

1:01.5537

 

12

104.455

1:39:06.5129

Honda

P

111

Andretti Steinbrenner Autosport

19

45

Jack Harvey

85

21.9470

1:03.0824

0.7428

 

48

49

18

1:01.5459

 

13

104.468

1:39:07.2557

Honda

P

126

Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing

20

20

Conor Daly

85

24.2445

1:03.0911

2.2975

 

56

52

40

1:01.8227

 

25

104.001

1:39:09.5532

Chevy

P

198

Ed Carpenter Racing

21

48

Jimmie Johnson

73

4 LAPS

1:03.1515

4 LAPS

 

61

77

38

1:01.9631

 

21

103.765

1:29:52.1576

Honda

P

108

Chip Ganassi Racing

22

14

Kyle Kirkwood

58

Contact

1:22.4964

0.2638

 

56

64

36

1:01.9474

 

24

103.791

1:06:38.0424

Chevy

P

106

AJ Foyt Enterprises

23

27

Alexander Rossi

44

Contact

1:02.0552

1.8580

 

16

60

9

1:01.3121

 

4

104.867

47:26.7265

Honda

P

236

Andretti Autosport

24

4

Dalton Kellett

30

Mechanical

1:02.1369

25.3087

 

24

85

29

1:01.9926

 

23

103.716

33:37.2855

Chevy

P

76

AJ Foyt Enterprises

25

51

Takuma Sato

---

Contact

1:16.2983

0.2544

 

0

200

--

1:16.2983

 

19

84.269

1.7838

Honda

P

154

Dale Coyne Racing w/RWR

 

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