After the first of three Indy Car practice sessions at Iowa Speedway this weekend, Scott Dixon did not like anything about his car and the weekend’s outcome did not look good. After the race he left with his best finish ever at the 7/8th’s mile oval.
“I think considering how the weekend started, it was pretty damn good. We tried a few different things on Friday. Unfortunately we tried to stick it out,” Dixon said. I think we were 16th or 17th in the final warmup. Just threw last year’s setup on it and basically ran that, which was similar to what the 10 car had been running all weekend.”
Dixon and his crew made what they call a, “wholesale change,” which means major adjustments for the Chevrolet.
Indy Car: Dixon calls P3 a comeback
“I think unfortunately with a wholesale change like that, we spent much of the race just trying to dial the car in, at least the balance, and we had way too much understeer early on,” Dixon said. “It was nice to start the race, was pretty consistent, but fell off a lot towards the end.”
However, there was no beating Josef Newgarden on Sunday. The Tennessee Native lead an Indy Car record 282 laps out of the 300 ran at Iowa Speedway.
“I feel we would have been definitely in the hunt at the end,” Dixon said. “As Will [Power] said, I don’t think anybody really had anything for Josef [Newgarden] today.”
Dixon’s finish helped him to maintain his 4th place position in the point standings.
“I think Josef made a pretty good chunk [of points] up on that today,” Dixon said. “We always kind of see this, whether it’s going to play true to what we see every year, where it starts to flip here pretty quickly, make a real championship of it. A lot of championships, I find that towards the end it becomes a real race for the points.”
In the end, Dixon picked up a couple points on leader, Simon Pagenaud, when he did not expect to gain on the leader by the time he left Newton.
“It took us pretty much every stop to get the car better, and thats why I think each segment you see our progression get a little bit better, a good comeback for the team considering where we were.” For me it’s nice to have an Iowa go somewhat smooth. First time on the podium. I’ll all smiles. Big thanks to the Team Target for giving me something that was close to the front.
