Leading 150 of 200 laps Saturday, no one had anything for the Kiwi as he took his first victory of 2010
It wasn't exciting, it didn't generate many passes, and it was almost too predictable. But after 200 laps of racing at Kansas Speedway, Scott Dixon wasn't concerned about the manner by which he earned his first victory of 2010. After taking a commanding win today in Round 5, all the Kiwi cared about was getting his championship aspirations back on track as the series heads to Indianapolis.
"Winning at Kansas going into the month of May is a big deal. Team Target has had a slow start to the season, but this is what we need and jump back into points table. It's certainly good to get that momentum going to Indy."
Dixon sat back in the early going and shadowed polesitter Ryan Briscoe, but as the race reached Lap 31, the 2008 IZOD IndyCar Series champion pounced on the Team Penske pilot and never looked back. It was a classic Dixon oval performance: No dramas, no risk taking, and no chance for the competition to make their way past.
Dixon's teammate, reigning IZOD IndyCar Series champion Dario Franchitti, had no answer for the No. 9 car, and was forced to settle for second place. With the Scot seemingly resigned to watch Dixon gather the spoils, he improved from fourth to second in the final laps, despite a difficult car and a strong attack by Tony Kanaan to wrest the runner-up spot from the No. 10 Ganassi car.
"[Dixon] was a little bit quicker than I was, especially toward the end of the stint. He was probably .2 or .3 mile-per-hour every lap. My balance was very good, but he was just quicker. It went on for a quite a while then Tony and I were very close on the restart as well. Then the yellow came out just as we finished pitting and that put tons of cars between Scott and myself. I got past Helio and then I could see Tony coming on pretty strong. The last few laps, the car was really oversteering but I kept it flat and managed to jump him. I think second was a fair result for us."
Kanaan was visibly excited to have run so competitively once he got out of the car. "I have to thank the whole 7-Eleven crew for the great stops. It was a great race. We did what we could. We definitely didn't have the fastest car out there so we tried to maximize the result. Qualifying really doesn't matter at this place. I hope the fans enjoyed it. I want to thank them for coming and it's a good way to lead into Indianapolis."
Dixon cruised home with a 3.05-second advantage over Franchitti, while Kanaan crossed the start/finish line just .168 seconds behind Franchitti in third after an impressive march up the order from 15th.
The day started out looking like Ryan Briscoe was poised to join his teammates Helio Castroneves and Will Power in the win column, but for the first time in 2010, the three-car Team Penske armada was off their game.
Briscoe's time in the lead lasted just the first 1/8th of the race before the Ganassi train blew by. The Aussie hovered between third and eighth for the remainder of the race, but had to settle for a distant sixth, 6.7 seconds behind Dixon and two places behind Castroneves.
If Briscoe's day went slightly sour, Will Power's reintroduction to oval racing was entirely forgettable. A touch of oval rust reared its head on the Aussie's first pit stop as he overshot his stall. With the refueling hose stretched to its limits, his crew struggled to get fuel in the car, causing the stop to take an excruciatingly long time.
While Power was at fault for going too deep in his pit box, his crew failed to react to the mistake, and never pushed the No. 12 Verizon Wireless car back the two feet necessary to properly engage the fuel hose. Even with the car on the ground after its tires had been changed, the No. 12 wasn't rolled back and the refueler continued to struggle. Both errors saw the winner of the first three rounds go a lap down and drop out of contention. Power would eventually finish two laps down in 12th.
After taking a quality win at Barber Motorsports Park, Castroneves rebounded from a quiet seventh at Long Beach to take fourth at Kansas. Engaged in a late battle with Kanaan, the former Indy Lights teammates fought hard for third, but the three-time Indy 500 winner couldn't match Kanaan's speed.
With the Month of May set to start in two weeks, the two Brazilians looked ready to move the battle to the Brickyard where Kanaan will hunt for the one major win that continues to elude him.
Kanaan's new teammate (and new best friend), Long Beach winner Ryan Hunter-Reay, proved what persistence can do for a driver when a weekend starts off badly. Buried in 22nd place after qualifying, the IZOD-sponsored driver worked with his team overnight to develop a new setup for the No. 37 car, and it clearly worked.
While a crack at the lead looked too far out of reach, RHR spent most of the day at the sharp end of the field after passing 17 cars on the way to his fifth-place finish.
KV Racing Technology's Mario Moraes impressed once again on the ovals, taking seventh, followed by Alex Tagliani in the B&W-sponsored car. Tagliani held his starting spot of fifth early on, but struggled to hold that position after he and Milka Duno came together during a pit stop. For his team's first oval race, an eighth is still a major accomplishment.
John Andretti delivered a salty dog performance, moving from 17th to ninth while looking more than up for the challenge at Indy in one of his cousin's cars. Finishing third amongst the five Andretti Autosport cars was a reminder of the CART and NASCAR veteran's abilities.
The Top 3 Andretti Autosport finishers bettered their starting positions by more cars than almost the entire field combined, with Kanaan's 12, Hunter-Reay's 17 and John Andretti's eight making for 37 total spots of improvement.
Like so many other drivers today, Vitor Meira faded slightly, as his sixth starting spot turned into a finish of tenth by the end of 200 laps. Danica Patrick, someone who many expected to regain her 2009 form once the IZOD IndyCar Series returned to the ovals, failed to impress from the outset and came home two laps down. Starting ninth, Patrick went straight backwards, running in the mid-teens for most of the day, but was thankful to be promoted to 11th when former teammate Hideki Mutoh and oval rookie Takuma Sato crashed out with 14 laps to go.
The reason as to why Patrick is so adrift in open-wheel this year -- on street, road and oval tracks -- remains a mystery.
Marco Andretti, after starting from the back of the field, came home 13th. Dreyer & Reinbold's Mike Conway leapt from tenth at the start to push the Top 6 runners early, but he also faded, falling back to the high-teens before finishing 14th. His teammate, 2009 Watkins Glen winner Justin Wilson, never factored, taking 18th after going three laps down.
Like Marco Andretti, Dan Wheldon also started from the back of the field, moved from 25th to 15th at the finish, but showed nothing like the pace that was expected. With high hopes for Panther Racing's oval program in 2010, limping into Indy from Kansas wasn't what they had in mind.
Rafa Matos led Sarah Fisher home as they took 16th and 17th respectively. Neither driver came close to finding a competitive pace throughout the race, and made sure to stay clear of the faster cars.
Alex Lloyd's struggles this season continued at Kansas, as the Boy Scouts of America-sponsored car could do no better than 19th.
The remainder of the active runners were the rookies. Belgium's Bertrand Baguette took 20th for Conquest Racing, while Simona De Silvestro fell back three spots to finish 21st, and Mario Romancini took 22nd, up five positions from his 27th starting position.
Hideki Mutoh looked like an impressive finish was in order in his Newman/Haas car after hanging onto the leaders all day, but a coming together with fellow Japanese driver Takuma Sato saw the two drop out of near certain Top-10's with the finish line almost in sight. Before the crash, Sato looked like a veteran oval racer in what was his maiden attempt at only turning left. The two finished 23rd and 24th.
Jay Howard also clouted the wall (with 22 laps to go), causing the restart where Mutoh and Sato would end their days.
Milka Duno was the second driver out after contact with Tagliani. She was beaten to the punch of being first out by fellow Venezuelan E.J. Viso, whose quest for consistency continues. A drive-through penalty for speeding on pit lane was compounded by the diminutive driver bringing out the first yellow flag on Lap 75 when he reconfigured the right side of his Dallara against the hard Kansas wall. He would finish 27th and last.
Just like his win here last year, Dixon was untouchable. He lapped almost half of the field by Lap 60, stretched his lead to Franchitti by as much as 5.6 seconds while doing so, and jumped to second in the points standings, just 26 markers behind Power.
With Penske's dominance of the first three road course races, Andretti Autosport's resurgence at Long Beach and again today with two cars in the Top 5, and now with the Ganassi duo going 1-2 in the only oval warmup prior to Indy, the 94th running of the race has all the makings of at least a three-team fight. Let's just hope it isn't as processional as today's race.
