MONTEREY, Calif. — In one of the wilder races of 2023, Scott Dixon had to overcome a lot to end up celebrating the most as the winner of Sunday’s Firestone Grand Prix of Monterey.
In the short time between the end of Sunday morning warmup to the start of the final race of the 2023 NTT IndyCar Series season, Chip Ganassi Racing had to hurriedly replace the Honda engine in Dixon’s No. 9 PNC Honda.
Rolling the car onto the grid as driver introductions were beginning, the team met that goal.
But it didn’t take long for Dixon to have problems after the green flag. He was involved in a multi-car crash in Turn 1 at the start and received a drive through penalty by IndyCar Race Control for contact with Rinus VeeKay.
Dixon’s No. 9 Honda was already at the end of the lead lap because of the incident, and that is when the team went off strategy.
Dixon completed the 95-lap race on four pit stops. Palou was able to finish the race on just two stops, but he was caught out by a yellow flag one lap before he pitted on Lap 59.
Everyone else in the top six pitted at least five or six times.
While other cars were in the front and Dixon was mired in the middle, the race would eventually cycle to where he was in position to take the lead on Lap 76 when Romain Grosjean and Pato O’Ward had to pit for fuel and to meet the mandatory tire requirement of running at least one stint on Blacks and one stint on Firestone Reds.
The race restarted on Lap 78 with Dixon’s No. 9 Honda leading Scott McLaughlin’s No. 3 Chevrolet for Team Penske.
Dixon would speed away from McLaughlin to win by 7.3180 seconds. Chip Ganassi Racing teammate and 2023 IndyCar Series champion Alex Palou was third in the No. 10 American Legion Honda.
“A credit to this team,” Dixon said. “They’ve been executing like that all year. We got caught up in some mayhem at the start. I definitely didn’t agree with the (penalty) call, but I haven’t seen all of it yet. But I had nowhere to go. But we won; that’s all that matters. We won.”
Team Penske’s Will Power was fourth in the No. 12 Verizon Chevrolet and Juncos-Hollinger Racing’s Callum Ilott of Great Britain rounded out the top five in his best-ever IndyCar finish.
There were a race record eight caution periods and the yellow light was on for 1 hour, 11 minutes and 57 seconds. There were six lead changes among six drivers with 432 total passes in the race.
Dixon scored the 56th IndyCar victory of his career at an average speed of 92.645 miles per hour on the newly repaved, 11-turn 2.238-mile WeatherTech Raceway at Laguna Seca.
Palou clinched the 2023 NTT IndyCar Series championship with a victory in the Bitnile.com Grand Prix of Portland on September 3. He ends the season with a 78-point advantage over Dixon in the final standings.
McLaughlin finished third in the standings as the highest finish Team Penske driver. Arrow McLaren’s Pato O’Ward of Monterrey, Mexico was fourth in the standings with two-time IndyCar Series champion and this year’s Indianapolis 500 winner finishes the season fifth in the standings.
Chevrolet won the Manufacturer Championship by 12 points over Honda. Marcus Armstrong of Chip Ganassi Racing won the 2023 IndyCar Rookie of the Year Championship with an eighth-place finish, his fifth top 10 of the season. He defeated Augustin Canapino by 34 points, even though he did not compete in any of the five oval races on the schedule.
As for the race winner, Hull and Dixon decided to save fuel and try to finish the 95-lap race on one stop fewer than most of the rest of the field. They employed a similar strategy to win after being spun into the grass on Lap 1 of the Gallagher Grand Prix on Aug. 12 on the IMS road course and sipped fuel to win the Bommarito Automotive Group 500 presented by Axalta and Valvoline on Aug. 27 at World Wide Technology Raceway.
When it was drawn up, the fuel-saving strategy was risky because it probably required some slower running under yellow to make it to the finish on one less stop. Dixon also couldn’t let teammate Palou, who was cruising out front while leading 51 of the first 58 laps, build a big enough lead to stay out front after the final pit cycles ended.
The yellows came that Dixon needed – and then some. And one of the caution flags flew with terrible timing for Palou.
On Lap 58, the No. 18 HMD Trucking Honda of David Malukas and the No. 29 Sapphire Gas Solutions Honda of Devlin DeFrancesco made side-by-side contact, with Malukas spinning into the gravel adjacent to Turn 3 to trigger the fifth of a race record-tying eight caution periods.
Palou was nearing the end of one of his fuel stints when the incident unfolded, but he couldn’t dive into the pits before the caution lights illuminated. He made his second and final stop on the next lap, Lap 59, and re-entered the race in 15th place with 37 laps to go.
Meanwhile, Dixon made his third and final stop on Lap 65. That ended up being one stop fewer than McLaughlin. Meanwhile, Palou couldn’t make up enough ground in the closing stages of the race to convert his two-stop strategy into catching Dixon or McLaughlin, as the last 17 laps of the race ran green despite the last four caution periods coming between Laps 58 and 75.
Dixon took the lead for good on Lap 76 when leader Romain Grosjean pitted for the last time in the No. 28 DHL Honda of Andretti Autosport. It was one of six lead changes among six drivers in a wild race that featured 432 on-track passes, an IndyCar Series record for this picturesque track that features the famous “Corkscrew” turn complex.
From there, Dixon managed the gap after the final restart on Lap 78 and pulled away down the stretch of the 95-lap race with no need to save fuel.
“I think the morning kind of was tough, just to start off with a bit of a failure, then obviously getting a grip penalty wasn’t the way you wanted to start the day,” Dixon recalled. “I think we had done a good job in qualifying, which would have put us in a good spot to obviously fight for the lead on more of a straightforward race.
“As we had seen in the last kind of two or three days, even in the practice sessions, it’s been a lot of cars falling off track. I figured that the race was either going to go green to checkered or have a bunch of yellows. We had the yellows.
“The restarts were very tough. Kind of between 10 and 11 the way they would check up was difficult to get your space right. There were a lot of crashes in the last corner unfortunately with some restarts. I remember even being three-wide with Benjamin Pedersen and Armstrong. I think that’s when Armstrong spun as well when he was on the outside.
“It was a tough race. But worked out for us. Strategy, we just tried to keep it simple, kind of working from the back end of the race. I was definitely shocked to see the 5 and the 28 pit when they did. I knew after that we had a really fast car, even with some of the damage we kind of had from the contact with the 21 on the start.
“All in all, great day. It’s nice to rebound like we did. Definitely some heated moments throughout the race. Pretty pissed off at times. It’s always nice to finish the year like that.”