INDIANAPOLIS — Scott Dixon continues to chase Mario Andretti for second on the all-time list of Indy car winners.
Andretti won 52 races and four Indy car championships during his career, as well as the 1967 Daytona 500 and the 1978 Formula 1 title. Dixon entered June with 51 Indy car wins and six Indy car titles, as well as four Rolex 24 At Daytona IMSA sports car victories.
The two drivers share the same competitive fire and passion that has fueled their excellence throughout the decades of racing.
They also share a dubious distinction.
They each won the Indianapolis 500 only once, despite dominating the race’s record book.
Andretti is fourth all time in laps led in the Indianapolis 500 with 556, while Dixon is the all-time lap leader in the Indy 500 with 665 laps led. Andretti scored his only Indianapolis 500 victory in just his fifth attempt in 1969. At the time, Andretti thought it would be the first of six or seven wins he would score in the world’s biggest race.
Dixon won the Indianapolis in 2008, in just his sixth attempt. He also had the look of a four- or even five-time Indy winner.
Andretti finished second at Indy twice and third another time. He was usually in contention for the victory before bad luck cursed his efforts.
Dixon has finished second at Indy three times and third another time and has led laps in 15 of his 20 starts. He led 73 laps in both the 2009 and 2011 races, only to finish sixth and fifth. He led 84 laps in 2015 before trash entered his radiator inlet late in the race, causing the temperature to rise in the engine. He finished fourth.
Dixon led 111 laps in 2020 and was in prime position to take the lead from Takuma Sato before Spencer Pigot destroyed the pit lane attenuator with five laps to go. The race finished under caution.
In fact, in all three of Dixon’s second-place finishes, the race ended under caution.
But none of those compares to this year’s heartbreak in the 106th Indianapolis 500.
Dixon started on the pole for the fifth time, just one short of Rick Mears’ record of six Indy 500 poles. He led 95 laps and could seemingly take the lead whenever he wanted.
According to Chip Ganassi Racing managing director and Dixon’s race strategist Mike Hull, the team had every possible scenario covered in the race. Hull was calling the best race of his career on the team’s radio and had orchestrated a strategy that Dixon was playing out perfectly.
Dixon had yet to show what his No. 9 PNC Bank Honda was capable of. They were simply waiting for the end of the race when they needed to get 100 percent out of Dixon’s race car for the fight to the finish.
But on the final pit stop of the race on lap 175, Dixon entered pit lane too fast. He hit the brakes, smoking the rear tires, but it was too late.
Race control clocked him at 1 mph over the pit lane speed limit. IndyCar does not allow any “gray area” when it comes to pit-lane speeding, unlike NASCAR. For the sake of credibility and integrity, officials had no choice but to issue a drive through penalty for the driver who appeared destined to win his second Indianapolis 500 on May 29.
“You’ve got to be kidding!” Dixon screamed into the radio when told of the penalty.
Dixon quickly accepted the blame and it hit him harder than perhaps anything in his racing career. He was utterly despondent after the race, nearly in tears as his wife, Emma, tried to console him.
He said the only saving grace was his Chip Ganassi Racing teammate, Marcus Ericsson, had won the race for the team. Dixon congratulated his teammate and went underground to deal with one of the most bitter losses of his career.
He skipped the red carpet before the Indy 500 Victory Celebration at the J.W. Marriott Hotel the next evening, arrived in time to accept the 21st-place award and spoke to the crowd in a somber tone.
“I let a lot of people down,” Dixon said. “It’s a really bitter pill to swallow. It’s heartbreaking, to be honest. I just messed up.”
Afterward, Dixon quietly slipped out of the awards ceremony before its conclusion.
A second Indianapolis 500 victory could have been the crowning achievement to his glorious career and could have been the catalyst to a record-tying seventh NTT IndyCar Series championship.
Instead, it was another bitter disappointment to the man who is one of the greatest Indy 500 drivers in history but has only one trophy to show for it.
“This place is just brutal,” said Dixon’s agent, former Formula 1 and Indy 500 driver Stefan Johansson. “It really is. It’s the hardest race to win and the easiest race to win. It just depends on where you are.
“It’s always something different here.
“Of all of Scott’s misses, this one hurts the most. He has been the class of the field and has nothing but disappointment to show for it.”