When the caution came out for Takuma Sato's accident, it was on edge of everyone making it to finish with one more stop after that caution. A 65-lap stint was possible, but it required a certain level of comfort, especially as tires wore on. Dixon caught that caution at the right time, but Patricio O'Ward could have mirrored that strategy. Josef Newgarden could have mirrored that strategy. Both bailed within 40 laps. Dixon kept chugging along.
Marcus Ericsson was on pace to make it on one more stop when he took fuel under caution on lap 131 with Álex Palou, Colton Herta, Alexander Rossi and more. They all made two more pit stops after that.
This was a strategy only Dixon could handle, and he smashed the field.
Dixon has now won seven times when starting outside the top ten in his career. Nobody else has won more than four times when starting outside the top twenty. For a brief moment, it looked like Dixon was going to lap the field and it would not have been because of some blistering speed. It would have been down to precision. A consistent pace that any seasoned professional should have no problem with, and yet it was only Dixon that could manage it.
This simply could be the best driver we have ever seen. He is unquestionably among the best to regularly race in IndyCar. With 55 victories, the 60-mark has become achievable. A.J. Foyt's record of 67? That still feels a little out of reach, but let's see where we stand after next season. With Scott Dixon, nothing is impossible.
2. We should focus on the championship here because this felt like Josef Newgarden's day to put himself back behind Álex Palou and be the one to apply the pressure at Portland and Laguna Seca. It was looking that way in the first 125 laps. Newgarden had led 98 circuits of the 1.25-mile circuit, and if the Sato caution does not happen, Newgarden was going to probably lead many more.
The Sato caution flipped the race, putting Dixon effectively in control, but also making it difficult for everyone to make it on one stop. Newgarden was in a pickle, but still in a good position for the championship. He was set to gain points on Álex Palou, though a victory was going to be harder with Dixon ahead and the possibility of having to make two more pit stops.
Newgarden blinked at Patricio O'Ward stopping earlier, racing the #5 Chevrolet instead of the distance left in the race, and it backfired with O'Ward leapfrogging ahead of Newgarden after that pit stop, and Newgarden would still have to make another stop.
Dixon was gone at that point, out of reach, but again, Newgarden would still gain something on Palou. Then Newgarden got caught in the marbles shortly after his final pit stop and slapped the wall exiting turn two.
Undefeated oval season, gone. Championship, gone. Twenty-fifth in the results again.
I would have thought Newgarden could have managed Dixon's strategy, but the team was caught in another battle. The smartest choice would have been just to run with Dixon. Dixon was the rabbit setting the pace. That should have been the motivation for Newgarden. There was almost too much fear about the time lost running a three-stop strategy pace, but the drivers running a four-stop strategy were not going any quicker on track.
This wasn't a case of the four-stoppers running about a second faster each lap. They were all in the same ballpark. That sealed this race for Dixon, but nobody beyond the #9 crew realized four stops was not any faster, and the distraction of the four-stoppers cost Newgarden today.
It was really a day of a bunch of dumb strategies. It felt like everyone else was looking for a different answer rather than accepting the obvious solution.
3. Even if Newgarden didn't hit the wall, Álex Palou ended up finishing seventh today. Though never a contender, this was lightyears from a bad day for Palou.
Give Newgarden third-place, an additional 30 points to the six he scored today, five for 25th and one for leading a lap, and knock Palou down to eighth, taking two points for the Catalan driver, and Newgarden is still 93 points back with two races remaining. Newgarden would still have a shot, but he would need to cut another 45 points out of that deficit at Portland to have a slim prayer of the title at Laguna Seca. Effectively, Portland would have been a must-win for Newgarden even if he settled for third today.
Palou knows how much control he has and when he doesn't need to push the envelope, he will end up finishing seventh or eighth without breaking a sweat. It is a demoralizing position to be in if you are Newgarden, but that is Palou's perk when he hasn't put a wheel wrong all season and never looked out of sorts while Newgarden had a few races where he was nowhere to be seen.
4. For a moment, this was setting up to be a repeat of Texas with Newgarden taking on Patricio O'Ward and those two running away from the field. It felt like Newgarden had the edge in this one, but O'Ward was the only one hanging with Newgarden for the first half of the race. That is four runner-up finishes for O'Ward this season. It has strangely been an underwhelming season, especially with how the first five races went, but it is still a strong season for this group. A victory would make it look significantly better.
5. For the second consecutive year, David Malukas went on a late charge to the podium. Malukas couldn't quite get O'Ward for second, but he was trying. It was another great Gateway race for Malukas, in a year where he hasn't been that great. It isn't the worst sophomore season on record, but it is far from the greatest. I am weary of Malukas. I feel too many inflate the two or three great races we have seen from him and ignore the six races he has not finished this season. He bet on himself earlier this summer when he said he was leaving Dale Coyne Racing after this season. I think he is going to get in a better seat but not necessarily see better results.
6. Alexander Rossi had a solid run to fourth. All three Arrow McLaren cars were in the top eight all race and all three McLarens finished in the top eight. Rossi wasn't as good as O'Ward. Rossi was better than most. Fourth is a good result for this team. Again, it is close but not that close from Rossi. We are far from the driver who had a hand on the Astor Cup in 2018.
7. Scott McLaughlin won pole position but a nine-spot grid penalty meant he had to start tenth. I wish we could have seen what this race would have looked like with two Team Penske cars on the front row. I am not sure McLaughlin could have beat Newgarden, but I think Team Penske could have repeated the Iowa performance where taking the top two positions boxed out the rest of the field. Still another sensational oval result for McLaughlin, eight top five finishes and 11 top ten finishes in 14 career oval starts, and all three of his non-top ten results were in the Indianapolis 500! Figure that one out?
8. Colton Herta had a good day and finished sixth. Herta overcame tire wear issues. Andretti Autosport does seem to burn through tires quicker than most on ovals, and Herta was really holding on from the first stint of the race. He was going to be no match for Newgarden and O'Ward. A podium would have been difficult.
9. Felix Rosenqvist ended up eighth. Nothing special happened today. The one thing McLaren has done well is it can put all three cars in the same zip code. The problem is, since the month of May, that zip code hasn't been in proximity of race victories. Rosenqvist is going to get the short end of the stick for running otherwise great results for most of the other teams in IndyCar.
10. Will Power and Marcus Ericsson came together in practice and then followed it up with Power finishing ninth and Ericsson finishing tenth. Power tried to match the Dixon strategy, but when Power stopped on lap 190, it was clear he wasn't going to make it. That extra pit stop only knocked him down to ninth, which feels about right for his day.
Ericsson was fortunate to have an unsecured left rear tire on his second pit stop come loose almost immediately after he exited his pit box, and the team could roll him back and get it re-attached without losing a lap. However, Ericsson topped off on lap 131, should have been in a better position than Dixon to make it on one more stop, and Ericsson could not make that strategy work. Either the team and driver did not believe in itself or a three-stop strategy was going to be that difficult to pull off. Tenth is a little worse than how Ericsson looked.
11. Nobody else did anything notable today, and with how many different strategies there were, outside of Newgarden brushing the wall, I don't think anyone can feel all that bad about their finishing position.
12. Rinus VeeKay was 11th, a good day, but I don't think he wasn't mentioned once.
Romain Grosjean was on the same strategy as Dixon, but Grosjean got trapped a lap down and couldn't make up anymore positions than finishing 12th.
Santino Ferrucci gambled from the very first caution for Benjamin Pedersen's spin on the opening lap, and it got Ferrucci 13th. This result was more strategy than speed.
Ryan Hunter-Reay made it two Ed Carpenter Racing cars in the top 15, something we have not said much this year, only twice to be precise. Hunter-Reay didn't do anything spectacular to finish 14th. It is at least better than most days this season for the past champion
Kyle Kirkwood stopped on lap 189 and did not come close to make it to the finish, forced to make an extra stop. I think this balanced out. Kirkwood maybe should have finished tenth or 11th. Fifteenth doesn't feel that off from where he was.
13. Conor Daly had a good qualifying run, but Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing didn't quite have it in the race. Daly also tried to go off strategy, and it knocked him down to 16th. Daly was directly ahead of Christian Lundgaard and Daly was the better runner of the two all race, and Graham Rahal finished 20th, so all three RLLR cars finished in the top 20 today on an oval. Not the most rewarding result, but it is some form of progress. The team should be thrilled for Portland coming up.
14. Linus Lundqvist made a few brilliant moves early, but went backward as he battled tire wear. Lundqvist was 18th and five spots ahead of Hélio Castroneves, who I don't think was mentioned once during this race. That is the story of Meyer Shank Racing's season.
15. There are a bunch of stragglers left.
Devlin DeFrancesco was 19th. How anyone believes that the opening five corners in the previous IMS road course race means more for DeFrancesco's future than the 32 races without a top ten finish driving for Andretti Autosport is baffling. This is who is he! He isn't some hidden talent.
Sting Ray Robb didn't do anything stupid and finished 21st.
Agustín Canapino had a shot to take a chunk out of Marcus Armstrong's advantage in the rookie of the year battle and all Canapino could do was take back eight points. Credit to Canapino because in his first year on oval he was the best of the rookies, most of which ran oval in Indy Lights and the Road to Indy.
Ed Carpenter ran over Benjamin Pedersen at the start. I am not sure we need Ed Carpenter running all the ovals anymore. He can show up once a year in May. We're good. As for Pedersen, that was rough, but was this race really going to be any better for him?
16. Takuma Sato was trying to knock down the wall exiting turn two from lap one and he finally did on lap 120.
Sato's 2023 season with Chip Ganassi Racing: 28th at Texas after an accident, seventh in the Indianapolis 500, ninth in the first Iowa race, 25th after brushing the wall in the second Iowa race, 26th after hitting the wall at Gateway.
Was this really better than how Marcus Armstrong could have done? Outside of Indianapolis, I don't think so. This does raise the question of if we have seen the last of Takuma Sato in IndyCar. I imagine he would get a few more shots at Indianapolis if he would like it. Honda would have no problem making that happen.
17. Callum Ilott brushed the wall and ended his race while in a good position. I don't think it would have been a top ten, but the top fifteen felt likely, which is still a good result for Juncos Hollinger Racing.
18. IndyCar used an alternate tire compound in this race. Based on how tire wear was already, I think this was always going to be a four-stop race for most drivers, but the alternative tire seemed to force teams to pit lane earlier on that alternate tire stint. The Sato caution really neutralized seeing how the race would have played out with the alternate compound. It felt like everyone was going to use it on the second or third stint. I don't think we have enough information on it to say it wasn't worth. I think it should be attempted again.
I do think the regulations should adjust to running an alternate tire on an oval. For a road and street course, a driver just has to do two laps to meet the requirements of using a compound. That was still the case in this race, but two laps in an oval race is not the same proportionally as two laps on a road or street course.
The average number of laps in an IndyCar oval race is 242. The average number of laps in an IndyCar road/street course race is 87.5 laps. In comparison, you only have to run each compound for about 2.28% of a road/street course race while it was only 0.769% of this Gateway race.
You see how that is problem. To match on proportion, the minimum number of oval laps running on each compound should be about five or six laps, but even I don't think that is enough.
The minimum for this race should be 20 laps, because a team shouldn't be able to skirt the regulation, put on the alternate compound under caution, get to run five or six laps under caution for an extended clean up and then take off the tires and wipe their hands of it.
The minimum number of laps should be greater than a blink of an eye. It should be 20 or 30 green flag laps. Teams shouldn't be given loopholes to exploit. If IndyCar wants to run multiple compounds on ovals then it should make sure we get to see it play into the race and not have teams try to pass on a technicality.
19. The Sato caution did bring up the wavearound issue again in IndyCar, and I mentioned it after Texas in April as well. IndyCar shouldn't allow the wavearound cars to pit under that yellow. NASCAR gets it right. You either take the wavearound and get a lap back or you make a pit stop, not both.
It almost worked out where the waved around drivers were gifted making it on one final stop after the Sato caution because they stopped five laps after the leaders. This happens at least once almost every season in IndyCar. It shouldn't.
There were eight cars on the lead lap when the Sato caution came out. Those cars should not be at a disadvantage for running better in the race. The driver a lap down in 13th who hasn't spent a lap in the top five should not be handed a better strategy.
Force the teams into one decision. Stay out and get the lap back but be on older tires and have to stop in 25-40 laps anyway or pit and remain a lap down and see if there is another way to make up ground.
I don't think it has happened yet but there have been a few situations where a driver has come close to winning only because he got the wavearound and made a pit stop within the fuel window while the leaders made their stop five or six laps earlier.
IndyCar can stop that now. It shouldn't have gotten this far to begin with.
20. This was a staggering race with how the strategies played out, but it is still Gateway. It is hard to pass. Not impossible, just hard. There aren't going to be nine passes a lap here. A second lane isn't going to really develop, but an additional half lane might. With tire wear, it becomes tougher because of the marbles.
But it isn't as simple as bringing the hardest tire in the world because while that gets rid of the marbles it then means everyone is running the same speed and it will be single-file for the entire race. The only time positions will change will be during a pit cycle.
Whether it is run at day or night this is what an Gateway race is going to be. It doesn't really matter. This is what most short oval races will be for IndyCar. Phoenix was like this. Milwaukee wasn't that much different. Loudon would look similar. Richmond could look different because of the banking and that place seems to chew up tires now.
Iowa is the exception, not the rule. Remember that anytime more oval races, especially short oval races, come up.
21. Two races and 14 days remain in the 2023 IndyCar Series season. Onto Portland.
