LONG BEACH, Calif. — Recap by Race Chaser Online Managing Editor Jacob Seelman — Chris Jones/IndyCar photo —
After Sunday’s 41st annual Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach, it’s clear that at least in the modern era — there is a new king of Indy car racing.
That king goes by the name Scott Dixon — whose No. 9 TARGET/Chip Ganassi Racing Chevrolet-Dallara beat Verizon P1 Award winner and polesitter Helio Castroneves off pit road during the first round of stops on lap 29 and never looked back, only giving up the top spot again during the final pit cycle en route to a 2.2221 second triumph over the Team Penske veteran.
The victory was the 36th of Dixon’s already-storied Indy car career — breaking a tie for fifth on the all-time list with Bobby Unser — and Dixon’s first at Long Beach, after only having one top five finish in eight prior starts at the historic facility.
“This is huge,” Dixon said. “I love the event, but as far as coming here and doing well it hadn’t been on that list. That pit stop exchange definitely helped us get to the lead but the car was fast and all we had to do was maintain that lead.”
Dixon’s win also made some additional history, as the three-time champion tied Unser, Emerson Fittipaldi and Castroneves atop the all-time list with an Indy car victory in 11 consecutive seasons. Dixon also now has 13 seasons with at least one victory — A.J. Foyt leads that list with 18 and Mario Andretti with 16 is second.
“Long Beach is never an easy place to win and Scott Dixon did a great job today and so did his pit crew to get him out front,” said Unser, who four days earlier was honored in Long Beach by the Road Racing Drivers Club. “Racing is a team effort and both Scott and his crew earned the win, my congratulations to them.”
The difference between Dixon and Castroneves on the race-altering pit stop was when Helio’s chief mechanic Travis Law held the No.3 in the pit box for an extra second to prevent contact with the incoming car of Tony Kanaan. That split second proved to be costly, as despite a faster final pit stop than Dixon, Castroneves fell six-tenths of a second short of the No. 9 coming out of the pits on lap 55.
He would never come closer than that the rest of the way.
Castroneves, while settling for his second-straight runner-up result and 37th career P2 finish (tied for second all-time with Bobby Rahal), was slightly disappointed with the final result after believing he had a car capable of winning the race.
“The Firestone tires were actually holding pretty good for me. My AAA car was awesome and we were pretty good all the way,” Castroneves explained. “The guys did a great job in the pits and especially [during] the incident between me and [Kanaan]. It was better to be safe than sorry, but it was a great job overall for Team Penske. At the end of the day, [yes it’s disappointing, but] second place is not bad.”
Castroneves’ Penske teammate Juan Pablo Montoya finished third after winning the season-opening round in St. Petersburg and finishing fifth at NOLA, but saw his points lead over Castroneves trimmed to just three markers heading into race four at Barber Motorsports Park on April 26.
Simon Pagenaud gave Penske three cars in the top four with his fourth-place result, and Kanaan rounded out the top five for Ganassi.
Defending Verizon IndyCar Series champion Will Power stalled his car coming in for his first pit stop and lost a lap in the process — Power was never able to recover and finished the race in 20th position after starting 18th.
“I feel bad for the Verizon Chevy Team. They worked so hard and me finishing P20 was a result of a bad day in qualifying,” Power admitted. “I didn’t get it done and it was a snowball effect from there. Today I made mistakes and I stalled the car on pit road during the first pit stop. Was hoping for a top ten finish but it didn’t happen. It makes me more motivated to make up for it the next couple races.”
After debris plagued the opening two rounds of the season, with parts and pieces breaking off of the Chevy and Honda aero kits, Sunday’s Long Beach event seemed to have things right at last — the race was slowed only once by caution for four laps.
The next round of the Verizon IndyCar Series, the Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama from Barber Motorsports Park, will air live on NBC Sports Network on April 26 at 3 p.m. Eastern.
