Scott Dixon admits that he was hoping for more crashes as he clung on to an unlikely win in a chaotic Nashville IndyCar race.
However, he had been as low as 23rd on merit due to a poor grid position plus an unlucky yellow, and still 20th on merit after getting shunted in the concertina which occurred just after the second restart.
That impact jammed the left-rear wheel on the #9 Honda which not only elongated the pit stop Dixon had to make, but also caused underfloor damage in its removal.
When Rinus VeeKay ran up an escape road, the New Zealander was one of four to stop in case of another Caution, and one came just two laps later when Graham Rahal understeered into a wall and was shunted by VeeKay, coincidentally.
Having opted to not take fresh tyres in that stop, Car #9 was first of those four which had just been into the lane, and hence filtered up to second in the order when most pitted under the Rahal-VeeKay yellow.
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When an off-sequence Josef Newgarden had to retreat to the pits for fuel on Lap 65, Dixon assumed a lead which he would not relinquish.
Helping his cause, however, was the Caution in which Newgarden made said stop, and another for a Newgarden-Romain Grosjean incident which denied the likes of McLaughlin time to overtake him.
“That was wild, it was a wild day,” said Dixon, who is now up to second in the series at six points behind Will Power.
“We had a good start, I thought things were going well, and then we came in for the first stop, and the air jacks failed or the hose failed.
“We went all the way to the back and got into the chaos in Turn 5 or 6 and just got rolled over the back and hit pretty hard.
“Actually, we couldn’t get the wheel off because it was stuck on the brake caliper.
“Took the team a lot of time to get that off, but then it ripped a bunch of the underfloor off of the car as well and all the strakes.
“The car was bent and broken, but for us I think strategy-wise to take no tyres on that last stop was probably the key.
“We were able to jump a couple and have enough fuel to get towards the end, and to the end, but it was very difficult to drive.
“The car just had no grip. Each time we had a restart, I was just praying for another accident. Some of those came. Some of them didn’t.
“Another lap with McLaughlin would have been extremely tough to hold him off.
“He was just super-fast, and I think just in a better situation.”
Dixon made six pit stops in the 80-lap race, four more than McLaughlin.
He also officially had to serve a penalty for emergency service in a closed pit, although being forced to restart at the back was essentially a moot point considering he was already last of those on the lead lap.
The victory was reminiscent of that of team-mate Marcus Ericsson a year earlier in Nashville, when the Swede got airborne in a restart shunt.
On that day, Ericsson led Dixon to the chequered flag despite taking five pit stops to the latter’s four, in a race which featured nine Cautions compared to this year’s eight.
“These races can be all over the map,” noted the six-time IndyCar champion.
“And honestly, we had a really fast car all weekend. We just never really got two consecutive laps together, and we got kind of hosed in qualifying.
“I was so angry after qualifying because I knew we had great speed. We saw that in the Warm Up that the car just had generally great pace.
“This race is tough to read. Last year was much the same for us where we just tried to stay out of trouble, but sometimes when you crash and almost flip the car like Marcus did last year.
“[This year] where we ripped the back part off the car, sometimes just good omens that it’s going to be a good day.”
The third-last event of the season takes place at Gateway on August 19-20 (local time), and will be streamed live and ad-free on Stan Sport.
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