Scott Dixon Slays As Will Power Survives Commonwealth Based Race At Honda Indy Toronto

Chip Ganassi Racing's lead driver, Scott Dixon sails through Turn 1 with the Prince's Gate (erected 1927 for the Prince of Wales) as a backdrop. The Princes' Gates is a triumphal arch and a monumental gateway at Exhibition Place in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The structure was named Princes' Gates, after Edward, Prince of Wales and Prince George, Duke of Kent who officially opened these gates on August 30, 1927. Image Credit: Chris Jones via Penske Entertainment (2022)

Scott Dixon Slays As Will Power Survives Commonwealth Based Race At Honda Indy Toronto

Canada, New Zealand, and Australia are all still active members of the Commonwealth Of Nations ... Britain and its dominions agreed they were "equal in status, in no way subordinate one to another in any aspect of their domestic or external affairs, though united by common allegiance to the Crown, and freely associated as members of the British Commonwealth of Nations". The term "Commonwealth" was officially adopted to describe the community.

[ht: Wikipedia]

There are as many active (full season) Commonwealth origin racecar drivers in the NTT INDYCAR SERIES as American racecar drivers - 7 drivers versus 8 drivers respectively) Image Credit: WorldPopulationReview.com (2022)

The reason that this point-of-order came to light in conjunction with this Honda Indy Toronto race is that Scott Dixon, upon winning at this venue a fourth time in his career, stated that he considers Toronto to be his "home" track since New Zealand, Dixon's birthplace, is a Commonwealth member nation - so is Australia, Will Power's birthplace.

After the three round Knock-Out Qualifications format, the following 25 car field for the 10th race of the 2022 season was set up as follows:

Four rookies in the top 12 of the field. Season points leader Marcus Ericsson starting down at P9 - number two in the season points, Will Power starts way down at P16 (but has two sets of fresh REDS), and third in the points, Josef Newgarden starts at P3.

Biggest possible season points winner in this deal may just be sixth in the season points starting at P2 Scott Dixon if he has nothing but Green Flag racing ahead of him - he is set to begin a season ending run.

Race Stare Tire Strategy - Image Credit: Facebook (2022)

For Will Power to survive the battle for season points out of the shortest street course on the NTT INDYCAR SERIES schedule, he will need another drive of the year as he had in Mid-Ohio where he started at P21 due to a Quals. Penalty - slid to last place at P27 due to a non-contact spin on the first lap - to finish at P3 on the podium!!!

This excerpted and edited from Motorport.com - 

Toronto IndyCar: Dixon scores 52nd win, matches Mario Andretti

By: David Malsher-Lopez - Jul 17, 2022, 2:16 PM

Chip Ganassi Racing-Honda’s legend Scott Dixon held off Colton Herta and Felix Rosenqvist to score his 52nd IndyCar triumph and his fourth in Toronto, and match the legendary Mario Andretti in second on the all-time IndyCar winners list.

From the start, polesitter Herta was unthreatened, while Dixon swept across from the outside to ensure Newgarden couldn’t sneak up from third to claim second. Newgarden checked his momentum and that allowed Alexander Rossi around his outside to try and claim third, but Newgarden had put the matter beyond dispute by the end of the lap. Scott McLaughlin, his teammate, passed David Malukas for fifth, but there was even worse luck for the other Dale Coyne Racing-Honda, that of Takuma Sato who was shoved into the wall at the Turn 1 kerfuffle, and limped his very broken car back to the pits. The debris left behind obliged Race Control to throw the full-course caution.

Following the Lap 4 restart Felix Rosenqvist demoted Malukas down to seventh, while Power had already taken advantage of his alternate tires to move into 12th, from 16th on the grid, but rather than burn up all his push to pass trying to stay ahead of Romain Grosjean who he’d passed on the opening lap, he let the Frenchman back past on Lap 11 and pitted next time by to grab primaries. Defending champion Alex Palou, who had started 22nd, had pitted a couple of laps earlier to take on primaries and such had been his pace, the undercut ensured Power emerged behind him. To avoid the risk of getting jumped should a yellow fall, the leaders rapidly started pulling in, Newgarden remaining ahead of Rossi but now split by rookie Malukas. Herta and McLaughlin stopped on Lap 19, a lap after Dixon and found himself being outbraked by the six-time champion into Turn 1, to effectively take the lead. Behind them, Newgarden and now Rossi were ahead of Malukas, while Rosenqvist had turned in fast enough laps at the end of his stint to emerge ahead of McLaughlin and hold off the Penske driver.

However, Dixon wasn’t yet in the lead, for Graham Rahal, Rinus VeeKay, Pato O’Ward, Jimmie Johnson and Conor Daly had risked running a long first stint on their primaries to try and make a net gain.

Rahal finally pitted from the lead on Lap 25, emerging in 14th which would become 10th once his fellow long runners stopped. Further back, Power was only 19th, and not even threatening the Andretti cars of DeFrancesco and Grosjean ahead.

On Lap 30, Rosenqvist moved ahead of Malukas and onto the tail of future Arrow McLaren SP driver, Rossi, who was applying the pressure to Newgarden while the Penske driver stayed bottled up behind the yet-to-stop Daly.

Trackside performance artist Bill Patterson posted this tribute to Scott Dixon tying Mario Andretti on 52 career wins - the second most wins behind A.J. Foyt's 67 wins. CAPTION: Congratulations on #52 to Scott Dixon! Making it look easy today in Toronto, now tied for 2nd (with Mario Andretti) in IndyCar history, Scott still has "it"!!! His 1st in 20021, his latest in 2022. Wow, just wow! Both originals available at http://ow.ly/CjI150JXHm2 - Image Credit: Bill Patterson via FB/META (2022)

O’Ward finally stopped on Lap 32, leaving Dixon out front with a 2.5sec lead over Herta, the pair of them in a race of their own as 14sec behind them, Daly continued to hold up a train of cars led by Newgarden, Rossi and Rosenqvist. Finally Daly uncorked the bottle on Lap 36 and pitted.

Not that Newgarden then made any notable progress thereafter because he was in fuel-save mode having been one of the early stoppers. On Lap 43, just past half distance in this 85-lap race, Dixon was 2.3sec ahead of Herta, with Newgarden still 14sec back, with Rossi and Rosenqvist 2sec further back disputing fourth.

That dispute ended in tears on Lap 45, just as Rosenqvist was encouraged by his strategist to make the pass. At Turn 3, the AMSP driver flicked to the inside of the future AMSP driver, and he was fully alongside as they exited the turn but as Rosenqvist floored the throttle his car slid sideways and the contact sent the Andretti car hard into the wall. Race Control would say the attempt was legit and so there was no penalty for the AMSP driver.

The drivers wended their way into the tortuous pitlane, and Newgarden suffered a horrible stop as he stopped too far from his crew, and the refueler struggled to get the nozzle engaged nad Newgarden was down to 11th.. With VeeKay and Daly having stayed out front after their late stops, Ed Carpenter Racing-Chevrolet had a 1-2 – VeeKay on reds, Daly on blacks – ahead of Dixon, Herta, Rosenqvist, McLaughlin, Rahal, Pagenaud, Ericsson and Palou. Following the restart, Newgarden lost out further to Christian Lundgaard and O’Ward.

Up (almost) at the front, Herta was now fully able to stay in Dixon’s wake, but then the yellow flew for debris at Turn 1 – concrete debris, caused by the track breaking up – compressed the field once more.

Following the Lap 59 restart, Ericsson had a couple of wheel banging moments with teammate Ericsson over eighth place but failed to make a move stick. He only had to wait a few seconds to gain eighth anyway, because the yellow had to be thrown once more due to Kirkwood and Johnson coming together at the back of the field and stalling. That yellow saw VeeKay duck into the pits, but because the field had to go so slow through the incident scene, the Dutch driver was able to emerge in 13th despite the field being bunched together.

The next restart came at the end of Lap 66, with 19 laps to go, and into Turn 1, Rahal muscled down the inside of McLaughlin to snatch fourth and the Penske driver got out on the marbles through Turn 2 and lost places to Ericsson, Palou, Lundgaard and Pagenaud. On Lap 69, Pagenaud passed Lundgaard for seventh. Another Penske driver, however, moved forward, getting ahead of O’Ward and Malukas to grab 10th.

Up front, Dixon pulled away from Herta who was having to watch his mirrors for Rosenqvist. Some 1.7sec back, Rahal was fending off the Ericsson vs Palou battle.

In the final 10 laps, Palou eased off from the back of Ericsson, allowing the championship leader to focus on trying to find a way past Rahal. Three seconds further up the road, Rosenqvist’s efforts to get around Herta redoubled, but he couldn’t quite get it done, and he fell half a second short. Ahead of them Dixon scored his first win of the year, after leading 40 of the 85 laps, and ensuring he has now scored at least one win in 18 seasons.

Rahal was great fourth ahead of Ericsson, while Palou can be proud of his charge from 22nd to sixth place, the highest finishing driver of those who had never seen Toronto before this weekend.

Lundgaard was a fine eighth ahead of Penske drivers McLaughlin and Newgarden who completed the Top 10.

ENDS

A great day for points movement for Chip Ganassi Racing drivers with a win by Dixon, the maintaining in the season points lead by Ericsson (tacking on a few points to the margin between him and Penske's Will Power), and a couple of leap frog position moves - Alex Palou moves Newgarden to P4 and takes over P3 with Scott Dixon winning, he moves from P6 over Pato O'Ward to P5. 

NTT INDYCAR SERIES Point Standings:

Ericsson 351, Power 316, Palou 314, Newgarden 307, Dixon 307, 

O'Ward 276, McLaughlin 274, Herta 254, Rosenqvist 244, Pagenaud 243, 

Rossi 236, VeeKay 211, Rahal 210, Daly 198, Grosjean 197, 

Lundgaard 183, Castroneves 173, Malukas 163, Sato 154, Harvey 126, 

Ilott 113, DeFrancesco 111, Johnson 108, Kirkwood 106, Tony Kanaan 78, 

Kellett 76, Santino Ferrucci 71, Tatiana Calderon 58, JR Hildebrand 53, Ed Carpenter 49, 

Juan Pablo Montoya 44, Simona De Silvestro 21, Marco Andretti 17, Sage Karam 14, Stefan Wilson 10

CGR drivers are now sitting at P1, P3, and P5 in the season points tally with seven races remaining.

Next up? Two races - HY-VEEDEALS.COM 250 PRESENTED BY DOORDASH & HY-VEE SALUTE TO FARMERS 300 PRESENTED BY GOOGLE - Iowa Speedway - July 22-23 - Official Schedule

... notes from The EDJE

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TAGS: NTT INDYCAR SERIES, Honda Indy Toronto, Chip Ganassi Racing, HY-VEE, Iowa Speedway, The EDJE