Scott Dixon was quickest in the lone practice session of the day on Saturday afternoon. It was the first time any of these drivers had been in the race car since February too. So, it should come to no surprise that Dixon was the one celebrating in victory lane when it was all said and done in the 2020 NTT IndyCar Series season opener.

Dixon, dominated the Genesys 300 en route to his 47th career Indy Car victory. He was untouchable all day. The Chip Ganassi Racing driver first took over the lead on Lap 31 and would lead 157 of the final 170 laps in his No. 9 Honda to give CGR their 109th Indy Car win in their 30th anniversary season.

“The car rolled off really well,” said Dixon who now has a win in 18 straight seasons now, tying AJ Foyt for most ever. “I know we’d be working extremely hard on just trying to fix some of the issues we had last year. We had some new people, plus a ton coming back over from the GT program. The engineering depth and everything got a lot stronger, so development was good through the winter.

“The DIL, the simulator with Honda that we’ve been using for the last three weeks in preparation for Texas, has been really good. Lots of things we didn’t think we would try or have the time to try on track, we were able to kind of do that. Gave us some ideas. We were able to sort of verify them once we got here.

“The PNC Bank No. 9 was strong all night. We had a couple little issues in the pit stop there. I don’t know if I went long. We had a bit of a bauble and I went from first back to third. The car just had some really good speed. It was just nice to drive in traffic. Never really had to push too hard. Just trying to make sure we could stay ahead of the rest of them.

“Not often you get a car like that. Just very thankful to have that. The team gave me an amazing car. It was a fun night for us on the No. 9. It’s great to be back in the car after such a long break, to do it like that.”

The only challenge that Dixon had was from his teammate Felix Rosenqvist, but after Dixon exited pit lane for the final time with 10 laps remaining, Rosenqvist knew he had to pounce if he wanted any shot at his first career series win. The second year driver got into the slippery traction compound and spun his No. 10 Honda as a result. In wake of that, Rosenqvist hit the outside SAFER barrier in Turn 2, ending his night with a 20th place effort.

“Obviously I came out on new tires and I don’t know if James (Hinchcliffe) had old tires there,” Rosenqvist said. “It’s my judgement, I went for the outside. Probably shouldn’t have done that. It’s one of those things where you sit there and you’re going 40 mph slower than you want to go behind another car and it’s tempting to move up one lane. But it’s so slippery, you know.

“I just feel really sorry for my guys because our car was just unbelievable tonight. It was my breakthrough on ovals and I had a really good shot there I think. So I’m really disappointed.”

Dixon, knew that Rosenqvist was going to be a threat and felt bad for how his teammates night ended.

“Yeah, I knew the cars were very similar,” Dixon said on if he was worried about Rosenqvist catching and passing him for the win. “I knew he was going to be tough. I know Felix has been kind of sneaking up on the ovals a little bit more than the road courses and things like that, street courses, where he just naturally feels a lot more comfortable.

“But I knew these days would come where he’s going to be knocking on the door pretty hard. I feel bad for him. I don’t know exactly what happened there. I think he tried to pass around the outside, got caught up, got high, washed out into the wall.

“It’s a big NTT race for us here. I am sure they loved seeing the show he was putting on. He’s a great kid, a huge talent, is going to go a long way. Occasionally these things happen.”

That though, set up a three lap shootout for the win, in which Dixon had no competition. He’d still win by 4.109-seconds, showing just how strong his car was that in 4.5 miles, he cleared second place by over four seconds.

Simon Pagenaud brought his No. 22 Chevrolet home second, said that even if the lapped cars were moved in between he and Dixon, he didn’t have anything for Dixon for the win.

“I think Dixon was too good anyways, quite frankly,” said Pagenaud. “I’m pretty realistic about my chances. I think he was the car to beat tonight.

“Yeah, I didn’t understand the situation. I need to look at the rules. Maybe I’m the one that didn’t understand it. Yeah, I was surprised that they didn’t move the cars. I’m assuming it’s because they wanted to go back green. Quite frankly, I get that. You have to give a show. We’re here for a show at the end of the day.

“Again, with everything that’s going on, we couldn’t finish under yellow, even though we did but it was the last corner. I think that’s probably what race control saw. The only way they could go back green in time before the end was to do that. If they decided to do that, I totally get it.”

Pagenaud and Josef Newgarden had dealt with tire problems all night but would rebound to finish second and third respectively. For Pagenaud, it was his fifth consecutive top six finish at Texas including three of the last four being on the podium. Pagenaud, now has three podiums in his last four superspeedway starts and 35 in his Indy Car career.

The defending series champion as well as defending race winner in Newgarden had to settle for third in his No. 1 Chevrolet. The Tennessee native started on the pole and led the first 30 laps en route to his second straight top five finish at Texas. He had none in his previous seven starts.

“I mean, honestly tonight feels like a victory to me,” Newgarden said after leading 41 laps in total from the pole. “We were not very good. Congrats to Scott. They were amazing tonight. I mean, they were just a cut above. They are very deserving winners. Scott, look, he was way better than me tonight. It’s as simple as that. He had a good run, was able to stay pretty tight fresh on tires. Honestly tonight for me was a night of hanging on. I was doing everything I could just to try to stay up front.

“It was a tough night. I think we had good speed in the car. Team Chevy did a great job for us. We just did not have a perfect handle on what we needed over a full stint.

“It’s one of those nights you just got to kind of swallow your pride. We knew we just weren’t good enough tonight. Look, I just tried to finish as high as possible. That was what we did. The team really put me in a position to do that. We had amazing stops. We kept fighting and trying to create a strategy to keep me up front even though I wasn’t very good throughout a tire stint.

“Honestly we did everything we could to fight to stay up front. Early on I was doing everything I could to keep Scott behind. He was way quicker. Once I got a little deeper into the pack, it was even harder to hang onto that front area.

“We’ll be working hard to come back and make sure we understand why that was. We’ll be hunting for a win soon. It was a good night to finish third.”

Zach Veach tied a career best finish with a fourth in his No. 26 Honda while Ed Carpenter rounded out the top five in his No. 20 Chevrolet.

Here are my main takeaways.

Rough Start

We waited nearly nine months to get the 2020 season started and now that it did, the start of the race was sort of a disaster. In fact, the whole thing didn’t go like it should have.

First off, Takuma Sato didn’t have enough time to have his backup car put together in order to start the race. The drivers qualified only three hours before the race, so if disaster like for what happened to Sato happened, it would be a tall task to get a new car ready in time for the race.

Then, three cars all had electrical problems before the race even began too. Sato’s teammate Graham Rahal as well as two Andretti Autosport cars in Ryan Hunter-Reay and Alexander Rossi all had electrical problems just before the engines fired.

Rahal, had to start on pit road, while Rossi had to drop to the rear. Then, Rossi and Hunter-Reay were penalized for unapproved adjustments and had to serve drive through penalties. Rahal, had to serve a stop and go. While serving his penalty, Rossi was then hit with a pit road speeding infraction too.

While all this was going on, we finally got to Lap 5 and the TV broadcast decided to go to a commercial five laps into the race. The rest of the race was a high speed single file parade due to the traction compound from the middle of the turns up to the SAFER barriers in the corners. No one wanted to risk getting into that and crashing. When anyone tested it, the crashes on Saturday proved costly in doing so.

Finally, on the final restart, IndyCar kept the lapped cars between Dixon and Pagenaud. The rule book states that they need to move to the back of the lead lap cars. Instead, they stayed there which helped allow Dixon to open up at four second advantage at the finish in just three laps. Still, Pagenaud noted that even if they didn’t move the cars back, he had nothing for Dixon.

Not a great debut for network TV in primetime.

Rough IndyCar Debut For Rinus VeeKay

A week ago from now, Rinus VeeKay wasn’t even in the country. The rookie driver was overseas still and trying to make his way back. Luckily, everything worked out for him in the midst of a pandemic to get back over here.

The problem was, he hasn’t been in the car since February. He has never raced at Texas before, let alone an IndyCar either. But here he was making his series debut. Unfortunately, it couldn’t have gone much worse.

Just minutes into practice, the only one of the day, VeeKay made what he called a “rookie mistake” when he got his No. 21 Chevrolet too low in Turn 3. That turned his car around and slammed him into the Turn 4 SAFER barrier. He only turned 11 total laps in the session with over half of them being install laps to test the pit limiter.

The team had to fix the car but they didn’t qualify and would elect to spend more time getting the car right and to just start in the back. In the race itself, VeeKay got too high in Turn 2 on Lap 37 and got into the outside wall. He then came down and hit the right rear tire of fellow rookie Alex Palou ending both of their nights.

48 total laps and two crashes in a span of seven hours for VeeKay. Welcome to IndyCar kid.

Veterans Of The Sport Rise To The Top

We knew with the amount of unknowns that the best of the best would be the ones to beat on Saturday night. That’s why the starting lineup and finishing order shouldn’t necessarily surprise us.

We’ve had five different drivers win the Indy Car championship since 2012. All five of them qualified in the top six on Saturday. In terms of the podium, the last three drivers to have won the title, they finished 1-2-3.

Dixon, won championships in 2015 and 2018. He won. Pagenaud won the title in 2016. He finished second. Newgarden, hoisted the Astor Cup championship trophy in 2017 and 2019. He finished third.

“I think experience is good most of the time,” Dixon said. “It can also set you in your ways a little bit too much, as well. If something changes, it’s not what you’re expecting, I think that can be a bit detrimental as well.

“I think knowing the process of the race, the tires, even though those things can’t change a lot, you kind of have, all of us do, a pretty big memory bank of things that do and don’t work. This year for us it’s been a little bit different with a change-up on the 9 car with the engineering side. That’s been a little bit of a process.

“But, no, I think, yeah, experience tonight definitely helped. You saw some people I think early on make some mistakes pretty quickly that maybe necessarily if they’d done a few more races before we got to Texas, that wouldn’t have happened.”

Nice Rebound By Hunter-Reay

The Andretti Autosport driver initially qualified his No. 28 Honda in fourth. That came after he crashed out early on in the lone practice session of the day hours earlier. Then, his ECU unit failed him and caused him to move from the grid to his pit box just prior to the start of Saturday night’s season opener.

He wasn’t alone either.

His teammate Alexander Rossi and fellow Honda driver Graham Rahal all experienced the same thing. They’d luckily get it fired up, but he had to pit for an unapproved adjustment just after we got started. It cost him two laps in the process.

When it was all said and done, there Hunter-Reay was in eighth for his third straight top 10 finish at Texas.

Honda Dominates Again

Last year may have saw a Chevrolet car win the race at Texas, but Josef Newgarden was the only one to lead a lap for the bowties in that race. On Saturday night, Newgarden was the only Chevy driver to lead again as he led 41 of the 200 laps.

That’s right, it’s been since 2018 since a Chevy driver not named “Newgarden” led a lap at Texas.

Honda, led 159 of the 200 laps en route to another win. Last year, they led 194 of 248 laps. A year prior, they led 162 of 248 laps. Combined, that’s 515 of the last 696 laps (74%) at Texas.

Familiar Team In Victory Lane

Penske, Ganassi and Rahal have also combined to win the last six years now with Ganassi and Penske sweeping the podium on Saturday night. 

More One Day Shows In The Future?

The first race back was a one-day show. We practice, qualified and raced all in a span of seven hours. While it was grueling for the teams and drivers, most note that this could be in the cards for more opportunities of doing this in the future too.

“It was really the unknowns,” Dixon said of the day. “Trying to cram that all in. Traveling here this morning, qualifying, practice, race, then we fly home tonight. First time we’ve ever done anything like that. A lot of new things.

“Maybe that’s how we’ll do a lot of our events from now on. I’m not sure. I actually kind of enjoyed it. Kind of cool to do doubleheaders like this, which I think we’re going to do in the future this season, which is going to be a lot of fun. I think the unknowns are the most difficult part.”

Second place finisher Pagenaud agreed.

“The one-day show is actually interesting in many ways,” said last year’s Indy 500 champion. “I thought it was very interesting because you had to be very decisive on your decisions. Obviously, after the first session, we kind of had to decide the race setup right away because the car was going to go to impound after qualifying. That’s a split decision you make in a very short amount of time with your engineer. Same for the crew.

“I think, quite frankly, for me the heat was probably the hardest part of the day, getting acclimated to the heat in the car as well. It was a tough one. I’ve seen mechanics, a lot of mechanics, struggle today with the heat. Yeah, I thought it was very interesting to just do one day actually. Why not? Bring your stuff and race as hard as you can.”

Newgarden said that he too had a blast and that it was entertaining.

“The hardest part for me was thinking that we — basically thinking we made the right decisions going into the race, about 15 laps in realizing that we were horribly off the mark. So you don’t have a lot of time to rectify an issue.

“I think if there was more practice, more of a lead-up to this event, maybe we would have had some clues to point out maybe we weren’t as strong as we thought we were going into the race.

“When you have that jam-packed schedule, it’s kind of on the team and the driver to execute quickly and to make the right decisions, to show up with good stuff, kind of stick to your guns.

“I like that. I really like that style. It didn’t work out for us tonight. I think in the future we can hopefully thrive in that situation.”

Top Obscure Stat

Dixon became the first front row starter to win at Texas since 2014.

Top Quote

When asked why his car was the only one to be able to pass in the traction compound, Dixon said, “We worked pretty hard on trying to calm the entry and exits, especially of one and two, from last year. That’s what got really tricky. I think Herta actually last year was really good. He was able to sit a little bit high, arc that corner a lot more than we were able to. We worked on that a lot in the simulator. We kind of found some things that kind of seemed to work. You never know if that’s going to work in real life.

“As we rolled off, it did straightaway. So the car felt really secure. Some of those areas going into one later on older tires, definitely for me I couldn’t do it. The car was still very loose. Seeing that some others were pretty strong there when we were getting to race pretty tight. When the tires were fairly new, outside moves, it was a lot of fun.”

Genesys 300 Results

1.  9 Dixon
2. 22 Pagenaud
3.  1 Newgarden
4. 26 Veach
5. 20 Carpenter
6. 59 Daly
7. 88 Herta
8. 28 Hunter-Reay
9.  7 Askew R
10. 14 Kanaan
11.  4 Kimball OUT
12.  5 O’Ward R OUT
13. 12 Power -1
14. 98 Andretti -1
15. 27 Rossi -1
16. 60 Harvey -1
17. 15 Rahal -2
18. 29 Hinchcliffe -2
19.  8 Ericsson -4
20. 10 Rosenqvist OUT
21. 18 Ferrucci OUT
22. 21 VeeKay R OUT
23. 55 Palou R OUT
24. 30 Sato DNS