SALINAS, Calif — On a day that it seemed like no one wanted to win, Scott Dixon did Scott Dixon things once again and scored his 56th career NTT INDYCAR SERIES victory in Sunday’s Firestone Grand Prix of Monterey.

Dixon overcame a grid penalty for an engine problem suffered with mileage in the morning warmup, then an avoidable contact penalty from a first lap incident to come from behind to score his third win in the last four races of the season. He was winless in the first 13 races.

“Yeah, it was a wild day. I think as McLaughlin was commenting, I think he had a drive-through penalty as well. Race control was drive-through penalty, pretty happy today,” Dixon said.

“I think the morning kind of was tough, just to start off with a bit of a failure, then obviously getting a grip penalty wasn’t the way you wanted to start the day.

“I think we had done a good job in qualifying, which would have put us in a good spot to obviously fight for the lead on more of a straightforward race.

“As we had seen in the last kind of two or three days, even in the practice sessions, it’s been a lot of cars falling off track. I figured that the race was either going to go green to checkered or have a bunch of yellows. We had the yellows.

“The restarts were very tough. Kind of between 10 and 11 the way they would check up was difficult to get your space right. There were a lot of crashes in the last corner unfortunately with some restarts. I remember even being three-wide with Pedersen and Armstrong. I think that’s when Armstrong spun as well when he was on the outside.

“It was a tough race. But worked out for us. Strategy, we just tried to keep it simple, kind of working from the back end of the race. I was definitely shocked to see the 5 and the 28 pit when they did. I knew after that we had a really fast car, even with some of the damage we kind of had from the contact with the 21 on the start.

“All in all, great day. It’s nice to rebound like we did. Definitely some heated moments throughout the race. Pretty pissed off at times. It’s always nice to finish the year like that.”

Dixon’s pursuit to the win was a perfect path. He pit on Lap 7 for fuel only. Then he served his penalty on Lap 13. Four laps later, he pit for tires for the first time. He’d pit again on Lap 38 to go off strategy.

Meanwhile, it was looking like Alex Palou and Pato O’Ward was going to be the ones to beat. They ran 1-2 and had a commanding hold for the top two spots. That’s why Dixon elected to pit with others under the fourth caution of the day to do something different.

He lucked out with the Lap 57 caution for Devlin DeFrancesco and David Malukas in Turn 3. At the time, O’Ward was on pit road. Palou had yet to pit.

It was looking like it was a perfect storm for O’Ward. Palou would have to pit from the lead under caution and drop to 15th. O’Ward would cycle to the lead.

“Yeah, it was an interesting race,” said Palou. “Lots of action honestly. Started fifth. Knew that there was going to be some drama on the first couple of laps. I was lucky that I was out of the first lap incident in turn two.

“From there, honestly we just had a lot of pace. Was able to overtake Felix, just get a gap. The car was amazing. I thought our strategy was amazing, as well. It was also hard to judge the yellows. Like, we couldn’t really predict what was going to happen.

“That yellow hurt us, I think it was third or fourth yellow. It hurt us a lot. We had to drop back to like 15th. We were on a bad spot.”

That ended up being a detriment to O’Ward though too. They pit for reds knowing that they still needed 1 more stop to make it until the end. So did everyone else so they felt at that point like they were fine. He just needed to build a big enough gap on the restart to stay ahead.

He never got the chance.

Two straight cautions on restart negated his advantage. With needing to pit for the alternate tires still, even with fuel save, he’d have to pit.

On the second to last restart, Dixon sat in 9th. He’d move all the way up to third. Then, the final caution on Lap 75 for Helio Castroneves and Colton Herta in Turn 3 occurred.

O’Ward would have to pit then ruining his chances of a win. Ironically enough, if he was on the Firestone alternate tires by now, he’d have made it to the end.

Palou pit two laps later and did.

Dixon now up front and good on fuel, never looked back en route to the win. He held off Scott McLaughlin, Palou, Will Power and Callum Ilott on a wild incident filled day that saw so many caution laps the pace car needed refueling.

Chaos

I wondered what Sunday’s race was going to look like. This track is freshly paved and there’s been a lot of carnage on it. There were 24 stoppages for off track excursions between the test, two practice sessions and qualifying.

However, I’ve seen this script before. Crazy action leading into the race, then a calm main event itself.

This one was far from it.

8 cautions for 35 laps ensued. There were so many laps turned under yellow, the pace car had to be refueled.

It wasn’t just that, 17 penalties occurred too.

Half of the cautions occurred on starts or restarts including the opening lap. Christian Lundgaard got too low and on the Turn 1 curbing and it sent him into second place starter Scott McLaughlin pushing him off track. Josef Newgarden, Graham Rahal, Marcus Armstrong, Juri Vips all piled in and had no where to go.

Then, Scott Dixon and Rinus VeeKay had contact just past it.

On the Lap 37 restart, more carnage in Turn 11. On the Lap 63 and Lap 68 restarts, more carnage in Turn 11.

That’s because everyone was already on the throttle entering the corner and going side-by-side through it. However, the track is slippery off line and cause drivers to lose control while doing so.

“It’s just tremendously loose offline,” Scott McLaughlin said. “It’s just train tracks out there right now. It is what’s. You just got to figure it out. But, yeah, there’s no grip out there. I feel like the pavement is worn in where we have been running. Everywhere else where we haven’t been running.

“I’m sure it will wear in as the race goes on. That transition traditionally doesn’t bode for much passing.”

With that said, as passing was tough, restarts was the time to make up spots which is why it was a double-edged sword.

Plus, with so many drivers needing wins on Sunday in order to not go through the season winless, that played a part in this too.

“It is the last race of the year. The championship is sewn up. I’m sure there’s going to be some Kamikazes out there,” McLaughlin said.

His teammate agreed.

“You’ll fight pretty hard, I know that,” Power said on being winless. “You’ll fight pretty hard. If there’s someone there on the last lap, last corner, you haven’t got a win, yeah, certainly will be floating through your mind about what you might just do.”

Santino Ferrucci who was having a solid run before being a bystander in an incident called this shot on Saturday.

“It’s hard to pass, so you’re kind of banking on people to make mistakes,” he said. “It’s also the final race of the season so for sure, people are going to crash trying to pass.”

Combine all of this and you get C-H-A-O-S.

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Day Full Of Rebounds

Scott Dixon was penalized for a first lap incident. He’d rebound to win. Scott McLaughlin was pushed off track in Turn 1 on the first lap. He was penalized twice. One was for avoidable contact then the other for pitting after a repositioning penalty. He’d come back to finish 2nd.

Will Power was punished for not pitting on Lap 29, then he too shared the same two penalties as McLaughlin. He’d come back to finish 4th.

Alex Palou went from 1st to 15th after being caught out by not pitting on Lap 59. He’d finish third.

Christian Lundgaard was involved in that Lap 1 melee and penalized for it. He then was penalized for emergecy service. Even with early race damage, he still came home 6th.

Alexander Rossi was penalized for emergency service and blocking. He’d finish 7th. Marcus Armstrong was collected in Lap 1 and Lap 68 incidents. He’d finish 8th.

Talk about a day for rebounds.

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Penske/Ganassi Dominant On Natural Road Courses

Penske and Ganassi won all 7 races on natural road courses this season and just went 1-2-3 here for a second straight year. However, entering the race, it was looking like they’d be threatened.

21 of the last 24 visits entering the race were won from a top 3 starter (15 from the pole, 4 from 2nd). 2 of the 3 on Sunday belonged to McLaren and RLL.

Even with chaos, the podium on Sunday went Ganassi-Penske-Ganassi. Even a Penske was in 4th too.

22 of the last 25 were won from a top 6 starter in general. However, 2 of the 3 not occurred in the last 2 years. Alex Palou won from 11th in 2022 and Dixon from 11th this year.

This was Dixon’s 1st win in 6 tries here. The only tracks he’s not won at now is St. Pete (0-for-19), Iowa (0-for-19), Barber (0-for-13) and Portland (0-for-6).

Dixon was 3rd in 2019 but 13th and 12th the last two years. Now he’s a winner.

Dixon has also finished 7th, 6th, 4th, 2nd, 1st, 3rd, 1st respectively on natural road courses in 2023 too. He’s finished 2nd, 2nd, 2nd, 3rd, 1st, 3rd, 3rd, 5th, 2nd, 1st, 17th, 4th, 2nd, 3rd, 3rd, 3rd, 12th, 1st in the last 18 season finales.

For Palou in third, he has finished 5th, 1st, 1st, 1st, 7th, 1st, 3rd on natural road courses in 2023 and 2nd, 1st, 3rd in 3 tries here.

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Newgarden’s Rough Final Quarter Of Season Drops Him To 5th In Points

Josef Newgarden left Iowa with a legitimate chance to do something special. He went from 3rd to 2nd in points and made up a bunch of ground in the process. Even as we got through the first weekend of August at Nashville, a place he finished 4th and Alex Palou in 3rd, he was still within striking distance.

However, his final quarter of the season was abysmal.

A rough qualifying outing in the Gallagher Grand Prix left him 19th. They decided to take a grid penalty then and start 25th. He was collected in a first lap crash and finished 25th. Two weeks later, he led 98 laps in Gateway and was untouchable before falling behind on strategy and pushing too hard trying to make up ground. He found the Turn 2 wall on Lap 210 and would finish with back-to-back 25th place results.

He’d rebound to finish 5th in Portland but after being collected in an opening lap crash on Sunday then crashing again on Lap 8, he’d finish 21st.

That dropped him from 3rd to 5th in points which ties him with 2018 as his worst points finish since joining Team Penske. He was 1st, 1st, 2nd, 2nd, 2nd in the other 5 years.

As a result, Scott McLaughlin jumped from 5th to 3rd as the top finishing Penske driver for 2023.

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Leaders Circle

Agustin Canapino’s ability to hang onto a badly damaged front wing in the final green flag spring to the finish in Sunday’s NTT INDYCAR SERIES season finale and Juri Vips’ never give up attitude helped the two score the final two spots into the 22 car leaders circle field for 2024.

Canapino restarted on Lap 78 in fifth. It was challenging to hold on for the final 17 laps with the way that it was.

Canapino entered the day -3 but was solidly in at that moment. While he was falling backwards down the running order, if he could just nurse the car home to the checkered, the unlikely story of the first year car driven by the first year driver would get into the top 22 in the entrant points for leaders circle.

He’d do just that limping home 14th in the end.

“We’ve had a really strong weekend at Laguna Seca,” Canapino boasted. “We did a really good job in qualifying, finishing in P13. Although we started in P19 after the penalty, we were soon battling at the front and I was battling for the lead with [Alex] Palou at the end of the second stint.”

While he was bummed to lose out on a top five, he was happy for the team with the season result in points.

“It was unfortunate that my front wing was broken close to the end because we were in a really good position to earn a top-five, maybe a podium,” he continued. “But we showed really strong pace today and I would like to thank everybody in the team for their hard work. I’m really happy that we finished my first season in INDYCAR within the Leaders Circle.”

He was just one story. There was a wild set of circumstances for the other spots.

Vips was part of that first lap melee in Turn 1. Canapino gained nine spots by avoiding that carnage. Vips, went behind the wall for repairs.

He was +3 entering the day but they didn’t give up. They knew what was at stake. Even though he was several laps down, they got him back out to hopefully make up some spots with attrition to others.

Tom Blomqvist, another leaders circle challenger helped. He was near the top 10 before crashing out on Lap 63. He was 21st (+6) entering the day and was in good shape before that incident. Getting 5 points for the final race hurt.

Then, Devlin DeFrancesco was as high as third and in the top five before a mechanical failure towards the end too. He dropped down to 22nd costing him valuable points. Due to being 22nd and only having 8 points scored and 169 points entering, he was left outside with 177 points for the season.

With Kyle Kirkwood limping home in 25th, Vips gained two spots by coming back on track and not giving up. He beat DeFrancesco by one (178-177).

“It was looking like a really good start. I thought I avoided most of the melee and was going to gain probably six or seven positions but just in the middle of Turn 2 I got taken out on the side and that was us done basically,” Vips said. “We carried some damage until the end. The team did a good job getting me out there again. We ended up gaining a spot which was very important. I’m very proud of our effort.”

That’s a massive difference in a payout for him by doing so.

The top 22 in the entrant points receive a bonus the following year for the Indy 500 payouts. Think of it somewhat like a charter is to NASCAR. It’s massive.

You can tell the base for an Indy only entry is $102k. That’s why Katherine Legge got that for last place. 32nd place as a part-time Indy only entrant was $103k for RC Enerson. That also explains the bump to $462-$465k for 28th-31st placed finishers because they’re full-time entries in the leaders circle money.

Canapino is full-time but not in the leaders circle this year and that’s why he got $156 but not a lot payout like $102k.

Where this matters the most is, third place finisher at Indy, Santino Ferrucci only received $481,800 but fifth place finisher, Alexander Rossi, got $574k. Ferrucci’s car wasn’t in the leaders circle but Rossi’s was.

The two drivers in front of Ferrucci topped out over $1-million.

For the 30 and 78 rides, they narrowly get by.

Even if they didn’t make the top 22 in the leaders circle points, Bobby Rahal said that it will have no effect on whether this entry would have been back in 2024.

“I mean, we’re going racing either way, but it would sure be nice to be part of the Leaders Circle group,” he said a few weeks ago. “And that was an expectation that, frankly, I took for granted going into this year.”

The 29 ride at Andretti may not. There’s word that if the car didn’t get in the top 22 in leaders circle, they may scale back to 3 cars for 2024.

That 1 point could force them to downsize.

For Ryan Hunter-Reay, he did what he was asked to do.

Hunter-Reay knew what was at stake when he was called by good friend Ed Carpenter to help him out. With Conor Daly and Ed Carpenter Racing mutually agreeing to part ways just seven races into the season, if the ride was capable of running up front, Hunter-Reay never would have been called.

Now, 10 races later, Hunter-Reay leaves ECR in a better spot than he first joined. Mission accomplished. Rinus VeeKay learned a thing or two and if not for an opening incident to where he was punted off track by eventual race winner Scott Dixon, a top 10 may have ensued.

Still, 4 top 11 finishes in the final 5 races put the 21 car back on the right path.

For the 20 car, Hunter-Reay gave it a top 10 in his final start. He said he won’t likely be back in this role in 2024 but he did his job in keeping the ride in the leaders circle money.

Hunter-Reay finished 10th in the season finale.

“It was a good day for the No. 20 BITNILE.COM Chevrolet team,” he said. “Mission accomplished is what we see here at the end. It’s always tough when you are trying to points race while also being aggressive and competitive. We tried to balance those two in what was a pretty chaotic race. It was difficult at times to think about points but also wanting to move forward. All in all, we ran in the Top 3, finished in the Top 10 and secured a position in Leaders Circle. Mission accomplished!”

Despite making solid gains throughout each session, Ryan Hunter-Reay had to start today’s season finale at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca from the 25th position. During his qualifying run, the No. 20 BITNILE.COM Chevrolet spun coming out of Turn 11. As his spin caused a red flag, he was penalized by losing his two fastest laps.

When multiple cars made contact and went off-track on the opening lap of Sunday’s race, Hunter-Reay made it through unscathed. By the restart on Lap 6, he was scored in 14th, up 11 positions from his start. He picked up two more positions before the next yellow flag flew just a few laps later, moving him into 12th. 

Hunter-Reay stayed in the Top 10 for the middle portion of the race, cycling as high as 4th. On Lap 67 restart, he passed two more cars to move into 2nd. Hunter-Reay made his final pit stop four laps later, relinquishing the 2nd position. He rejoined the field in 12th, but made up two spots in the closing laps to earn his first Top 10 finish with Ed Carpenter Racing. 

With 2 top 15 finishes in the final 3 races and having 0 in the first 7, the path for ECR is back on the right footing.

Credit Hunter-Reay for that.

Results

MONTEREY, Calif. – Results Sunday of the Firestone Grand Prix of Monterey NTT INDYCAR SERIES event on the 2.238-mile WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca, with order of finish, starting position in parentheses, driver, engine, laps completed and reason out (if any):

1. (11) Scott Dixon, Honda, 95, Running
2. (2) Scott McLaughlin, Chevrolet, 95, Running
3. (5) Alex Palou, Honda, 95, Running
4. (7) Will Power, Chevrolet, 95, Running
5. (20) Callum Ilott, Chevrolet, 95, Running
6. (3) Christian Lundgaard, Honda, 95, Running
7. (15) Alexander Rossi, Chevrolet, 95, Running
8. (14) Marcus Armstrong, Honda, 95, Running
9. (9) Pato O’Ward, Chevrolet, 95, Running
10. (25) Ryan Hunter-Reay, Chevrolet, 95, Running
11. (8) Romain Grosjean, Honda, 95, Running
12. (24) Sting Ray Robb, Honda, 95, Running
13. (27) Helio Castroneves, Honda, 95, Running
14. (19) Agustin Canapino, Chevrolet, 95, Running
15. (18) Marcus Ericsson, Honda, 94, Running
16. (23) Benjamin Pedersen, Chevrolet, 94, Running
17. (17) Santino Ferrucci, Chevrolet, 94, Running
18. (6) Rinus VeeKay, Chevrolet, 93, Running
19. (1) Felix Rosenqvist, Chevrolet, 93, Running
20. (22) David Malukas, Honda, 93, Running
21. (4) Josef Newgarden, Chevrolet, 91, Running
22. (26) Devlin DeFrancesco, Honda, 91, Running
23. (12) Colton Herta, Honda, 80, Contact
24. (13) Juri Vips, Honda, 71, Running
25. (16) Kyle Kirkwood, Honda, 65, Running
26. (21) Tom Blomqvist, Honda, 61, Contact
27. (10) Graham Rahal, Honda, 0, Contact

Race Statistics
Winner’s average speed: 92.645 mph
Time of Race: 02:17:41.6400
Margin of victory: 7.3180 seconds
Cautions: 8 for 35 laps
Lead changes: 6 among 7 drivers

Lap Leaders:
Rosenqvist, Felix 1 – 6
Palou, Alex 7 – 28
Herta, Colton 29
Palou, Alex 30 – 58
O’Ward, Pato 59 – 73
Grosjean, Romain 74 – 75
Dixon, Scott 76 – 95

NTT INDYCAR SERIES Point Standings:
Palou 656, Dixon 578, McLaughlin 488, O’Ward 484, Newgarden 479, Ericsson 438, Power 425, Lundgaard 390, Rossi 375, Herta 356, Kirkwood 352, Rosenqvist 324, Grosjean 296, VeeKay 277, Rahal 276, Ilott 266, Malukas 265, Castroneves 217, Armstrong 214, Ferrucci 214, Canapino 180, DeFrancesco 177, Robb 147, Jack Harvey 146, Conor Daly 134, Hunter-Reay 131, Pedersen 129, Simon Pagenaud 88, Takuma Sato 70, Ed Carpenter 46, Linus Lundqvist 35, Tony Kanaan 18, Vips 18, Blomqvist 16, Marco Andretti 13, RC Enerson 5, Katherine Legge 5