How Scott Dixon Could Claim the IndyCar Title at Indianapolis
There are three races remaining in the 2020 IndyCar Series season, but Scott Dixon of Chip Ganassi Racing very well could clinch his sixth championship this weekend in the Harvest Grand Prix doubleheader at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Road Course.
The math is pretty straightforward.
Dixon’s Chip Ganassi Racing team has a 72-point advantage over Josef Newgarden, the two-time and defending series champion from Team Penske. The most points any driver can score on any given weekend is 54. The minimum is 4 points for any driver who takes the green flag.
Dismissing the possibility that Dixon could miss a race the rest of the way, the 40-year-old could close out the championship on Friday by winning Race 1 should Newgarden finishes 19th or worse.
Much would have to go wrong for Dixon to lose the championship, as no worse than a seventh-place average over the next three races also closes the door on Newgarden -- even if he were to win out the rest of the way.
The season finale is scheduled for Oct. 25. on the Streets of St. Petersburg.
Dixon could also close out this weekend but simply preventing Newgarden from making up 23 points over the two races at the Racing Capital of the World.
Dixon won the IndyCar Grand Prix on the IMS Road Course on July 4.
"The ultimate goal is to leave this weekend without having to worry about the championship, right," Dixon said during an IndyCar press conference on Monday. "The reality is that it's still going to be very tough. … We don't really change our approach each weekend. I think when you come down to the nitty-gritty of the championship, you are aware of the points and the outcomes a little bit more than you would be, say, at the start or middle part of the season.
"We'll focus on doing what we always try to do, and that's win the race. I think if we can win Race 1 or Race 2, that makes things a lot easier. If we can win the both of them, that seals the deal. We'll go in there with that mindset, see what we come out with."
Dixon opened the season with three consecutive victories at Texas, Indianapolis and Road America. He also won one of the two races at Gateway in August. His average finish of 4.5 suggests there is little Newgarden can do to prevent the inevitable.
Newgarden has two wins with an average finish of 6.4. He’s said on multiple occasions that he believes his team is faster than they were last year but have been bitten by bad luck more than Dixon. There’s certainly some merit there.
A caution came out during their pit stop in the first race at Gateway and that cost Newgarden a chance to win, ultimately finishing 12th. He pit on the same lap as Takuma Sato in the Indianapolis 500, but simply got beat. Dixon finished second that day.
That’s been the difference in the championship battle.
"I've had years where it just seems like we catch the yellow at the right point all the time," Newgarden said. "This year's been the opposite of that. It's hard to complain about it. It's IndyCar racing. Sometimes it falls your way, sometimes it doesn't.
"What I'm hoping is that these last three races we just have the good end of the luck to finish the season."
Meanwhile, Pato O’Ward of Arrow McLaren SP and Colton Herta and Andretti Autosport sit third and fourth in the championship at 118 and 129 points back. While mathematically eligible, both would need to win out and have the frontrunners fail to finish each of the final three races.
All told, winning a championship during a season in which IndyCar and its team have had to overcome a pandemic, would make this Astor Cup extra-special for both frontrunners.
"I think it would probably be the strangest just I think how the season's gone, the schedule change, the ups and downs," Newgarden said. "Honestly, I'm so thankful that the NTT IndyCar Series and everybody involved were able to get the ball rolling. …
"All of them are very unique. They're all very different, at least from my memory. But I think each one becomes that much more meaningful. This one for me would definitely mean the most."
That was a sentiment shared by Newgarden too.
"It would be the strangest," Newgarden said. "I don't know how you're going to forget this year. It's always going to be kind of marked in the book as an odd year, not just from a racing standpoint, but from everything else.
"I think because the year has been so strange even personally for everybody, it's going to mark this racing year as certainly a highlight. Every year is different, so individualized. Scott's season is going to be different than ours, everyone else in the championship. Everyone has a different story to tell with how their year has unfolded.
"For us it would be a very gratifying championship if we were able to somehow get everything conjured together at the end. It's been a tough year on our car specifically with the yellows, certainly some of the races have fallen. But you got to take the good with the bad, the bad with the good. They're all so different, sometimes things fall for you, sometimes they don't.
But yeah, probably a little more gratifying."
