With a dominating drive on a day worth double points, Scott Dixon once again proved he is one of the greatest IndyCar drivers in open-wheel history.
The New Zealander overcame long odds to grab his fourth championship by winning the season finale at Sonoma Raceway. The victory pulled him from third in the standings into a tie with Juan Pablo Montoya, with the title going to Dixon on a tiebreaker.
In many ways, it was a fitting win for the driver known as “The Iceman.”
Photo: AFP
Unfazed by his 47-point deficit to Montoya, he focused on the fact that his Chip Ganassi Racing team at least had a shot should he win the race. If anybody doubted he could do it, shame on them.
Dixon’s 38 wins are fifth on the career list, and he is only the fifth driver to win at least four titles. His first championship came in 2003 when he was 23. The driver with the longest career for Ganassi, Dixon added his fourth crown on Sunday at the age of 35.
“He’s arguably ‘the’ driver of our generation, ‘the’ IndyCar driver of our generation, for sure,” Ganassi said. “All around, on the track, off the track, he’s the complete package.”
Dixon’s win at Sonoma earned him a US$1 million bonus for the IndyCar title, and an additional US$75,000 from Sunoco for most victories (three) this season.
Off the track, he is one of IndyCar’s greatest ambassadors. It was Dixon who moved his wife and two young daughters to Florida for several months following driver Dan Wheldon’s death in 2011 to support Wheldon’s family. It was Dixon who stayed behind in Pennsylvania last week and was with fellow driver Justin Wilson’s family when he died on Aug. 24 following the accident at Pocono a day earlier.
Then it was on to Sacramento and San Francisco and Sonoma for a whirlwind tour of California promoting IndyCar’s finale. On Friday, the first day back at the track for a paddock in mourning, he was quiet, maybe a little distracted. Asked if being back at the track and in a routine helped the drivers grieve, Dixon simply nodded.
“It’s been a very tough week,” he conceded, acknowledging the field was full of “heavy hearts.”
“But as Justin would have wanted, he would have wanted us to go out and race,” he said.
That is exactly what IndyCar does, time and time again, crisis after crisis.
It has been a season seemingly full of rough patches, beginning with the late cancelation of the scheduled opener in Brazil. So the season instead opened in St Petersburg, Florida, where the introduction of the new body kits quickly showed they were too brittle. Any contact left a scattering of debris, and one piece even flew over the grandstands and stuck a bystander.
The inaugural race in New Orleans was a rainy mess, and the series could not get to Indianapolis Motor Speedway fast enough in May to begin preparing for its biggest event of the year. Instead, the buildup was marred by three cars going airborne, leading to a last-minute rules change the morning of qualifying.
One day later, James Hinchcliffe suffered a life-threatening injury when a broken part from his crashed race car pierced one of his legs.
The Indianapolis 500 did go off without a hitch and was won by Montoya, who drank the celebratory milk 15 years after his first 500 victory.
From there, it was Montoya’s championship to lose. He had led the standings from the season opener and his only real challenge seemed to be from Graham Rahal, the lone Honda driver who could keep pace with all the big-time Chevrolet teams.
Rahal sliced Montoya’s lead in the standings to just nine points with two races remaining, but an accident a week ago at Pocono effectively sunk his chances. Still, the turnaround of single-car team Rahal Letterman Lanigan from barely competitive last year to championship contender was one of the highlights of the IndyCar season.
Rahal is quietly helping to raise money for Wilson’s family, just as he did in 2011 when he organized an auction that raised US$627,203 for Wheldon’s family. On Sunday, all the drivers posed in a group photograph with a race-worn helmet they had committed to a Wilson auction.
It was one of many Wilson tributes that made it a somber day leading into a popular win.
However, because it is IndyCar, the race is not without its own controversy. Montoya was clearly frustrated all weekend knowing that the race would be worth double points, and the IndyCar gimmick cost him the title.
In fairness, Montoya also won the only other race this season worth double points — the Indy 500 — but he was annoyed that six drivers remained in contention for the title headed into Sunday.
“Is it fair for a normal championship? No, but it’s the rules they want to play with, and if you don’t like the rules, don’t race,” he said.
A sumo star was born in Japan on Sunday when 24-year-old Takerufuji became the first wrestler in 110 years to win a top-division tournament on his debut, triumphing at the 15-day Spring Grand Sumo Tournament in Osaka despite injuring his ankle on the penultimate day. Takerufuji, whose injury had left him in a wheelchair outside the ring, shoved out the higher-ranked Gonoyama at the Edion Arena Osaka to the delight of the crowd, giving him an unassailable record of 13 wins and two losses to claim the Emperor’s Cup. “I did it just through willpower. I didn’t really know what was going
The US’ Ilia Malinin on Saturday produced six scintillating quadruple jumps, including a quadruple Axel, in the men’s free skate to capture his first figure skating world title. The 19-year-old nicknamed the “Quad god,” who is the only skater to land a quadruple Axel in competition, dazzled with an array of breathtakingly executed jumps starting with his quad Axel and including a quadruple Lutz in combination with a triple flip and a quadruple toe loop in combination with a triple toe. He added an unexpected triple-triple combination at the end to earn a world-record 227.79 in the free program for a championship
Shohei Ohtani’s interpreter is being criminally investigated by the IRS, and the attorney for his alleged bookmaker said Thursday that the ex-Los Angeles Dodgers employee placed bets on international soccer — but not baseball. The IRS confirmed Thursday that interpreter Ippei Mizuhara and Mathew Bowyer, the alleged illegal bookmaker, are under criminal investigation through the agency’s Los Angeles Field Office. IRS Criminal Investigation spokesperson Scott Villiard said he could not provide additional details. Mizuhara, 39, was fired by the Dodgers on Wednesday following reports from the Los Angeles Times and ESPN about his alleged ties to an illegal bookmaker and debts well
MLB on Friday announced a formal investigation into the scandal swirling around Shohei Ohtani and his former interpreter amid charges that the Los Angeles Dodgers superstar was the victim of “massive theft.” The Dodgers on Wednesday fired Ippei Mizuhara, Ohtani’s long-time interpreter and close friend, after Ohtani’s representatives alleged that the Japanese two-way star had been the victim of theft, which was reported to involve millions of dollars and link Mizuhara to a suspected illegal bookmaker in California. “Major League Baseball has been gathering information since we learned about the allegations involving Shohei Ohtani and Ippei Mizuhara from the news media,” MLB