INDYCARNATION

 

KANSAS CITY, Kan. – Scott Dixon is a glass-half-full guy, but as he was pounding out lap after blazing lap on the 1.52-mile Kansas Speedway oval as the race leader he was just waiting for something to go wrong.

It never did, much to his relief.

Dixon won the Road Runner Turbo Indy 300 for the second consecutive year, giving Target Chip Ganassi Racing its fourth victory in a row at the track (Dan Wheldon won in 2007 and ‘08) and the team’s seventh IZOD IndyCar Series 1-2 finish. He held off Dario Franchitti over the final six laps after a restart in the first oval race of the season.

“Definitely at the end I was worried because we've been caught out so many times with the pit sequence,” said Dixon, who led a field-high 167 laps and vaulted to second in the championship standings. “I thought, ‘There's going to be a yellow come out here shortly and it's going a catch us out.’ Sure enough, just as we pitted, it came out. It didn't affect us. If we'd gone one lap longer, the last 10 or 15 laps could have been a different story. Luckily enough it worked out for us.

“Going into the month of May (at Indianapolis), winning a race is huge for us and our team needed this “I just hope we can carry it through.”

While Team Target dominated, six different teams were represented in the top 10. The top five in points are separated by 38 points heading into the biggest points-paying race of the season (double-digit points will be awarded for top qualifiers in the Indianapolis 500 in addition to race points). Points leader Will Power finished 12th (his first time out of the top five in the five races this season).

Andretti Autosport’s Tony Kanaan improved 11 positions, passing Team Penske’s Helio Castroneves for third on Lap 198 of 200, and Ryan Hunter-Reay posted his best oval finish by moving up 17 spots from his starting position in the Andretti Autosport-prepared No. 37 IZOD car to finish fifth.

“Toward the end it was madness and I was in the middle of it,” Castroneves, who finished second in the ‘09 race, said of the last of four restarts after contact involving the Nos. 5 and 06 cars of Takuma Sato and Hideki Mutoh.

Dixon, who didn’t necessarily need to use many of the 20 pushes of the Honda overtake assist system early on, was active with the button on the restart to remain ahead of the hard-charging Franchitti in the No. 10 Suave entry. Dixon led a field-high 167 laps (he led 134 last year) to move closer to Sam Hornish Jr.’s series (3,428) record.

“It was a short weekend for everybody,” said Dixon, who started on the front row. “Track time, there wasn't much of it. I think rolling off the truck was important. We made a few minor changes to the car for the race setup, just tried to make it more consistent over a long run. It definitely showed in the race.

“I could see the competition was pretty tight back there, a lot of passing and stuff going on. So I just hope we can carry the momentum over.”

Pole sitter Ryan Briscoe led the initial 31 laps, being overtaken by Dixon on the frontstretch. But the interesting parts of his race were yet to come: The left-front tire of the No. 6 Team Penske car rolled off on the backstretch of Lap 78, which dropped him to 11th. He moved to seventh by Lap 115, only to fall out of the top 10 by Lap 165. On the final restart, Briscoe had positioned himself in sixth place, where he remained.

“We got out of sequence when we lost a wheel and that left us short a set of sticker tires,” he said. “It was an exciting race and we probably passed more cars than anyone else out there. Considering the day we had, I feel pretty good that we were able to finish on the lead lap and bring home a top-six finish.”

KV Racing Technology’s Mario Moraes overtook Alex Tagliani in the No. 77 FAZZT Race Team car for seventh place on the final lap, and Richard Petty/Andretti Autosport’s John Andretti posted his first IZOD IndyCar Series top-10 finish (ninth). Vitor Meira in the No. 14 ABC Supply car for A.J. Foyt Racing was 10th.

“We had a problem in qualifying that hurts us,” said Moraes, who started 12th. “We tried to fix it for the race, but maybe it wasn’t enough.  The car ran pretty good though.  The setup wasn’t the best for today. Overall, I thought we could have had a better placing. So there are some things we can work on for Indy."  

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