Even when it looked like Graham Rahal had outsmarted the rest of the NTT IndyCar Series field on Saturday, Scott Dixon managed to prevail in a big way by the end of the race.
Dixon earned the win by a large margin to take his second-straight series victory to open the 2020 season. He won just under a month ago, also, at Texas.
Early on in the action it looked like Dixon, who chose the common drivers’ three-pit-stop strategy, would be stuck in the middle of the pack along with the rest of the field.
The top five drivers in Rahal, Conor Daly, Spencer Pigot, Will Power, and Josef Newgarden had plans to try and make it on two stops with limited speed.
However, it only took a handful of laps from comparing Power’s speed with Dixon’s for Team Penske to surrender its drivers to the pits to change their strategy to mirror the three-stop.
It left the other three as the only ones who were attempting the two-stop approach, and Rahal was making it work. It looked like we might see him land his first victory since the 2017 season.
Instead, thanks to a caution on lap 42, a screw was thrown in that strategy.
The Rahal-Letterman-Lanigan Racing driver stuck to it, though, and actually held the lead on Dixon for a handful of laps.
Dixon would get by Rahal, eventually, and from then on it was all the No. 9 on the NBC broadcast.
The Chip Ganassi driver would win the race by nearly 20 seconds ahead of Rahal and Simon Pagenaud, who salvaged podium finishes.
This is a big momentum piece for Dixon and co. as the IndyCar tour will make four stops in the next two weeks with doubleheader weekends at both Road America and Iowa Speedway.
The next IndyCar race is scheduled to begin at Road America on Saturday, July 11 at 4:00 p.m. CT on NBCSN.
IndyCar GMR Grand Prix Results
1. Scott Dixon
2. Graham Rahal
3. Simon Pagenaud
4. Colton Herta
5. Rinus Veekay
6. Marcus Ericsson
7. Josef Newgarden
8. Pato O’Ward
9. Santino Ferrucci
10. Takuma Sato
11. James Hinchcliffe
12. Conor Daly
13. Ryan Hunter-Reay
14. Zach Veach
15. Felix Rosenqvist
16. Max Chilton
17. Jack Harvey
18. Charlie Kimball
19. Alex Palou
20. Will Power
21. Dalton Kellett
22. Marco Andretti
23. Sage Karam
24. Spencer Pigot
25. Alexander Rossi
26. Oliver Askew
IndyCar Standings
1. Scott Dixon 104
2. Simon Pagenaud 75
3. Josef Newgarden 64
4. Colton Herta 58
5. Graham Rahal 54
6. Zach Veach 50
7. Conor Daly 46
8. Pato O’Ward 42
9. Ryan Hunter-Reay 41
10. Marcus Ericsson 40