Scott Dixon Weighs In On His Dominating Weekend
Scott Dixon was nearly perfect in IndyCar’s return to Watkins Glen, and spoke about his weekend of success after winning the 2016 Grand Prix at the Glen.
Scott Dixon is no stranger to success, but what the defending Verizon IndyCar Series champion did this weekend was on a whole other level. Dixon handily won the 2016 Grand Prix at the Glen after earning the pole and nearly sweeping all the practice sessions – and he knows just how rare an accomplishment that is.
“These are the weekends that you definitely don’t forget,” Dixon said afterward, “just in the sheer fact of we had such a smooth one, which made it hard also going into the race. We had been fast in practice, fast in qualifying, obviously got the pole. You just think of the problems and maybe strategy not going your way or maybe having a mechanical and taking you out of it.”
As always, the veteran racer pointed out that his success was not a one-man effort.
“A lot of it is what the team does,” he continued. “Huge credit to everybody at Team Target and the whole Ganassi organization, from the people back at the workshop to the guys that are here on the weekend to make this opportunity possible. The car was just fantastic, and the track I love. I love coming to obviously upstate New York, and this track is one of the old-school great American tracks that we’re lucky enough to come back here and race.”
“Huge thanks to the Verizon IndyCar Series and everybody at the Glen for working this out in a very short time frame, and the fans responded,” Dixon added. “It was great to see so many people here with not even having this on the schedule earlier in the year.
“[I] just love being back here,” he said, quipping, “and I think we should have a double points race here and probably race two or three times at the Glen.”
You can’t blame him for the suggestion. Dixon has run at Watkins Glen eight times in his career and won four of those races, including three consecutive between 2005 and 2007. It’s another track that he shines at, and he shone brightly this weekend.
Part of that was a little bit of luck falling his way. He had just exited pit lane when a yellow flag fell for the exploding tire of Mikhail Aleshin, but he said that good break doesn’t erase the memory of the opposite situation happening when he had a similarly strong run in the Honda Indy Toronto.
“Unfortunately it doesn’t,” he explained. “You always think about those ones more than some of the victories that you get just because of the sheer fact that you thought you were so close to getting it.
“Toronto was a tough one. We’d been bitten by that three or four times throughout my career there, and we had spoken about it before the race. I think that’s what made it a little bit harder to swallow.”
“I think Mike [Hull] called a perfect race this weekend,” Dixon continued. “It’s so hard. You can’t equate for a yellow coming out when they do, and today we were on the other side of it. We were like, hey, we’re going to pit as soon as we can. As soon as these windows open up, we’re going to take care of ourselves and make sure. If we lose out a little bit, so be it. At least we’re not going to go to the mid-pack or back of the field and have to try and fight our way through.
“As you saw today, we pitted a lap pretty much before anybody else, and we had a caution a lap later, and that’s just how these races can flip. It’s tough to swallow when it’s on the other side.”
The Grand Prix at the Glen win was Dixon’s 40th open-wheel victory, which put him fourth on the all-time wins list. Figuring out where this one would rank amongst those 40 wasn’t easy.
“There’s so many different races,” he reflected. “Indianapolis I think is always going to be a standout just because of what that race means to a lot of people and to yourself, especially I think as I’ve been in the series for so long now, to see what Indianapolis is really about. That one is always really tough to top.
“But I think as the weekend goes, which if you look at my Indianapolis 500 victory in 2008, that month went very similar to how this weekend went. We led a lot of practices, we got a pole and we led almost 150 laps or something, I have no idea. But it was a lot. So you know, Indy is hard to beat, man, but this was definitely a pretty sweet weekend.”
There’s no doubt that Dixon had a fantastic weekend at Watkins Glen and boosted his 2016 season tremendously. Yet given everything he’s accomplished over the years, would he rank this weekend among one of his best all-time?
“It’s probably close to it, yeah,” he reflected. “I think for a road course. I know we’ve had some dominant weekends like this at ovals. Kansas I think rings a bell back in the day where the team had a very dominant streak going, and Mid-Ohio we’ve had something close to that, but I think to lead all three practices, warmup, qualifying the pole, and then win the race.
“I think TK [Tony Kanaan] actually got fast lap in the race, which is one thing I didn’t get,” he concluded, laughing, “I’ll talk to him about that later.”
That was about the only thing that didn’t fall Scott Dixon’s way this weekend, as Dixon stunned IndyCar one more time at Watkins Glen.
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