08/06/14

New Blog Post

Well to be honest with you, I really didn’t see that one coming! My fifth win and 10th for the Target Team at Mid-Ohio really came out of nowhere. Starting dead last is never a great feeling, but we put together a great strategy and saved the right amount of fuel and it goes to show you never know what’s going to happen until the checkered flag falls.

It's a good feeling though. Winning is a good feeling. I think having the year that we've had, you understand why the feeling is so good. Sometimes you can understand if one of the Ganassi cars hasn't won at this point in the season, but all four of us?

I think you never want to get complacent in this series. It's extremely competitive. Everybody in the Verizon IndyCar Series does a fantastic job. That's why it's so tough to win. For me to get back on the top spot, it means a lot. I knew we had a good car. But at a road course like this, a very tight one, to be able to pass 21 other cars, unless you have strategy go in your favor, it's pretty much impossible.

It's kind of like when you win the Indianapolis 500 for the first time. It's a small bit of that with relief and knowing that we didn't go a year without winning a race and that we can definitely try and close out this championship as strong as possible.

You still set your sights on winning. You know it's going to take a lot. But I think especially with pits closed and cautions it's not that much of a fantasy anymore. I think even if you look at a lot of the street courses this year, the people that ended up winning them, you would have thought no way they would have won it.

It definitely brings a different dynamic. Last year's championship was all pits-open cautions, which made the race fairly straightforward. If you weren't at the front of the field, you were going to really struggle. Mid-Ohio, these road courses, you don't expect cautions. That's the tough part. We knew that we needed one, and we probably needed one in the right place to make a big jump that we needed.

I know we’re still mathematically eligible to win the championship with the No. 9 team at this point, but there are three races left, and one with double points at Fontana, and we’re just going out and trying to win each one. We really have nothing to lose.

….until then…

Enjoy the racing!

SD

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#ScottDixon