UpdateF1 >> Formula 1 News > Dixon dominates Mid-Ohio race

Kiwi completes twentieth win milestone

Scott Dixon took a commanding win in the IndyCar race at Mid-Ohio. The Ganassi driver held a half-minute advantage over Penske's Ryan Briscoe to grab his twentieth IndyCar Series victory.

"Obviously it's a fantastic milestone for myself and obviously for the team," said reigning champion Dixon. "I've achieved all of those wins with Target. Without them, it wouldn't have been possible.

Dixon also retakes the championship lead from Briscoe, but that doesn't seem to be a big deal for the Kiwi.

"I don't really care for leading the championship now," said Dixon, who has both lost and won the title in the final race the past two seasons. "The only time you want to lead it is at the end. If you can get a runaway now and start building some points on those guys, that's going to be important. But I'll happily be second going into (the season finale at) Homestead.

Polesitter and last year's winner Ryan Briscoe lost his lead to Coyne's Justin Wilson early on and then got jumped on the pitstops by Dixon. Briscoe settled for second after Wilson hit trouble in the pits.

"No doubt he was strong," said Briscoe. "I heard him saying he could just put the car anywhere. He just had one of those cars. I had one of those days last year. I could do anything with it, be aggressive and the car would stick.

Behind the two rivals, other Ganassi driver Dario Franchitti took third, ahead an impressive Ryan Hunter-Reay (A.J. Foyt). "We were able to gap anybody out there and we were holding with the leaders. It was a lot of fun," Hunter-Reay said. "A fourth for this team right now is a big deal."

Justin Wilson, who took Briscoe's lead on lap 9 and then lost it to Dixon later on, looked on for another strong road course result. However, Wilson ran out of fuel on his in lap, which caused his car to stall in the pits, dropping the Briton out of contention.

"We were having a great weekend, the car was running quick," said Wilson, who eventually crossed the line down in thirteenth. "Obviously, we are disappointed with the results as we wanted to do much better."

Japan's Hideki Mutoh surprisingly finished fifth as the first of the Andretti-Green drivers, with Marco Andretti behind him in sixth.

Meanwhile, Paul Tracy took seventh in a one-off substitution for KV's regular driver Mario Moraes, while Oriol Servia (NHL) ended up in eleventh on his comeback. Robert Doornbos, who switched from NHL to HVM, finished in fourteenth, right in front of teammate E.J. Viso.

Scott Dixon now has a narrow three point lead over Ryan Briscoe. Dario Franchitti is third, twenty points behind his Ganassi teammate.

Full results:

1. Scott Dixon - Ganassi
2. Ryan Briscoe - Penske
3. Dario Franchitti - Ganassi
4. Ryan Hunter-Reay - A.J. Foyt
5. Hideki Mutoh - Andretti Green
6. Marco Andretti - Andretti Green
7. Paul Tracy - KV
8. Graham Rahal - Newman/Haas/Lanigan
9. Raphael Matos - Luczo Dragon
10. Tony Kanaan - Andretti Green
11. Oriol Servia - Newman/Haas/Lanigan
12. Helio Castroneves - Penske
13. Justin Wilson - Dale Coyne
14. Robert Doornbos - HVM
15. Ernesto Viso - HVM
16. Dan Wheldon - Panther
17. Ed Carpenter - Vision
18. Richard Antinucci - 3G
19. Danica Patrick - Andretti Green

20. Mike Conway - Dreyer & Reinbold
21. Milka Duno - Dreyer & Reinbold

Filip Cleeren

Written: Mon, 10 Aug 2009 22:35:55