INDIANAPOLIS – Discuss everything you need to know if Scott Dixon had the most productive car or if IndyCar avoided a yellow flag ending for the 104th race of the Indianapolis 500. Takuma Sato will let you finish, while you say hello and then dip in your milk at two percent. Because rahal Driver Letterman Lanigan Racing, a proud Japanese driver, took the checkered flag on Sunday to design an Indy 500 that will be talked about for years.
“The Indy 500, you never know until the last corner,” said Sato, the 20th two-time winner of the Great Racing Show. “It’s amazing. Thanks a lot. I can’t locate the words, I can’t locate the words.
“It’s amazing.”
Sato’s 500-moment name in the last four practices came when his frontline teammate Dixon led 111 laps, adding a pass on the first lap to poleman Marco Andretti who temporarily kicked Andretti Autosport off the stage. Dixon on the 9th overall in the 500 laps of his career with 452, but loaded near the front of the record books, surpassing A.J.’s tastes. Foyt and Mario Andretti third.
In what had been unofficially described as the “year of Dixon” after Chip Ganassi Racing’s 3 consecutive victories to kick off the 2020 season, he seemed in a position to flee the peloton. At one point in the first part of Sunday’s race, Dixon led for more than 10 seconds and the peloton split into two good strategies. He’s way above all of them.
And even when the box accumulated in one of the seven warnings spread throughout the day, it almost looked like Dixon was there, leading or preparing to qualify, everyone’s focus.
But he said Thursday it could be a pilot’s fall.
“I think if you can fly under the radar, which will be tricky when you’re ahead, if you can be in the top five and you’re not at all wrong, it would be best, I think,” he said. Thursday’s media day. “You don’t need to be the center of attention, that’s for sure, I think.
“You’ll have to have a much better day. You almost want a better run and a little luck, man. With the way the warnings and the fuel war strategy fall, there seem to be (late) warnings that in front of the box or split it a little Yes, I think you want a very good day with a lot of luck.
Dixon had almost the first, but he couldn’t catch the last one.
More than halfway through the race, Dixon had clung to an unofficial teammate in last year’s runner-up, Alexander Rossi, as the two exchanged headbutts back and forth on the turn and the pair tried to create a gap in the rest of the group. The manoeuvre began once Andretti’s driver advanced Sato on lap 101.
But after the twist of Alex Palou’s car’s drive around lap 122, almost the total platoon rushed to the pit lane to prevent two laps later. There they hit Rossi out of his box and made him a slight touch with Sato, who was driving down the slow lane. Rossi asked for a damaging release and moved to the back of the box in the reboot: Dixon’s wife is gone.
Rossi would lose traction in 2 20 laps later and crash into the wall, his day finished.
“I keep saying what I just said, but still, Takuma reacts to reboots and doesn’t get a penalty. Just consistency,” Rossi said on the show. “We will communicate about it. I don’t have an opinion right now. It’s notoriously frustrating. There are two sides of the story.”
Sato’s car survived contact, and three laps after the green flag, Sato jumped first, overtaking Dixon at the start and finish line at lap 157. After leading what he said after the race, maybe there were a few extra laps at this point. Array the RLL forced to dive into pits for their last prevention a lap before Dixon, who after the race thought his competitor was dangerously thrown at the back of his tank.
“He seemed to hesitate around the age of 15 or 12 to leave. We looked like it directly before, but I think he made a decision, he was too slow and he came back,” Dixon said. “I probably deserve to have been more competitive there. Maybe he deserves to have done it harder and maybe he’s run out of fuel. It’s hard for the swallowing team.
“But it’s an incredible race, and it comes out victorious. Drink milk, and that’s all that matters.”
After the platoon first crossed the pit los Angeles in los Angeles, Sato took the third plos angelesce – and the proverbial race head in Dixon – in the 172 Angeles. Suddenly, his car got to the max, eventually pushing Dixon a deficit to second. Celos angeles a rappelé le souvenir de los angeles défense de los angeles t’te du champion en titre Simon Pagenaud il ya un an sur Rossi, for-ant toujours los angeles voiture é passer du haut, Dixon ne se rapprochant jamais assez des virages 2 ou four pouruer une course légitime.
Sato said that with less than 20 years to play, his team told him he was right about the fuel, making head defense possible.
“Our team, we had a stimulation rally in the garage this morning, and I said I’ve never been so satisfied with this team’s current stage,” said team owner Bobby Rahal, whose team also won in 2004 with Buddy Rice. “They clashed with Andretti, Ganassi, McLaren, Penske. A tough audience, maybe tougher than usual, and we had to compete and win. Just a great sense of pride for the team.
“And Takuma, is shown and in a position to go. It doesn’t have 80 or 85 or even 90%. That’s what I like about him. He’s just a guy who understands that, and goes out and does as productive as possible.”
When the head platoon began to sail through traffic with six laps to go, they reached the line, as the maximum and monumental moment of the race occurred a few hundred meters from them. Sato’s teammate Spencer Pigot veered toward Turn 4, sliding toward the pit lane aterensor and crushing his car, and Dixon was awaiting his victory in the Indy 500. The precaution came here, and with only five laps to go, the race ended under the yellow flag, rather than under a red flag that was used in 2014 with 8 laps for the end.
IndyCar factored in the following statement: “IndyCar did everything imaginable to finish the races under the green, but in this case, after the evaluation of the incident, there were very few laps left to gather the platoon behind the speed car, factor a red flag and then restart for a green flag ending.”
Dixon asked himself the question, thinking that a career leader with about 3 to do “would have been an easy target.” Sato was not sure how it might have happened, however, the owner of his team left room for doubt.
“It was a risk to win at any level of the race,” Rahal said, “and he’s a worthy winner.”
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Email IndyStar motorsport reporter Nathan Brown to [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter: @By_NathanBrown.