LONG BEACH, Calif. — Scott Dixon used mind-boggling fuel-saving strategy Sunday to win the Grand Prix of Long Beach and move closer to A.J. Foyt on IndyCar’s all-time win list with his 57th career victory.
Foyt is IndyCar’s winningest driver with 67 victories — a mark the 43-year-old Dixon isn’t sure he can hit.
“Still sounds like a lot,” he said. “Some years there you could knock out five, six or seven [wins]. If it’s a good year, you can possibly get four or five. That’s strong. We’ll just keep our head down, man. It’s one of those things that I always say hopefully when you leave the sport, you’re happy with the stats.
“Of course, these are big stats. This is a big deal. We’re still a long way away from that.”
Colton Herta and reigning IndyCar champion Alex Palou were baffled by Dixon’s ability to stretch his fuel for nearly 50 of the 85 laps.
“Once he took [the lead], I was like, ‘He’s going to make it work,'” said Dixon teammate Palou. “Probably he’s cheating and he has an extra fuel cell that I don’t know about. Yeah, that’s it. I’m joking.”
Runner-up Herta said Dixon needed both a fast car and his fuel-saving skills to pull it off.
“You need to be good at fuel saving, but you also need a good car to do that,” Herta said. “There’s a few guys in the series that are probably capable of doing it, but they need a lot of things to go right, a lot of things for their car to be able to handle saving fuel.
“Obviously seems like Dixon is the only one that goes for these things sometimes, and they always work out.”
Dixon, with a sly smile, downplayed how easy he made it look.
“I think it was definitely a bit sketchy in the fact that the pressure is coming hard and strong,” he said. “We have a light that comes on that gives you a couple of laps heads up that you’re actually going to run out of fuel. I didn’t see it with two laps to go. They came on the radio saying, ‘Go flat out, overtake, whatever you need.’
“That was definitely nice to hear at that point because the stress level was pretty high. To get after it for the last two laps without a concern was big.”
Dixon’s win is his second in the most prestigious street course race in the United States and gave Chip Ganassi Racing a sweep of the weekend. Ganassi’s sports car team of Renger van der Zande and Sebastian Bourdais won the IMSA race on Saturday.
The victory also makes it two…
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