He was the youngest-ever (20) winner in his first year, won his first championship in his third season, and has finished outside the Top Five in points only five times. Shortly after the Detroit Grand Prix this May, he will turn 40 while racing neck-and-neck with young guns half his age.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s interesting to see how each generation shifts,\u201d he said in an interview from his home in Indianapolis. \u201cIt\u2019s what drives you. It\u2019s purely competition, and with these young guys there\u2019s been a big insurgence in recent years in IndyCar. I\u2019m loving it.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of those young guys this year will be 23-year-old rookie Oliver Askew of Sweden, part of a bumper crop of new talent, who punched his ticket to the NTT IndyCar Series by winning the Indy Lights feeder championship last year,\u00a0just like New Zealand-native Dixon did 20 years ago on the heels of a dominant 2000 Indy Lights campaign.<\/div>\n
Dixon has tasted success on Detroit\u2019s rugged street course \u2014 winning here three times \u2014 but not at St. Petersburg.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve never won there, which is something that bugs me,\u201d says the veteran nicknamed the Iceman. \u201cWe had some great pre-testing, and the team has done a great job gearing up for the season.\u201d<\/p>\n
Though both St. Pete and Detroit are street courses, Dixon emphasizes that they are dramatically different from the cockpit, primarily because of Belle Isle\u2019s concrete surface.<\/p>\n
\u201cDetroit is its own bag, really. It\u2019s a concrete circuit and it\u2019s quite rough just with where all the seams are and how the concrete lays,\u201d he said. \u201cTechnically, St. Pete has a little more grip and a little more high-speed. Detroit has . . . very low grip in some areas.\u201d<\/p>\n
Detroit commuters know what he\u2019s talking about.<\/p>\n
Dixon has been at the top of IndyCar for so long in part because he is a master of all surfaces. Again, the Federer analogy applies.<\/p>\n
The 38-year old Swiss legend has won his 20 tennis titles on grass, hard courts, and clay. IndyCar is like no other racing series on the planet \u2014 requiring drivers to win on street courses, road courses, short-track ovals, and super-speedway ovals if they are to take home the crown after 17 races.<\/p>\n
That versatility is no more in evidence than the week of May 24-31 when racers will transition from the banked Indianapolis super-speedway to two punishing races on Belle Isle\u2019s mean streets.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the biggest extreme you can have,\u201d said Dixon, who won the coveted Indy 500 in 2008. \u201cOne week you\u2019re at 250 mph with almost no downforce on the car \u2014 about 1,500 pounds \u2014 and then go to a street course topping out at 170 mph but with 6,000 pounds of downforce on the car. \u00a0I love that mix as a driver.\u201d<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t always so.<\/p>\n
Dixon came to US open-wheel racing from the epic road courses of New Zealand and Australia \u2014 \u201cmy all-time favorite\u2019s Philip Island, which is just outside of Melbourne\u201d \u2014 but had to quickly adapt to the banked ovals adored by American fans.<\/p>\n
\u201cHonestly, (my) first year in 2001, I didn\u2019t get along well with the ovals,\u201d said Dixon, even though he had had success in Indy racing\u2019s junior series, Indy Lights. A move to Chip Ganassi\u2019s racing team in 2002, however, was a turning point. He\u2019s been with Ganassi ever since.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce I moved to Ganassi and had a good base of (chassis) setups, it was a good mind shift for me. We went on to win the championship,\u201d he said, recalling an era when the open-wheel series was split between CART and the Indy Racing League. All 16 IRL races were held on ovals.<\/p>\n
Through his two decades of success in the U.S., Dixon has had numerous rivals including champions Dario Franchitti, Sam Hornish, and most recently Josef Newgarden. But perhaps no driver has been as consistently excellent over the last decade as Will Power \u2014 an Australian who is the same age as Dixon.<\/p>\n
\n
Scott Dixon\u00a0
(Photo: Tom E. Puskar, AP)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div><\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Named Autoweek\u2019s top two \u201cDrivers of the Decade,\u201d (Dixon is No. 1) they are the only two pilots to have finished in the Top 10 in points the last 10 years.<\/p>\n
Yet, where Federer and Rafael Nadal will forever be compared as tennis rivals, Dixon does not view Power in the same manner.<\/p>\n
\u201c(There\u2019s) not a set rivalry, it\u2019s always the guy you\u2019re competing with at the time. I think it\u2019s more team based,\u201d reflects Dixon, who will pilot a Honda-powered Dallara Sunday. \u201cWe benchmark ourselves off Penske. They are a helluva team with a fantastic driver lineup and the same goes for Andretti.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dixon says the new season brings a big change for drivers as they acclimate to\u00a0the “aeroscreen” safety cockpit design meant to shield them from flying debris.\u00a0A fierce competitor, Dixon would relish another swim in Belle Isle\u2019s fountain if he can win again here in Detroit.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the only time I\u2019ve ever jumped in a fountain,\u201d he laughed. \u201cIt was a lot colder than I expected, but when you\u2019re winning, man, who cares!\u201d<\/p>\n
But the race that animates him like no other \u2014 a universal feeling among his peers \u2014 is the Indianapolis 500.<\/p>\n
\u201cIndy is like nothing else. I\u2019ve been lucky enough to go to Super Bowls, World Cups, all the great events around the world,\u201d said the Kiwi. \u201cBut to get almost 400,000 people in one place \u2014 the atmosphere is crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n
The road racing talent who won his first racing title as a 14-year old on the other side of the world, is now the dean of IndyCar drivers.<\/p>\n
\u201cI never really got (oval racing) until I drove it. And then I thought,\u00a0\u2018Wow, this is so tough, and so technical.\u2019 It\u2019s crazy, man, living life on the edge at 250 mph.\u201d<\/p>\n
IndyCar Series highlights<\/strong><\/h3>\nOpener:\u00a0Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg<\/strong><\/p>\nWhen:\u00a0<\/strong>3 p.m. Sunday<\/p>\nTV:\u00a0<\/strong>NBCSN<\/p>\nChevrolet Detroit Grand Prix\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nRace 1:\u00a0<\/strong>3 p.m.\u00a0Saturday, May 30<\/p>\nRace 2:\u00a0<\/strong>3 p.m.\u00a0Sunday, May 31<\/p>\nTV:\u00a0<\/strong>Both on NBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Think of Scott Dixon as IndyCar\u2019s Roger Federer. As he enters his 20th year in American open-wheel racing this weekend in St. Petersburg, Florida, Dixon has dominated the sport like few before him. Like Federer in tennis, Dixon has been a constant at the top of the sport, winning five championships and amassing more wins […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24961"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24961"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24961\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24962,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24961\/revisions\/24962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}