Chip Ganassi Racing’s Scott Dixon in the No.9 PNC Bank Honda was unable to capitalize on his strong qualifying for the 109th running of the Indianapolis 500 presented by Gainbridge on Sunday.
The Iceman who started fourth had his left rear brakes overheat on the formation lap and had to pit for repairs meaning he went three laps down finishing the race in 23rd.
“I really don’t know what happened there. The left rear break overheated, almost instantly. I didn’t do anything crazy on the warm-up, but it caught fire and just disintegrated. Rough day, I couldn’t do anything about it. We tried to fix it continuously, and the No. 9 PNC Bank Honda had really good speed. All in all, congrats to the team. That’s a huge start to the season for Alex and his first 500, so well done to them.”
Dixon heads to Detroit in sixth place in the championship, 156 points behind Palou.
The Iceman has a nine-place grid penalty for Sunday’s race.
Elsewhere in the Ganassi camp, Kyffin Simpson retired from the race and speaking following the action he said:
It was tough. It was just kind of the wrong place at the wrong time. It was a good restart for us, I felt like we were moving forward really strong, we were in a good spot, the car was feeling good, we just got collected. Nothing I could really do, I tried to get as high as possible, but it gets really sketchy if you get up too high. So I was kind of balancing that, and just barely got clipped. Super sorry to the No. 8 Journie Rewards Honda guys, and we’ll be back strong next weekend.”