Chip Ganassi Racing’s Scott Dixon in the No.9 PNC Bank Honda overcame an engine change penalty to score his third win of the season and the 56th of his career.
The six-time NTT INDYCAR SERIES champion suffered a failure in morning warm up at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca on Sunday and started 11th.
The Iceman was issued a drive through penalty for avoidable contact with Ed Carpenter Racing’s Rinus VeeKay.
Dixon and his No.9 crew went off strategy and that helped him to avoid the chaos to claim victory.
“A credit to this team. “They’ve been executing like that all year. We got caught up in some mayhem at the start. I definitely didn’t agree with the (penalty) call, but I haven’t seen all of it yet. But I had nowhere to go. But we won; that’s all that matters. We won.
Dixon went on to say:
Wild day! Obviously starting with a penalty and then getting a penalty right at the start was not great, it was very up-and-down. Ultimately, having the option to do fuel mileage when we needed to and jump the pack when we needed to was great. I was shocked to see the 28 and the 5 pit when they did. That Honda fuel mileage made it really easy to run out front today and we had great speed too. All-in-all, to finish the year on a win is huge.”
For Alex Palou in the No.10 Be The One American Legion Honda who was officially crowned champion he scored another podium finish with third place and speaking following the action he said:
It’s been an amazing year. Five wins, 10 podiums! And today was going to be a really good race as well. The yellows didn’t help us, but it was a fun race. Everybody at Chip Ganassi Racing did an awesome job giving us the cars we needed and I’m super happy to get our second championship together.”
Honda Performance Development scored a total of 12 victories over the course of the 17 race season with a win rate of just over 70 percent and missed on the Manufacturers championship by just 12 points.
Speaking about the season, Kelvin Fu (Vice President, Honda Performance Development) on Honda’s 12-race win season:
“A great end to a great season here at Laguna Seca. Congrats to everyone at Honda, HPD and Chip Ganassi Racing on another race win—our 12th of the year, and a championship 1-2 for Alex Palou and Scott Dixon, as well as Rookie of the Year honors for Marcus Armstrong. We’re looking forward to fighting for more next year with the new IndyCar Hybrid engines”
