The six times championship winner secured his seventh podium at St. Petersburg after not making the cut for the Fastest Six on Saturday in what was a more-up-than-down weekend, topping the first practice session but crashing out in the second.
In spite of making contact with Felix Rosenqvist at the beginning of the race right after the first restart, Dixon managed to achieve his 132rd career podium, even leading three laps before pitting, and a 192nd ever Top 5, an impressive achievement shared with Mario Andretti.
The Chip Ganassi driver commented on his performance after the race, apologising to the Arrow McLaren driver and former teammate he unexpectedly came into contact with:
“It was definitely a wild race and glad everybody is okay. Feel bad again for getting into Felix a little bit there on the restart. Made his day definitely a little bit tougher. I thought we were definitely clear at that point, and when that kind of pinch point comes, we just sort of came together there, so that was frustrating.”
He later expanded on the crash, mentioning how he hadn’t seen the Swedish driver while making a mistake of his own:
“Yeah, I didn’t realize he was still there, and I didn’t feel like I pinched him that much. Kind of where you come through the left-hand wall does come in quite a bit, and then I didn’t turn in my normal line. I was still more to the right than I typically would have been, but if I could do it again, I would have moved more to the right.”
Asked about the rest of his race, Dixon was rather upbeat, even if disappointed about the yellow flag brought out by the collision of Kirkwood and Daly just after he had stopped to pit:
“Yeah, it was a pretty smooth day. I think how the cautions fell kind of played to us until that untimely one. I think we would have clearly got the lead there, and it would have been kind of smooth sailing.”
Another slight issue he had to manage during the race was tyre degradation, which left the driver from New Zeeland wondering if a different strategy could have aided him in his quest for the race win:
“Strategy-wise we didn’t have to go super long on the reds, and then we could have pitted early for the blacks, and kind of got out of being in a bad situation for going long and getting caught on a yellow later.”
It was overall an amazing weekend for the Chip Ganassi team, who leaves St. Petersburg with an unexpected 1-3, as Dixon brought up thanking the team, while also sparing a thought for second place finisher Pato O’Ward, who missed out on the race win due to a slight engine issue:
“Still take great points. A third-place finish is fantastic here, considering how the day was. Huge credit to the team.
“Congrats to Marcus, as well. They did a hell of a job. Feel bad for Pato here obviously with — a plenum event is just something you can’t do much about. Yeah, take the points and move on to Texas,” he concluded.
Photo credits: Chip Ganassi Racing
