IndyCar: Will Scott Dixon win his fifth championship in 2018?

By Asher Fair | Jun 12, 2018

FORT WORTH, TX - JUNE 09: Scott Dixon, driver of the #9 PNC Bank Chip Ganassi Racing Honda (Photo by Robert Laberge/Getty Images) /

Scott Dixon is attempting to win his fifth career IndyCar championship for the third consecutive season. Will he get it done in 2018?

After entering the Chevrolet Dual in Detroit, which included the seventh and eighth races of the 17-race 2018 IndyCar season, with just one victory since the end of the 2016 IndyCar season, four-time IndyCar champion Scott Dixon won two of the next three races in his #9 Chip Ganassi Racing Honda.

Dixon, 37, won the first race of the Chevrolet Dual in Detroit on the 14-turn, 2.35-mile temporary street circuit on the streets of Belle Isle in Detroit, Michigan, and he won the DXC Technology 600 at the four-turn, 1.44-mile Texas Motor Speedway oval in Fort Worth.

After Dixon and Chip Ganassi Racing as a whole failed to get a good grip on the new UAK18 aero kit early in the season, Dixon suddenly finds himself tied for the series lead in victories this season, with Team Penske’s Josef Newgarden and Will Power and he finds himself leading the championship standings by 23 points (357 to 334) over Andretti Autosport’s Alexander Rossi in second place.

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Given the fact that Dixon has won at five of the remaining eight tracks, including four of the next five, on the 2018 IndyCar schedule, it would be foolish to count him out from winning this year’s championship and becoming just the second driver in the sport’s history to win five championships.

The only driver who has won more than four IndyCar championships is A.J. Foyt, who won seven of them. Dixon, who just won the 43rd race of his IndyCar career to pass Michael Andretti (42 wins) for third on the all-time wins list so that he now trails only Foyt (67 wins) and Mario Andretti (52 wins) on that list, will certainly not back down from an opportunity to catch the legendary Foyt in another major statistical category.

Even during Dixon’s “slow” start to the season when it seemed like a lot of people wanted to count him out (again), he was solid. In the first six races of the season, he finished on the podium twice and he finished outside of the top six just once due to a pit road penalty that he was issued for entering the pits while they were closed late in the race on the streets of Long Beach, California, which was the third race of the season.

Now that Dixon is in a rhythm, as evidenced by the fact that he has five top four finishes, four podium finishes and two victories in the last five races with both of those victories having come in the last three races, look out.

Dixon has always been a quick learner. In the second season of the DW12 era, the 2013 season, Dixon won his third career championship after finishing in third place in the championship standings in the 2012 season. He won his fourth career championship in the 2015 season, which was the first season of the aero kit era, as well.

Dixon appears to be the best driver in the field in the new UAK18 aero kit as well, and that is the case despite the fact that he did not have a spectacular start to the season.

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Do you believe that Scott Dixon will win the 2018 IndyCar championship to become just the second driver in IndyCar history to win five championships? With eight races left in the 2018 season anything is possible, but one thing is certain. Counting out “The Iceman” would be a huge mistake.