IndyCar: Is the 2019 championship battle a two-driver battle?

By Asher Fair | Jun 12, 2019

FORT WORTH, TEXAS - JUNE 08: Josef Newgarden of the United States, driver of the #2 Fitzgerald USA Team Penske Chevrolet, battles Alexander Rossi of the United States, driver of the #27 GESS/Capstone Honda, during the NTT IndyCar Series DXC Technology 600 at Texas Motor Speedway on June 08, 2019 in Fort Worth, Texas. (Photo by Sean Gardner/Getty Images) /

Following the DXC Technology 600 at Texas Motor Speedway, has the 2019 IndyCar championship battle become a two-driver battle?

Team Penske’s Josef Newgarden held of Andretti Autosport’s Alexander Rossi in second place for the second time in the last three IndyCar races to win the 2019 season’s ninth race, the DXC Technology 600, at Texas Motor Speedway. Newgarden also won the first of two races at the Raceway on Belle Isle over Rossi in second last Saturday.

With a combined four victories and nine top two finishes through the 17-race season’s first nine races, it is not shocking that Newgarden and Rossi sit atop the championship standings in first and second place with 367 points and 342 points, respectively.

But while the season is just beyond its halfway mark, is the championship battle already effectively only a two-driver battle?

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Team Penske’s Simon Pagenaud sits 48 points behind Newgarden in third place in the championship standings with 319 points while Chip Ganassi Racing’s Scott Dixon and Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing’s Takuma Sato sit in fourth and fifth with 278 points and 272 points, 89 points and 95 points behind Newgarden, respectively.

Aside of Rossi, these three drivers are the only three drivers who are within 112 points of Newgarden for the lead of the championship standings.

Do Pagenaud, Dixon or Sato still have a chance to win the 2019 championship?

Pagenaud, unlike Dixon and Sato, is still within immediate striking distance of the top two drivers in the championship standings, but his point total is a bit misleading as a result of the fact that the 103rd running of the Indianapolis 500 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, which he won, was a double points-paying race.

Aside of his victory in this race and his victory in the race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course, he has not finished a race in the top five all season. His average finishing position in the other seven races is only 10.00.

Dixon, meanwhile, is a driver who can never be counted out. He has rallied from huge deficits to win four of his five previous IndyCar championships, so if he is able to overcome an 89-point deficit throughout the final eight races of the season, it would not be the first time that he has done so. He is the Tom Brady/New England Patriots of IndyCar.

Before his late wreck in the DXC Technology 600, he had cut down a 92-point deficit to a 52-point deficit to Newgarden in the championship standings in the matter of one race, a regular points-paying race, no less.

Sato has his flashes of looking like a serious championship contender. While his consistency has drastically improved over the last few seasons, he still isn’t on the level where he can truly prove himself as the top driver over the course of an entire 17-race season.

This was on full display in the DXC Technology 600 when he dominated the race’s first 60 laps after starting from the pole position before hitting one of the members of his pit crew and hitting the pit wall, ruining his race even before he was issued a drive-through penalty for causing this mayhem.

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Is the 2019 IndyCar championship battle effectively a two-driver battle? That is certainly how it is beginning to shape up, but there is no reason to believe that Scott Dixon is incapable of changing that by challenging both Josef Newgarden and Alexander Rossi.