IndyCar: Here's how massive Scott Dixon's points lead is

Scott Dixon’s lead in the IndyCar championship standings is all but insurmountable with six races remaining on the 2020 schedule.

If anybody other than Chip Ganassi Racing’s Scott Dixon still had a chance to win the 2020 IndyCar championship and prevent the five-time champion from winning his sixth title, they failed to stand up at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway.

Dixon entered this 200-lap race around the four-turn, 1.25-mile (2.012-kilometer) oval in Madison, Illinois with an 84-point lead over Team Penske’s Josef Newgarden in the championship standings with seven of the season’s 14 races in the books.

To put that in perspective, one race win is worth 50 points (51 guaranteed since winners must lead at least one lap), and drivers who competed in a race are guaranteed to score at least five points.

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So already, the 40-year-old New Zealander was effectively two races ahead of even being challenged for the title.

With a doubleheader at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway, one of the few tracks where Dixon had never won and where he had recorded two finishes of 15th place or worse in four starts, looming, there was still hope.

Sure, there’s still hope — but that hope might be aligned with the 2021 season more so than the 2020 campaign.

Dixon became the 11th different driver to win a race at Gateway in 11 races at the track, as he held off Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing’s Takuma Sato by just 0.1404 seconds to secure the victory, a 1-2 swap of the Indy 500 result from last Sunday.

Meanwhile, while Dixon was busy wrapping up his fourth win, sixth top two finish and seventh top five result through eight races this season, Newgarden was down in 12th place.

Dixon scored 51 points in this race.

Newgarden scored just 18.

Arrow McLaren SP’s Pato O’Ward, who entered the race in third place in the championship standings, did a solid job to finish in third behind Dixon and Sato and score 38 points, but he still lost 13 points to Dixon and did not score enough points to pass Newgarden in the championship standings.

Now with six races to go, Dixon’s lead in the standings is 117 points over Newgarden.

Let’s also not forget the fact that there will not be a double points-paying season finale for the first time since 2013 this year.

Oh, and there are still two races at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course left to be run, a track where Dixon is a six-time winner. In fact, he is the most recent winner at the venues slated to host five of the final six races of the season (Gateway, Mid-Ohio twice and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course twice).

The streets of St. Petersburg, the site of the season finale, is the lone exception.

We already noted that Dixon has finished lower than fifth place just once this season. But even if Newgarden were to win three races in a row (assuming 51 points per win) and Dixon were to finish in sixth (28 points) in all three races, he would still be 48 points ahead of the two-time and reigning champion.

No driver has won a championship after leading the championship standings after every since since Sam Hornish Jr. in 2001 (Sebastien Bourdais did do it in the 2006 Champ Car season), and no driver has locked up the championship before the season finale since Dan Wheldon did it back in 2005.

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Dixon is on place to end both of those droughts, and he has a chance to inch closer to doing so in tomorrow’s race at World Wide Technology at Gateway. This race is set to be broadcast live on NBC Sports Network beginning at 3:00 p.m. ET.

IndyCar: Here’s how massive Scott Dixon’s points lead is

By Asher Fair | Aug 29, 2020

Scott Dixon’s lead in the IndyCar championship standings is all but insurmountable with six races remaining on the 2020 schedule.