IndyCar: Scott Dixon's cold streak has become alarming

Scott Dixon has not finished in the top eight in any of the last three IndyCar races. He hadn’t failed to do so since May of 2014.

Team Penske’s Josef Newgarden has eaten away at the IndyCar points lead of Chip Ganassi Racing’s Scott Dixon over the last four races, cutting his gap to the top down from 117 points to just 40 with two races remaining.

Depending on the wins tiebreaker, which Dixon currently leads four to three over Newgarden, Newgarden needs to make up either 20 or 20.5 points per race over the final two races of the year to win the title.

The driver of the #1 Chevrolet has trimmed Dixon’s gap by a whopping average of 19.25 points over the last four races, which is no easy feat against the five-time champion.

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Newgarden’s results during this four-race span include two victories, one at World Wide Technology Raceway and another at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course, and finishes of second and eighth place at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course.

Dixon’s results don’t include any finishes outside of the top 10, which makes Newgarden’s gap-trimming all the more impressive. However, Dixon’s last three races show that this recent “cold streak”, which has seen him lose 77 points relative to the two-time champion, is more alarming than it looks.

Dixon entered each of the last four races as the reigning winner at the venue. He finished in fifth place at World Wide Technology Raceway after winning the race there the day before, and he won the race at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course last year before this year’s doubleheader, which netted him two 10th place finishes. He spun out during the second race.

Having won the race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course in July, he entered the first race of this weekend’s doubleheader as the reigning winner as well. He could only manage a ninth place result after going off the track for the second consecutive race.

Dixon may be on an eight-race streak of top 10 finishes, his longest streak of that variety since the end of the 2017 season and into the 2018 season when he reeled off 13 top 10 results in a row.

But he has not finished higher than ninth place in any of the last three races.

Prior to now, he hadn’t failed to finish in the top eight in three straight races since all the way back in May of 2014.

He finished in 15th place at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course before crashing out of the Indianapolis 500 and finishing in 29th. He followed that up with an 11th place run at the Raceway on Belle Isle.

His current three-race stint includes no results lower than 10th place, so it is not super problematic compared to that three-race run from 2014. But considering the fact that he is trying to win a championship and Newgarden has been running at the front on a regular basis and taking huge chunks out of his points lead consistently, this isn’t good enough.

Should Dixon fail to finish today’s race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course outside of the top eight, it would mark the first time since the 2005 season — more than 15 years ago!!! — that he has gone four consecutive races without a top eight result.

He finished in 13th place at the Milwaukee Mile, 19th at Michigan International Speedway, 23rd at Kentucky Speedway and 16th at Pikes Peak International Raceway during that four-race span.

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Tune in to NBC at 2:30 p.m. ET this afternoon for the live broadcast of the second race of the Harvest Grand Prix doubleheader from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course. Dixon is set to start in 15th place while Newgarden is set to start in ninth.

IndyCar: Scott Dixon’s cold streak has become alarming

By Asher Fair | Oct 3, 2020

Scott Dixon has not finished in the top eight in any of the last three IndyCar races. He hadn’t failed to do so since May of 2014.