IndyCar: Despite no title, Scott Dixon still managed to set a record

Scott Dixon may have gone consecutive seasons without an IndyCar championship for the first time in several years, but he still set a record.

Six-time IndyCar champion Scott Dixon came up shy of winning a record-tying seventh title for the second consecutive season, marking just the second time he has gone back-to-back seasons without winning a championship in the last decade.

Perhaps more disappointing for Dixon is the fact that a pit road speeding penalty late in May’s Indy 500, which saw him become the race’s all-time laps led leader, ruined his chances of becoming a two-time Indy 500 winner.

He scored 33 points in that race instead of 95 with a second place finish or possibly 115 with a win, a difference that would have won him the title.

But Dixon, who finished the 2022 season in third place in the standings, still managed to set a new record to conclude the year.

Dixon was one of two drivers to compete every one of the 2,268 laps on the 17-race 2022 schedule, the other being series champion Will Power of Team Penske.

But Dixon is now the only driver in IndyCar history to have run every lap on the schedule in multiple seasons. He also pulled it off in 2020, when he won the most recent of his six championships after running all 1,900 laps on the 14-race calendar. He won four races in 2020 and two in 2022.

Dixon, who has said that he would like to compete in IndyCar for at least another five seasons, is under contract to drive the #9 Honda again in 2023. He has been with Chip Ganassi Racing since 2002 and has driven the #9 car full-time since 2003, when he won his first championship.

In the last 11 seasons, Dixon, whose 53 career wins rank second on the all-time wins list behind seven-time champion A.J. Foyt’s 67, is the only driver to win a championship following a top three finish in the standings the previous year, and he has done it three times during that span. Power finished in ninth place in last year’s standings.