Scott Dixon was over the moon after finishing the Iowa Corn 300 on the podium on Sunday, especially after being all at sea with set-up through practice and qualifying.
The New Zealander was still not 100% happy with his car throughout the 300-lap event, especially towards the end of the stints, with the Chip Ganassi Racing driver losing second place with just a few laps remaining to Will Power.
Dixon also praised race winner Josef Newgarden, who he felt was on a different level throughout the race, revealing that the performance of his tyres faded while trying to stay with the Ed Carpenter Racing driver.
“Considering how the weekend started it was pretty dang good,” said Dixon of his podium finish. “We were in a hole as of Friday so we had a wholesale change for the race today. So it took us a little while to get the balance closer – but we had too much understeer and fell off a lot towards the end.
“It almost seemed like (Josef) had another set of wings on that car – huge credit to him and everybody at the team there. They did a helluva job. I knew all day that he was running very fast, but it wasn’t until the end that I got up to the pointy end of the field.
“I kind of hurt my race toward that latter part there – I was trying to keep up with Josef and burned the front tires up.”
