Three things are inevitable in life. Death, taxes, and Scott Dixon competing for an NTT IndyCar Series championship.
Dixon started buried in the field in fourteenth and sustained damage to the floor of his car in the lap 26 caution. Yet with luck on the final pit stop, no grip, and 50-lap old tyres, Dixon out-dueled fellow countryman Scott McLauglin to the race win.
“We had a big crash there that took half the floor off the car, we had to take four turns of front wing out so we had no grip,” Dixon said. “…and then I think we did 45 or 50 laps on that last set of tyres, so the last stop we didn’t even take tyres!”
“Nashville is awesome!”
With his unlikely win, the “Iceman” now only sits six points behind points leader Will Power as he tries to tie A.J. Foyt for the most championships in series history with seven.
After severe weather delayed the start of the race by over an hour, McLaughlin led the field to green alongside Romain Grosjean. The “Crashville” moniker came out early in this race, as Colton Herta tangled with Dalton Kellett in turn four on lap four. No caution was thrown, but Herta did go one lap down as he limped back to the pit lane.
Misfortunes continued in the Andretti camp as Alexander Rossi brought out the first caution of the day four laps later, locking his rear brakes and stalling his engine. This also put Rossi a lap down like his teammate, having already pit on lap four to gamble on an alternate strategy.
McLauglin led the field back to green on lap 11, and the field finally got settled into a run. Drivers on the green-walled alternate tyres, made of guayule, began to make their pit stops around lap 23, when the second caution flag flew for Helio Castroneves, who spun in turn three.
Alex Palou, Simon Pagenaud, and David Malukas all pit before the caution came out, cycling to the front and gaining precious positions.
Crashville took full effect after the lap 25 restart with a massive, seven-car pileup taking out seven cars and quite possibly Pato O’Ward‘s championship hopes. A traffic jam in turn six saw Graham Rahal rear-end O’Ward (who also rear-ended Power but not as aggressively), while in an other incident Callum Ilott, Kellett and more (including Dixon) found themselves in the clutter.
While Rahal was able to get repaired and back out on track, O’Ward was forced to retire. He finished twenty-fourth.
These back to back cautions put Rossi and Herta back on the lead lap and on the right strategy.
After a lengthy caution, the field went back to green on lap 33, and right back to yellow before a full lap could be run as Devlin DeFrancesco and Takuma Sato crashed in turn ten. Sato was trying to go around the outside of DeFrancesco and after slight contact both were sent into the outside wall. At the same time, Ilott and Rossi found themselves in the runoff at turn nine, with Ilott suffering a cut tyre.
The field once again got set to restart the race on lap 41 after an aborted attempt, with Palou maintaining the lead after slight contact in the rear by second-place Pagenaud, who then found himself slipping down the order with differential issues. McLaughlin then slid into second place and began to hunt Palou down.
On lap 50, Dixon, Power, and Christian Lundgaard were the first to make their final pit stops, which proved to be the perfect call. Rinus Veekay, who also pit that lap, immediately brought out a caution on his out lap after running into Rahal in turn four, who already crunched the outside barrier. This launched the trio of Dixon, Power and Lundgaard right to the top of the order behind an off-strategy Josef Newgarden as all the other leaders pit under caution.
The next restart came on lap 56, and finally the field settled into a bit of a rhythm once more. Newgarden, off strategy on primary tyres, needed a lot of caution laps to stay in the hunt for the win, and he got another on lap 65 as Kyle Kirkwood took out David Malukas in turn nine, a heartbreaking crash that saw both drivers having incredible performances bow out unceremoniously.
Going into turn nine, Kirkwood made an incredibly late move, hitting the inside wall before bouncing into Malukas and sending both into the tyre barrier. After running in the top ten (and Malukas running as high as third), the two finished nineteenth and twentieth respectively. This marks Kirkwood’s seventh DNF of the season.
Newgarden pit under this caution for the alternate tyre, handing the lead to Dixon for the restart with 11 laps to go. McLauglin made a huge dive to take fourth place, with Grosjean behind making aggressive moves to get into the top five. Marcus Ericsson was another victim of getting rear-ended, falling back now with gear selection issues. McLaughlin soon got up to third, with both him and second-place Lundgaard closing in on a wounded Dixon.
Before they could make a move, however, yet another caution came out with eight laps to go for Jimmie Johnson, who spun coming off the bridge in the run to turn three, with a hard impact in the wall.
A quick cleanup left five laps to go at the next restart and Dixon wasted no time taking the lead again, while McLauglin took second from Lundgaard. Further back, Newgarden made a bold dive into turn nine that put Grosjean in the wall, and the caution flag out. While a gutsy move, Newgarden was fully alongside Grosjean in the corner, and race control decided to not take action despite the Frenchman’s frustrations with Newgarden.
The red flag was put out not long after the yellow, to ensure that the race could be completed under green. The race went green with two laps to go, allowing for one full lap of racing, Dixon versus McLaughlin, kiwi versus kiwi, with Dixon holding on to take sole possession of second place on the all time IndyCar wins list.
Thanks to the misfortunes of the other title contenders, Dixon now sits second with three races remaining, only six points back of Power.
McLaughlin came home second, with Palou putting two Chip Ganassi Racing cars on the podium after his third place finish. Somehow despite going a lap down early, Rossi and Herta came back to finish fourth and fifth respectively.
Newgarden kept his foot in the title race with a sixth place finish, followed by Felix Rosenqvist in seventh. Lundgaard, who ran out of push to pass and fell down the order in the final restarts, finished eighth, with Pagenaud grabbing Meyer Shank Racing another top ten in ninth. Jack Harvey rounded out the top ten, his first top ten of the year.
With the summer stretch now over, only three races remain in the season. Next up is the final oval of the year with the Bommarito Automotive Group 500 at World Wide Technology Raceway on 20 August.
Big Machine Music City Grand Prix – Official Results
| RANK | CAR NO. | DRIVER | NAT | TEAM | TIME |
| 1 | 9 | Scott Dixon | NZL | Chip Ganassi Racing | 2:06:24.2439 |
| 2 | 3 | Scott McLaughlin | NZL | Team Penske | + 0.1067 sec. |
| 3 | 10 | Alex Palou | ESP | Chip Ganassi Racing | + 0.6100 sec. |
| 4 | 27 | Alexander Rossi | USA | Andretti Autosport | + 0.9412 sec. |
| 5 | 26 | Colton Herta | USA | Andretti Autosport | + 1.3942 sec. |
| 6 | 2 | Josef Newgarden | USA | Team Penske | + 2.1828 sec. |
| 7 | 7 | Felix Rosenqvist | SWE | Arrow McLaren SP | + 2.8426 sec. |
| 8 | 30 | Christian Lundgaard (R) | DEN | Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing | + 3.2724 sec. |
| 9 | 60 | Simon Pagenaud | FRA | Meyer Shank Racing | + 4.1560 sec. |
| 10 | 45 | Jack Harvey | GBR | Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing | + 4.4000 sec. |
| 11 | 12 | Will Power | AUS | Team Penske | + 6.7843 sec. |
| 12 | 21 | Rinus VeeKay | NED | Ed Carpenter Racing | 1 Lap |
| 13 | 06 | Helio Castroneves | BRA | Meyer Shank Racing | + 1 Lap |
| 14 | 8 | Marcus Ericsson | SWE | Chip Ganassi Racing | Mechanical |
| 15 | 77 | Callum Ilott (R) | GBR | Juncos Hollinger Racing | + 4 Laps |
| 16 | 28 | Romain Grosjean | FRA | Andretti Autosport | Crash |
| 17 | 20 | Conor Daly | USA | Ed Carpenter Racing | + 6 Laps |
| 18 | 48 | Jimmie Johnson | USA | Chip Ganassi Racing | Crash |
| 19 | 14 | Kyle Kirkwood (R) | USA | A.J. Foyt Enterprises | Crash |
| 20 | 18 | David Malukas (R) | USA | Dale Coyne Racing w/ HMD Motorsports | Crash |
| 21 | 51 | Takuma Sato | JPN | Dale Coyne Racing w/ Rick Ware Racing | Crash |
| 22 | 29 | Devlin DeFrancesco (R) | CAN | Andretti Steinbrenner Autosport | Crash |
| 23 | 15 | Graham Rahal | USA | Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing | Crash |
| 24 | 5 | Pato O’Ward | MEX | Arrow McLaren SP | Crash |
| 25 | 4 | Dalton Kellett | CAN | A.J. Foyt Enterprises | Crash |
| 26 | 16 | Simona De Silvestro | SUI | Paretta Autosport | Crash |
