Dixon Leads Honda Podium Sweep at Mid-Ohio

Dixon Leads Honda Podium Sweep at Mid-Ohio
• Scott Dixon scores second victory of 2019, sixth career Honda Indy 200 victory
• Felix Rosenqvist fills out 1-2 for Chip Ganassi Racing
• Ryan Hunter-Reay completes 1-2-3 sweep for Honda’s sixth win of 2019

LEXINGTON, Ohio (July 28, 2019) – The “Master of Mid-Ohio”, Scott Dixon, scored his sixth Honda Indy 200 victory Sunday, dominating the middle stage of the 90-lap contest and then holding off teammate Felix Rosenqvist on fading tires in the closing laps, taking the checkers by the narrow margin of 0.0934 seconds. Ryan Hunter-Reay completed a 1-2-3 sweep for Honda, finishing third, and his Andretti Autosport teammate Alexander Rossi closed to within 16 points of championship leader Josef Newgarden with a fifth-place finish.

Starting eighth on the hard-compound Firestone “Black” sidewall tires, Dixon’s Chip Ganassi Racing team was one of only three to successfully execute a two-pit-stop strategy. Not pitting until Lap 30, Dixon then ran the soft-compound “Red” sidewall tires to build a massive 12.5-second lead on the field by Lap 50. However, his team elected to run a second set of Red tires for the third and final stint of the race, and Dixon’s lead began to shrink rapidly in the final 15 laps.

In the closing laps, Dixon had to deal with both a group of lapped cars attempting to unlap themselves, and rapidly closing rivals Rosenqvist, Hunter-Reay and Newgarden. On the final lap, Dixon and Rosenqvist made light contact in Turn 2, while Hunter-Reay and Newgarden had harder contact exiting the corner, sending Newgarden into the gravel trap and a 11th-place finish. Rosenqvist continued to challenge his teammate throughout the rest of the lap, but came up just short at the finish. Still, second-place is his best finish in his rookie IndyCar Series season and his first podium result.

Hunter-Reay survived the last-lap contact with Newgarden to finish third, his second podium of the year and first since the Circuit of the Americas. While not figuring in the battle for the win, Rossi’s fifth-place finish was his 10th top-five result of 2019, as he continues to battle Newgarden for the IndyCar Drivers’ Championship.

A large crowd, including approximately 10,000 Honda associates from multiple central Ohio Honda facilities, filled the 2.258-mile Mid-Ohio road circuit as the 90-lap race ran caution-free for the second year in succession.