Dixon Wins Firestone Indy 200 at Nashville

Scott Dixon * Photo Chris Jones

LEBANON, Tenn. – Saturday, July 15, 2006

Sam Hornish Jr. stressed after qualifying on the front row for the Firestone Indy 200 at Nashville Superspeedway that he can’t make any mistakes, have any bad races the remainder of the IndyCar Series season.

The reigning Indianapolis 500 champion had won the past two races and taken a 20-point lead in the standings. Hornish looked to be on course to secure his third series championship.

Well, Hornish wasn’t thrown off course, but it’s considerably narrower with five races left after the No. 6 Marlboro Team Penske Dallara/Honda/Firestone made contact with the Turn 4 SAFER Barrier on Lap 129 of 200. A season-low 14th-place finish significantly constricted his margin to five points.

The beneficiaries finished in the top five on the 1.33-mile concrete oval. Let the race for the championship continue at The Milwaukee Mile (1:30 p.m. ET, ESPN) in eight days.

Scott Dixon moved into second with 311 with his victory in front of a floodlit capacity crowd that was on its feet from green flag to checkered. Target Chip Ganassi Racing teammate Dan Wheldon was 0.1176 of a second behind, with Vitor Meira making another bold statement with third place in the No. 4 Revive Panther Racing Dallara/Honda/Firestone.

Hornish’s teammate, Helio Castroneves, finished fifth and is third in the standings (310), while Wheldon remains fourth with 300 points.

Dixon was the beneficiary of caution lap pit stops, taking the point on Lap 134. He had to hold off multiple challenges by Wheldon and Meira – including two restarts – the remainder of the race. Wheldon attempted a final pass on the high side of the backstretch on the white flag lap to no avail.

“I think with Vitor and Dan, they were both very quick,” said Dixon, who won on an oval for the first time since June 2003. “I think any car that's out front, you're trying to push a lot of air out there. It's very easy for the cars behind to catch up. I think Dan definitely had a little more speed than most people throughout the night. I think I was definitely more worried about him being behind me than Vitor.

“I think I could see once Vitor got behind me, I could move my line around enough to sort of screw with his air, not have him to be so much of a problem. But coming down towards the end, Dan was very fast. I was hoping and praying those laps were going to start falling a lot quicker to get towards the end.

“I think we just had a good enough car that stuck on the bottom. It’s very hard to go around the outside here. Once I saw him try it two or three times, I knew we were pretty comfortable.”

Said Meira, who posted his second third place in a row and fifth top-five finish: “When everything got hotter, I think the Ganassi cars were a little quicker than us. I guess it showed. Third place, which is the first race with Revive, that's a really good start to the rest of the season. Now we have big support behind us, it's only going to improve as we go on.”

Hornish, who led 10 laps, was running sixth after pitting for tires and fuel on Lap 126. Three laps later, he found himself in the “marbles.”

"We got out after our last pit stop and I was running behind the No. 4 car (Meira),” he said. “I was trying to get a run on him and the car just pushed up into the marbles. At that point, there really wasn't anything I could do. I'm really angry with myself, because I've been saying that you can't get up into the marbles here and that's exactly what I did.

“It's unfortunate because the Marlboro Team Penske car was really good tonight and we were so strong up until that point."

Danica Patrick tied her career best with a fourth place, advancing six positions in the No. 16 Argent Mortgage Dallara/Honda/Firestone. Dario Franchitti, the 2005 race winner, was sixth, and Andretti Green Racing teammate Marco Andretti advanced 10 positions to eighth. Ryan Briscoe, making his oval debut with Dreyer & Reinbold Racing, started 13th and finished ninth. Vision Racing’s Ed Carpenter was 10th.

“This is the product of a lot of a labor,” Patrick said. “We've been working so hard on this car. I'm happy for the team, for the crew, we had good pit stops today. That's what it takes to run up front. One of these times we're going to win one. We just have to hang around up there more often.”

Teammate Jeff Simmons posted a career-best seventh after starting 15th, and recorded his second consecutive top 10.

“We made the car competitive and we were able to run with many of the guys out there,” he said. “We are continuing to improve with the Dallara chassis. Now we move onto The Milwaukee Mile, which is a tough place. It is a flat track and handling is a key there.”