On a beautiful Sunday afternoon in Downtown Long Beach, veteran driver Scott Dixon took the checkered flag at the 49th Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach.
Dixon, 43, claimed his second career victory on the streets of Long Beach for Chip Ganassi Racing, after winning the 2015 edition. The New Zealand native held off 2021 GPLB Champion Colton Herta in second place, with Chip Ganassi teammate Alex Palou taking third.
“It’s always a marquee event,” said Dixon of racing in Long Beach. “The history of the event, I think this is the 40th IndyCar race, celebrating 50 years next year, there’s not many events on the Indy schedule that people can celebrate like that.”
Sunday’s race featured a field divided, with two distinct strategies regarding when to pit and refuel. An early caution within the first 20 laps opened the door for some drivers – including Dixon and early leader Will Power – to pit early and aim to conserve fuel. Others opted for an alternate strategy to remain on the track and put down fast times.
“It was a tough race, I still don’t completely know how Dixon made it to the front,” said Herta of the conflicting strategies. “It was pretty impressive, but from where we were, we thought the best option was staying out there and I think we made the most out of that strategy. I thought the car was really fast, but it takes more than a fast car to win in auto racing.”
Dixon led a race-high 42 laps on Sunday, and did well to conserve fuel as the field made up ground and got behind him with around 10 laps to go. Dixon said it was one of the more stressful wins of his career, but he was relieved to be able to go all-out over the final two laps and secure the victory.
“We have a light that comes on that gives you a couple laps heads up if you’re going to run out of fuel, and I didn’t see it with two laps to go,” Dixon recalled. “They came on the radio just saying go full out, use overtake, whatever you need. So that was really nice to hear at that point because the stress level was really high … Huge credit to the team.”
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This year’s race was remarkably clean, with just the one early wreck by Christian Rasmussen leading to a full track caution. There was some meaningful contact throughout the race, however, especially late at Long Beach’s vaunted hairpin turn.
Josef Newgarden, the leader of the alternate strategy who was hoping to chase down Dixon with plenty of fuel to spare, was hit from behind by Herta going into Turn 11. Newgarden stalled briefly after the impact, dropping back to fourth place where he would ultimately finish the race.
Newgarden voiced his frustrations to Herta afterward and discussed what he saw during the incident that essentially took away his opportunity to go for the win.
“I don’t know, it seemed pretty obvious he just misjudged it and ran into me,” Newgarden said. “I’m not gonna say we were gonna get Dixon, it was actually very very difficult for me to get the run that I needed to. I think traffic was going to provide me an opportunity, so actually that run I was really excited about, I think was gonna be my last chance. Never know if we would’ve pulled it off or not. Maybe not, (Dixon) was really quick.”
Herta said he apologized to Newgarden after the race and was grateful to not have been penalized for the contact, which he deemed to be a borderline call by race officials. Herta said that Newgarden took a different line through the turn in order to line up a run at Dixon, which led to him misjudging Newgarden’s speed.
“He slowed down his speed so much on entry, that if you’re not doing that every lap it’s tough to gauge how fast he was going to be going there,” Herta explained. “Ultimately it’s his right to do that and it’s my right to not run into the back of him there. But that’s why he did it, he went wider, he took a different line to get a better exit to hopefully get a run on Scott, but in doing that he was a lot slower in the corner.”
Pole-sitter Felix Rosenqvist fell back to the field almost immediately, as Power — a two-time Long Beach champion — was able to overtake him before reaching the first turn. Power led the first 15 laps before opting to pit under caution, but was unable to get back to the front of the pack. Rosenqvist would finish the race in ninth.
Dixon dedicated his win to Sir Colin Giltrap, a New Zealand businessman heavily involved in the motorsports industry who died earlier this week at the age of 84.
The win in Long Beach is the 57th in Dixon’s IndyCar career, leaving him 10 wins shy of A.J. Foyt’s career wins record. Dixon said his wins in Long Beach are special thanks to the energy he feels from the crowd every year.
“I think what we really enjoy as drivers and teams is the atmosphere,” Dixon said. “This place is wild, it’s got a lot of energy. … We always say, if we only had more events like Long Beach, or the 500, or Nashville, places like that. It’s tough to beat it.”
The IndyCar series will head to Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham, Alabama next Saturday. Newgarden is the current IndyCar points leader for the 2024 season, followed by Dixon, Herta, Palou, and Power rounding out the Top 5 on the leaderboard.