How Dixon held on in IndyCar's most unpredictable season

It was the year when everything had to be kept in perspective, because during a pandemic nothing is as important as protecting lives. But livelihoods also need protecting and, in order to allow the IndyCar Series' teams to survive by fulfilling their agreements with sponsors, the show had to go on.

Easier said than done, even for a man with the foresight of Roger Penske, who officially took charge of Indianapolis Motor Speedway and IndyCar in early January. Ever-changing restrictions in various states in response to coronavirus played havoc with the series' schedule, so as well as the investment already made to upgrade facilities at the Speedway, suddenly Penske Entertainment Corp had to help subsidise events that were allowed only a limited number of spectators and vendors, or none at all.

As for activities at the track, all involved knew that the series as a whole had to do the right thing. Sure, there remain deluded folk in denial of COVID-19's contagiousness, but there would be no foolhardiness on The Captain's watch, and so for paddock personnel, IndyCar imposed strict protocols that followed CDC guidelines.

Some hurdles were impossible to overcome, however, and it would take too long to fully recount the depressing chronology of event postponements and cancellations after the series' last-minute withdrawal from the season-opener at St Petersburg in March.

St Pete was eventually rescheduled for October as the season finale, the Grand Prix of Indianapolis was shifted from mid-May to early July, and the Indianapolis 500 was pushed back to the third weekend in August. Gone altogether were the races at Barber Motorsports Park, Circuit of The Americas, Long Beach, the double-header at Belle Isle (Detroit), Toronto, Portland, Laguna Seca and the planned return to Richmond.

To help get the number of races to 14, the events at Road America, Iowa Speedway, World Wide Technology Raceway (Gateway) and Mid-Ohio became double-headers, while a new event, the Harvest Grand Prix on IMS's road course, was added in early October, and it too was a two-race affair.

Yet, when the field gathered for the new season opener at Texas Motor Speedway in June, some of those changes hadn't even been mooted, and few of them were set in stone. Everything, it seemed, was in a state of flux. Perhaps it's little wonder, then, that the team most adept at adapting, Chip Ganassi Racing, and the most experienced ace on the grid, Scott Dixon, won the first three races of the year.

But let's be clear, they weren't just superb at winging it: the Ganassi brain trust had also done superb work in the extraordinarily elongated off-season, adapting their Honda-powered cars to the new weight distribution and aeroflow caused by the mandatory aeroscreen. Michael Cannon, newly arrived from Dale Coyne Racing, was Dixon's race engineer but dismissively described himself to Autosport as a tuner: the grassroots re-engineering of Ganassi's cars, he said, was largely the domain of his predecessor and newly appointed competitions director Chris Simmons, and technical director Julian Robertson.

Dixon couldn't always produce the magic. His car's tricky nature at Road America was accentuated in dirty air so, when he lost time to low fuel pressure during an in-lap for one of the pitstops, he could salvage only 12th

Whoever deserves the credit, in Texas CGR was a league ahead and, had Felix Rosenqvist not crashed out of second place in the closing stages and Marcus Ericsson not had a pitlane issue, Dixon believes the team could have scored a 1-2-3. Two of the Chevrolet-engined Team Penske cars, those driven by 2016 champion Simon Pagenaud and by 2017 and 2019 title winner Josef Newgarden, suffered severe tyre vibrations two thirds of the way into their stints, but salvaged second and third respectively. The other, driven by 2014 champ Will Power, was taken out of contention by a bad pitstop. It would be a recurring theme.

Dixon's second win, at GP Indy, owed more to good fortune as Power and Newgarden were hobbled by a race-day yellow, but the Kiwi was in another league from the rest of his opposition and left behind Graham Rahal, who was hobbled by a two-stop strategy. When his three fastest opponents suffered pitlane mishaps in Road America race one - Newgarden stalled, Power and Rahal had slow crew members - Dixon's third straight win was sealed. The #9 Ganassi crew, and Newgarden's #1 Penske equivalent, were near flawless this year.

Dixon couldn't always produce the magic. His car's tricky nature at Road America was accentuated in dirty air so, when he lost time to low fuel pressure during an in-lap for one of the pitstops, he could salvage only 12th. Later in the season he had a horror weekend at Mid-Ohio. He cooked his rear tyres during Saturday qualifying and had to climb from 17th on the grid in a race where there were no yellows, and so could manage only 10th.

The next day he spun out of third place, had to charge hard and claimed another 10th. At the Harvest Grand Prix, he and the team couldn't get the car to work on Firestone's primary compound and he could manage only ninth and eighth. But he had created such an enormous points cushion by then - second and fifth in Iowa, an unlucky runner-up finish at the double-points Indy 500, a win (his 50th) and a fifth at Gateway - that his sixth title looked like a formality at St Pete. And so it proved.

Reigning champ Newgarden gave it a damn good go, though. Having stalled in the pits in Road America race one and been slow the following day, he was set to dominate the first race in Iowa until a yellow flew just after he'd pitted and left him buried in the pack and a lap down. This caution period had been caused by Power losing a front wheel after another pitcrew screw-up, but a loss for two Penske drivers proved a gain for the third.

Pagenaud - who'd had to start at the rear of the field when his car died in qualifying - was the prime beneficiary and he came through to win. The next night, Newgarden and Power finished 1-2 and, while the Chevrolets were left gasping by Honda in the Indy 500, Newgarden was the highest-finishing Bowtie boy in fifth. Unlucky with yellows again in Gateway race one - his 12th place on a day that Dixon won left Newgarden 117 points down! - he again bounced back in style to win race two, before adding victory in the Harvest GP race one and the season finale at St Pete, by which time the gap was down to just 16 points. He could only rue the missed opportunities earlier in the year.

So too could team-mate Power. Five poles but only two wins; three other podiums but no further top-fives. On days when a race ran relatively smoothly, he proved capable of dominating, but his pitcrew let him down four times, he let himself down three times, and fate in the form of ill-timed cautions killed his winning chances twice.

Chip Ganassi's disappointment with Rosenqvist's shunt in the season opener was soothed somewhat when the Swedish sophomore turned in a truly stellar drive in Road America race two and passed long-time race leader Pato O'Ward with just two laps to go to score his first win.

PLUS: Why Ganassi's newest winner is still on an upward curve

But sadly this didn't open the floodgates for Rosenqvist, and he would score only one more top-five finish over the remainder of the season, doubtless one of the reasons why Ganassi didn't take up the option on his services for 2021.

So Rosenqvist has now joined Arrow McLaren SP to partner O'Ward, and he'll be aware that this direct comparison with the young Mexican will be demanding. O'Ward, in his first full IndyCar season, proved he's a champion of the future. He took four podiums and a pole, but also completed all but three of the season's laps, knowing exactly when to push and when to avoid making any wild moves.

He also benefited from Arrow McLaren SP taking great strides in the off-season, so that its cars rolled off the truck with strong set-ups - vitally important given that all events bar the Indy 500 and the Harvest GP were reduced to two days and therefore offered less practice time than in years gone by.

Pagenaud, after reviving his career in 2019, slipped back into the shadows for most of 2020. The Frenchman takes longer than Power and Newgarden to build confidence and speed, and this year there was far less time for both

In stark contrast, this worked out badly for the Andretti Autosport team, which struggled immensely for the first two thirds of the season despite flashes of promise from Jack Harvey (in the Meyer Shank Racing team that pooled its engineering talent and data with Andretti Autosport), Ryan Hunter-Reay, Colton Herta and Alexander Rossi.

Their race-day pace struggles were often exacerbated by mediocre or poor pitstops. This latter problem came under a harsh spotlight at Indy when four AA cars qualified in the Fast Nine, and both Rossi and Hunter-Reay appeared to be victory contenders in the race until pitlane mishaps.

All came good at Mid-Ohio, however, and Herta thoroughly deserved to be the man who reaped the ultimate reward. All season long he emulated his former Indy Lights team-mate O'Ward in banking points when the car wasn't great and fighting for victory when it was, and that third place in the championship is no fluke.

Other single-race winners of course included Takuma Sato, who passed Dixon for the lead late on at Indy and then discovered it was the winning move when the race finished under caution. He was also strong at Gateway. But elsewhere Taku was generally unimpressive compared with team-mate Rahal.

Pagenaud, after reviving his career in 2019, slipped back into the shadows for most of 2020. The Frenchman takes longer than Power and Newgarden to build confidence and speed, and this year there was far less time for both that and for backtracking his fundamentally more individual set-ups once he found they made him no quicker.

On his best days, Pagenaud can be one of the aces, but 2020 proved there are others of similar talent who can reach their peak performance more often, and unless he rediscovers his 2016, 2017 or 2019 form, it's hard to imagine Penske renewing his contract at the end of next year.