Dixon will treat Sonoma “like any other race” in bid for fifth title

The Chip Ganassi Racing-Honda ace finished a close runner-up to Alexander Rossi in today’s penultimate round at Watkins Glen, while points leader Newgarden smacked his Penske-Chevrolet into the pitlane safety barrier and was scored 18^th.

However, the 41-time race winner said he would not alter his approach to the finale at Sonoma Raceway, Calif., which is worth double points.

“I’ve been in situations like that before,” he said. “Tonight I'll probably have a couple beers, chill out, take the kids to school tomorrow morning, then get in some training.

“I think you’ve just got to treat [Sonoma] as another race. You can't overcomplicate it. Obviously we want to win it – there's a lot on the line. But if you overthink things too much, then it ends up being a very bad thing.

“I've never raced Josef for a championship like this… And it's not just the two of us. I haven't seen the points yet, but I imagine Helio [Castroneves] is through, [Simon] Pagenaud is still there as well. With double points, you can have a pretty hefty swing, as we found out last year [when] we had a really bad race.

“We'll take it as it comes. Try to get the most out of the test next week. I know Penske is testing there this week, as well. Anything can happen, as we saw today.”

Dixon admitted that his Watkins Glen race hadn’t been ideal, despite his second-place finish, since he suffered two slow pitstops.

“At the start, we kind of got run wide, dropped back to fourth. By the time we got to the Bus Stop, we were back in second. Then at the first stop, I actually locked the rears, and it didn't downshift. I almost stalled the car, got in sideways. They couldn't fuel the car. Luckily the yellow came there to kind of even that out.

“Then we had another fumble in the pits, lost about five spots, I think, and had to come back through. I think throughout the course of the day, we kind of missed the yellows where some of the others were able to catch some.

“We couldn't use overtake for about the first four laps after a restart, it would go straight into an overboost. That was kind of odd. But the car was fast. We passed a lot of people. I think at the end we were maybe as quick as Rossi, had we had clean air. But huge credit to those guys. They did a hell of a job.”

Dixon said that he was only made aware of Newgarden’s problems before the final green flag, and that it hadn’t notably softened his attack on Rossi.

“The last restart, I think Mike [Hull, strategist and Ganassi team manager] came on the radio and said that the #2 car had a problem. He said, ‘Make sure you get to the end here and don't have any issues and we should be OK.
That's all I knew about it. Didn't go into detail.

“[But] we chased Rossi pretty hard… I was trying as hard as I could with what I had. I think he had almost double OT [push to pass boost] that I did for the end. I tried to stay with him as best I could to capitalize at the end.”