The 2013 IndyCar Series championship came down to the final weekend at California Speedway on Saturday night, and it was Scott Dixon who was officially crowned the winner with his fifth-place finish in the season finale.
Many will point to the double-header weekend in Houston as the critical point in the championship, when Dixon came away with a total of 94 points after the two races and Helio Castroneves only secured 20. But I’ll say the turning point of the season was actually much earlier in the year.
After a difficult start to the season, Ganassi teams made an important choice at the end of June. Prior to the event at Pocono in the first weekend of July, many teams tested at the triangle-shaped track in Pennsylvania. Not the Ganassi boys. They went to Sebring, Fla. to run their own test.
What the team found helped improve the handling, and they were able to get more speed out of the car. Those changes produced immediate results, with Dixon winning the race in Pocono and Ganassi cars finishing 1-2-3. Dixon went on to sweep the double in Toronto the following weekend, and battle through the adversity in Sonoma and Baltimore to stay close enough to Castroneves before overtaking him in Houston with another race victory and a runner-up finish.
It wasn’t just what the Ganassi team learned about the car at Sebring that was a key to taking the title this season. It was the boldness to do something different when everybody else went to Pocono. It would have been easy to simply follow along with the rest of the pack, but it was the confidence to be different and the determination to keep chasing when things looked impossible to overcome that were the determining factors.
A few other post-race thoughts on the event:
Kudos to both Canadians! James Hinchcliffe persevered after an early problem to battle back and claim a fourth-place result. Alex Tagliani, who was subbing for the injured Dario Franchitti, ran extremely well, even leading the race for a period before unfortunately crashing out. Yes, Tagliani can still get the job done.
While there was some good racing at the two-mile California Speedway, IndyCar should be working with promoters for some improvements before next year’s event. Only nine of 25 cars that started the race actually finished. I know it’s a 500-mile race but 26 of 33 Indianapolis 500 cars were running at the end, and though it was only 400 miles, 19 of 24 racers were running at the conclusion of the Pocono race.
The dust and debris that caused several retirements on the weekend needs to be addressed, along with the seams in the asphalt. I love to see drivers running on the edge but if the potential exists for a car to crash out every time they cross a seam in the pavement, then that’s a problem.