Early on, Penske’s Indy 500 winner Josef Newgarden had looked on course for his sixth consecutive win on an oval – only AJ Foyt has managed more (seven in 1964) – but the race slipped away from him. Newgarden led the first 98 laps, then found himself staring at the back of Dixon’s Ganassi Dallara and fighting off O’Ward. He was pushing to avoid the Mexican undercutting him with 50 laps to go when he got up into the marbles at Turn 2 and tagged the wall. Game over, not only for his race but also for his already distant title hopes. Still, he has the Indy 500 on his account for 2023 – and that matters the most.
Dixon is now the only driver who can beat fellow Ganassi ace Alex Palou to the championship. But he’s 74 points down on the Spaniard with just two rounds to go – Portland on September 3 and Laguna Seca a week later. He’ll need more than his almost magical strategical abilities to steal what would be his seventh IndyCar title.
“We won’t lift until we’re totally out of it,” said Dixon with typical defiance. “Everyone on this team does a tremendous job and we’re 1-2 in the championship right now. It’s a shame our wins came later in the season, but we’ll keep pushing and see what we can come up with. It might get a little tense in the team.”
Early lead for Newgarden, but he fell away during the race
James Black/IndyCar
And to think a few weeks ago we thought Dixon was having a quiet season. You can never rule him out – much like Alonso. Age is just a number to these guys and while both continue to show the way to the younger generations, who’s to say when they will be done? Dixon in particular has every chance to eke further mileage out of his IndyCar career deep into his 40s, just as he does with that precious fuel for his Honda. As for Alonso, Aston Martin must consider who should succeed him eventually – but when exactly? It’s one of those nice problems for Aston, because Alonso clearly has plenty more to give.
Return of Jüri Vips
Meanwhile, As Palou and Dixon face off, a whole heap of attention will fall on a young driver who will be making his first IndyCar starts in those final rounds of 2023. Estonian Jüri Vips, 23, has been signed by Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing to see out the season following its split with Jack Harvey – and the team knows only too well what it has opened itself up to.
Vips, you might recall, was a rising star of the Red Bull junior programme and looked destined for an F1 chance further down the line. Indeed, he might well have been in line for the AlphaTauri seat ahead of Liam Lawson last weekend – and might even have been preferred to Daniel Ricciardo post-Silverstone – were it not for his horrendous behaviour back in June 2022. Vips was caught while gaming using one of the most offensive words in the English language, a racial slur that is simply inexcusable. Red Bull quite rightly dropped him immediately, although it was disappointing that his Hitech Formula 2 team kept him on. He slumped to 11th in the points at season’s end, his career apparently in tatters, through his own ignorance and stupidity.
Bobby Rahal has handed Juri Vips a second chance in IndyCar
Joe Portlock/F1 via Getty Images
But now he has been given a second chance, having impressed RLL in a couple of IndyCar tests. This week Bobby Rahal has moved to justify Vips’s signing and the driver himself has spoken of the work he has put in to educate himself better. You’ll have your own view on whether he deserves this shot. For Vips himself, it’s a stain he can’t rub away easily and it’ll probably haunt him for the rest of his life. He’ll be steeling himself for an almighty backlash in Portland and Laguna, especially on social media. RLL clearly thinks he is worth the heat that will fall on the outfit too, at a time when it has plenty of sporting troubles to work through – and the team had other options. What about promising British Indy NXT ace Toby Sowery, who has also tested, for example? Vips better be worth it.