{"id":184384,"date":"2009-09-25T09:21:38","date_gmt":"2009-09-25T08:21:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/opinion\/golden-shot-for-ganassi-pair\/"},"modified":"2019-09-19T09:08:58","modified_gmt":"2019-09-19T08:08:58","slug":"golden-shot-ganassi-pair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/articles\/us-scene\/indycar\/golden-shot-ganassi-pair\/","title":{"rendered":"Golden shot for Ganassi pair"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Scott Dixon and Dario Franchitti scored a one-two sweep for Chip Ganassi\u2019s team at the 1.5-mile Motegi oval in Japan on Saturday. The pair dominated the race, leading almost all the way with Dixon winning by 1.5 seconds. Dixon\u2019s fifth win of the year put him back on top of the IRL points with Franchitti just five behind and one race remaining at the Homestead-Miami oval next month.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-6067\" title=\"2009 IRL Motegi Priority\" src=\"https:\/\/msmproduction.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com\/s3fs-public\/uploads\/2009\/09\/scotfran-300x218.jpg\" alt=\"2009 IRL Motegi Priority\" width=\"300\" height=\"218\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Motegi\u2019s 300-mile race was disastrous for Ryan Briscoe and Team Penske, as Briscoe struggled to match the pace of Ganassi\u2019s cars and then crashed in the pitlane as he exited after his final stop. Briscoe\u2019s crew retrieved and repaired the car, getting him back on track to finish 18th and 15 laps down. Ryan had arrived in Japan with a clear, 35-point lead in the championship but flew home trailing Dixon by eight points and Franchitti by three, leaving everything to race for at Homestead.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-6069\" title=\"2009 IRL Motegi Priority\" src=\"https:\/\/msmproduction.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com\/s3fs-public\/uploads\/2009\/09\/pitlane-crash-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"2009 IRL Motegi Priority\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" \/><\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s definitely what we needed,\u201d grinned Dixon. \u201cDario was very quick early on and we had to ad some front wing and change the tyre pressures to improve the car at our first stop. But those changes really worked. My car was great at the end and now we go to Homestead with a real shot at the championship.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Between them, defending champion Dixon and 2007 champion Franchitti have won nine of the 16 IRL races run so far this year. Briscoe and team-mate H\u00e9lio Castroneves have combined to win five races for Penske. Castroneves is a distant fourth in the points after finishing a lap down in 10th place at Motegi, where the Brazilian faced an uphill battle after crashing on his qualifying run and starting the race from the back of the field.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-6068\" title=\"2009 IRL Sears Point\" src=\"https:\/\/msmproduction.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com\/s3fs-public\/uploads\/2009\/09\/dixoncar-300x204.jpg\" alt=\"2009 IRL Sears Point\" width=\"300\" height=\"204\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Graham Rahal and Oriol Servia produced a great result for Newman\/Haas Racing in Japan. They finished third and fourth, only a few seconds behind the lead pair. This was Newman\/Haas\u2019s best team performance of the year which helped push Rahal up to seventh in the points. Mario Moraes also drove another good race for KV Racing to finish fifth ahead of Danica Patrick and Marco Andretti.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-6070\" title=\"2009 IRL Mid Ohio\" src=\"https:\/\/msmproduction.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com\/s3fs-public\/uploads\/2009\/09\/dixon-199x300.jpg\" alt=\"2009 IRL Mid Ohio\" width=\"199\" height=\"300\" \/><\/p>\n<p>So this year\u2019s Indycar championship will be decided at the season finale in Florida in three weeks\u2019 time and, despite their dominant record in 2009, Dixon and Franchitti cannot pussyfoot or drive for points. In order to beat Briscoe they must race to win, which is exactly the way it should be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Scott Dixon and Dario Franchitti scored a one-two sweep for Chip Ganassi\u2019s team at the 1.5-mile Motegi oval in Japan on Saturday. The pair dominated the race, leading almost all the way with Dixon winning by 1.5 seconds. Dixon\u2019s fifth win of the year put him back on top of the IRL points with Franchitti [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":742,"featured_media":184385,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[118714,121827],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184384"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/742"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184384"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184384\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":574813,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184384\/revisions\/574813"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/184385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}