JOLIET, Ill. — When the fuel ran empty in Scott Dixon’s tank, the IndyCar driver’s spirits sank.
Had Dixon made it to the finish, he would have won Sunday’s season finale at Chicagoland Speedway and his second IndyCar championship.
“This is definitely one of the hardest things, but that’s the way things go sometimes,” Dixon said. “It’s a race that came down to fuel mileage which is no way to see it end. That’s the way things go sometimes. I’m pretty ticked off but we were short by two corners.
“I would have rather had it be a proper race rather than come down to fuel mileage.”
Dixon’s second-place finish was the end to a thrilling title race where Dixon was able to trim away Dario Franchitti’s once-sizable 65-point lead at the beginning of July to take a 4-point lead two weeks ago. But he entered Sunday’s race three points behind Franchitti making the IndyCar title easy to figure out.
Whoever finished in front of the other title contender would win the championship.
But in the nature of this race, it all came down to who got the best fuel mileage.
“I think race-wise our car was pretty good today but the 27 (Franchitti) had better fuel mileage all day. I knew coming down to it with the amount of laps we had it would be very close,” Franchitti said. “Going into Turn 3 it just died. Before that on the restart I knew we would be very close.
“We knew it would be very tight but we were hoping for another yellow. Being the last 10 or 15 laps on any sort of oval you can usually count on a wreck of some sort but everybody played it kind of cool today.”
After Dixon ran out of fuel, he simply took off the steering wheel rather than pound it.
“I didn’t want to waste my energy on that stuff,” Dixon said. “We’ll probably have a cry and a beer.
“What can you say? You have to take it and roll on and move on to next season. That’s part of it.”