Dixon win sets up three-way finale fight
MOTEGI, Japan -- As tight as it has been, the 2009 IndyCar Series championship fight between Ryan Briscoe, Dario Franchitti and Scott Dixon was probably always going to come down to a late-season mistake.
At Twin Ring Motegi in the penultimate round, Briscoe was the man who blinked.
Briscoe arrived in Japan with a 25-point championship lead over Franchitti and with 33 points in hand over Dixon. But the Australian driver for Team Penske smashed the wall while exiting the pits and stumbled to an 18th-place finish in the Indy Japan 300.
Meanwhile, Target Chip Ganassi Racing teammates Dixon and Franchitti dominated the race, leading 192 of the 200 laps. Franchitti looked to have the upper hand until he was put into the marbles while lapping rookie Raphael Matos on the 102nd lap, allowing Dixon to nip past into a lead he would not relinquish.
Dixon won the Japanese race by 1.448 seconds over his teammate, setting up a spectacular scenario for the Oct. 10 season finale at Homestead Miami Speedway. Dixon leads Franchitti by five points, with Briscoe trailing by just eight.
It's the second-closest three-way fight for the IndyCar crown in the 14-year history of the Indy Racing League, and the fourth year in a row the title will be decided in the season's final race.
“” -- IndyCar Series leader Scott Dixon
It's what we expect for IndyCar. It's going to come down to the final lap, the final corner of Miami.
"I guess we don't need a 'Chase,'" Franchitti quipped.
"It's what we expect for IndyCar," Dixon added. "It's going to come down to the final lap, the final corner of Miami."
For Dixon, winning at Motegi ranked high on his list of personal goals. The New Zealander has occasionally struggled at the asymmetrical Japanese oval since he made his first start there in 2001 while racing in the CART series, and in the 2003 IndyCar Series race, he suffered one of the biggest accidents of his career.
That dragon was slain Saturday, and the timing couldn't have been better.
"For me it's tremendous," Dixon said. "It's a track I've always wanted to win at, and I kind of put Motegi just below the Indy 500. It's a very difficult circuit. I remember coming here in the early years and competing for different engine manufacturers and how much emphasis was put on this race. If you have a fast car, you can still get to the front. I'm over the moon."
Dixon was worried his championship hopes were dashed after he endured a miserable weekend at Infineon Raceway in late August. But the tide turned in his favor in Japan, resulting in a 39-point swing.
He showed little sympathy for Briscoe, who was his Ganassi teammate in 2005.
"It's a feel-good moment, to be honest," Dixon said. "He probably had the same feeling when we had a terrible race in Sonoma. It's what we needed. We needed to get maximum points.
"I'm definitely a guy that's done a lot of stupid [stuff], too," he added. "It happens. Pressure is definitely part of it, but you're obviously trying to push the envelope. Ryan has definitely matured a lot, and you can see throughout the season all of us have had bad weekends. Right at the moment we're all pretty even in terms of bad weekends."
Briscoe took full credit -- or blame -- for his pit-lane blunder on Lap 106. He had just caught a lucky break with a yellow flag when rookie Mike Conway crashed while the No. 6 Team Penske car was already in pit lane. Had Briscoe been able to exit the pits cleanly, he would have made up a half-lap deficit on the flying Ganassi cars.
"I think I played it perfectly," he said. "I was saving fuel and went a lap further than the Ganassi guys. When the yellow came out we were in the pit lane and I knew it was a huge opportunity to have the lead of the race. As I left the pits Roger said I was going to be racing Scott to the blend line and I just gave 'er a bit too much throttle. As I transitioned onto the tarmac it just spun me around and caught me by surprise.
"There are no excuses. I just had a bit too much throttle. Fortunately, I had a points lead coming into here and we're not coming out of this too badly. It's only eight points, and all it takes is to win Homestead. That should be enough to win the championship, and I'm already pumped up about it. It certainly gives me a good chance to redeem myself."
Dixon had passed Franchitti for the lead just four laps earlier after Dario fell afoul of Matos.
"[Matos] just was weaving; he didn't want to go a lap down," Franchitti said. "We've seen that from him all year.
"We knew we had to come here and do what we did today, both Scott and myself. We were so evenly matched. I was better in traffic, he was quicker on his own. Whoever was ahead was going to win it. Both cars were fast today, but that one moment was all it took."
Franchitti and Dixon fought for the 2007 IndyCar Series championship, with the Scotsman claiming the laurels after Dixon ran out of fuel while leading the last lap of the season finale at Chicagoland Speedway. Now they are both driving for the same team and their friendship will be put to the test at Homestead.
"Fun, isn't it? That's the way it should be," Franchitti said. "We're both still in the fight, and that feels pretty good. It's going to be a hell of a show at Homestead. We'll just keep our heads down and do the best that we can."
Homestead is therefore shaping up as an all-or-nothing affair.
"It's going to be a crazy race," Dixon predicted. "Obviously the three of us are going to be pushing to the maximum. The only other player is maybe Helio [Castroneves], who could make it interesting because he'll be trying to help Ryan, but he's totally out of the chase of taking the championship. That will play into it, I'm sure. We just have to make sure that our cars are quick.
"But when it comes down to it, it's winner-takes-all or whoever is ahead of each other in that race. It's a tough kind of decision. You definitely don't want to take each other out, maybe have Briscoe sitting in third and he's laughing all the way to the bank when he wins."
Ganassi team director Mike Hull says Homestead will be business as usual for the Target team.
"We're not going to worry about the points and just race the way we usually do -- to win," he said. "We know if we do that, the points will take care of themselves."
It should be a barn burner.
John Oreovicz covers open-wheel racing for ESPN.com.
