After taking the lead on the first round of pit stops, Scott Dixon didn’t look back as he led the rest of the way, scoring the victory in the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach. It marks the first victory of the season for the Chip Ganassi Racing driver.
“I like coming here, I love the event,” he said. “But as far as an event and coming and doing well and looking forward to it, it was never really on that list. To finally conquer it- a lot of credit goes to a lot of people. That pit stop exchange there definitely helped us get to the lead, but the car was fast and we needed to maintain it. All in all, this is huge. Long Beach, I finally get to crack this one and I’m really happy.
“Firestone did a fantastic job. We even started on used (alternate) reds for the opening stint and were able to maintain pace. They are always good and we were able to maintain and look after them. For this weekend, our car was just dynamite on the (primary) blacks.”
Pole sitter Helio Castroneves led the opening laps and ran second for the second half of the event, never able to close the gap on Dixon.
“It was actually nice, the weather,” he commented. “Obviously Southern California is nice. Certainly the track was constantly changing. Every time it gets new tires, reds versus blacks and things like that, it’s about two hours of racing and the track changed quite a lot. For us, we kept constantly changing a little but of the driving style because one lap is good and another was different. The Firestone tires were actually holding pretty good for me. My AAA car was awesome and we were pretty good all the way.”
Castroneves’ loss of time in the pits was due to having to wait for Tony Kanaan to get into his stall, out of the way.
“The guys did a great job in the pits and especially the incident between me and Ganassi,” Castroneves said. “It was just perfect. It was better to be safe than sorry, but it was a great job overall for Team Penske. At the end of the day, second place is not bad.”
Points leader Juan Pablo Montoya ran up front throughout the race, finishing third after holding off a late charge from teammate Simon Pagenaud.
“He had a little less rear wing,” Montoya stated of Pagenaud. “To be honest with you, I was surprised my tires were going off and not his. But mine went off and I saw him coming so I just had to not make a mistake, make sure I came out of the last corner (well). He was a little quicker down the straight so just pay attention how close he was and use the button, stuff like that. He was never really that close. He got close, maybe his nose to my rear tires, but that was about it. He never got next to me or anything.”
Tony Kanaan finished fifth, followed by Sebastien Bourdais, Josef Newgarden, Marco Andretti, Carlos Munoz and Sebastian Saavedra.
Following a poor qualifying effort, defending series champion Will Power was not a threat all day after going down a lap when he stalled coming on to pit road at lap seven under caution. Power stalled when he slowed behind Lupe Filippi, who also stalled.
“I feel bad for the Verizon Chevy Team,” he stated. “They worked so hard and me finishing P20 was a result of a bad day in qualifying. I didn’t get it done and it was snowball effect from there. Today I made mistakes and I stalled the car on pit road during the first pit stop. Was hoping for a top ten finish but it didn’t happen. It makes me more motivated to make up for it the next couple races.”
