Drivers and teams who went through the first stretch of six consecutive races in IndyCar Series history can take a couple of days to exhale before they begin preparations for the Meijer Indy 300 at Kentucky Speedway on Aug. 9.
The stretch that began June 22 at Iowa concluded July 26 at Edmonton. Five drivers, including series points leader Scott Dixon, recorded victories during the stretch. Dixon outscored every driver in his quest for a second IndyCar Series championship.
Dixon pocketed 221 points during the six races, including 50 each for wins at Nashville and Edmonton. Helio Castroneves, who trails Dixon by 65 points in the standings with four races remaining, was the second-highest scoring driver with 191 points.
“It’s been a stretch where I think we probably could have maximized a little bit more as well, but that’s the way it goes,” said Dixon, whose only finish outside of the top five during the stretch was an 11th at Watkins Glen International. “You have to try and make the most of it, especially when you have races that you don’t do the best at.”
Mike Hull, managing director for Target Chip Ganassi Racing, credited Dixon’s and the team’s mental toughness for its success.
“Maybe that’s an understatement, or maybe we don’t give it enough consideration – one or the other, but we’ve worked really, really hard since we began this season to try to be in the position that we’re in today,” Hull said.
“You can use the cliche that you take one race at a time, but in actual fact, that’s exactly what we’ve done here. We’ve just worked one week at a time to do each race. Our job at hand is to be ready to race every week, so I think our guys have done a great job. The drivers have stayed strong through the whole process. All the Target mechanics have done the same thing. We got spit out the other side pretty successfully here.”
Other drivers who faired well during the six consecutive weekends of racing on a variety of ovals and road/street courses were Ryan Hunter-Reay and Darren Manning. Hunter-Reay scored his first career victory at Watkins Glen and moved up five positions in the standings to ninth. Manning, the seventh-highest scoring driver since Iowa, had four top-10 finishes to jump seven spots in the standings to 12th.
“It has been really grueling going all over the country and completely different racetracks every race weekend,” Manning said. “From Iowa to Richmond, they were probably about the only two tracks that were pretty similar, but when you’re actually driving them, they’re actually quite a lot different. Iowa is a very high-grip track, and even though Richmond is pretty high-grip, it’s still just a single-groove track, so it’s quite a lot different driving. The road courses back to the ovals and back to the road courses, it’s tough. You have to try and make sure you take every opportunity to relax when you get back home, even if it’s just for a day or so.”
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