Insider: 3 runner-ups and even more letdowns, Scott Dixon's emotions on another 500 pole

Nathan Brown | Indianapolis Star

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INDIANAPOLIS – Until the Indianapolis Motor Speedway delivers No. 2 to the Iceman, the Dixon family will forever be caught in a tragic game of tug of war. What, when and how do you celebrate the good days – the great, historic, record-breaking ones even – when they don’t end with 300,000 fans screaming your name while you bathe yourself in milk?

Emma Davies Dixon had convinced herself, at least outwardly, that she didn’t want to deal with that mess of emotions. Shortly before 4 p.m. Sunday afternoon at IMS, her husband minutes away from making his first of two runs toward a fifth Indianapolis 500 pole, she told anyone who’d listen she didn’t want it for her husband.

“Pole’s never been good to us,” she said. “It’s only even led to 2nd or worse.

“I don’t want pole.”

Except, an Indy 500 starting on pole helped deliver Scott Dixon's only victory in the Greatest Spectacle in Racing. Davies Dixon admits that triumph, three months after the couple were married, can be easy to forget at times. It was the Ganassi driver’s first start on the inside of Row 1 at the 500 in his sixth start overall. He’d started on the inside of Row 2 three times and taken runner-up the year prior. Dixon had one championship and 11 wins to his name at 26 years old.

No one could’ve imagined what these next 15 years would bring. Five more titles, 40 more wins, six more top-5 finishes at the 500 (including a pair of runner-ups), and those, perhaps, are just as awe-inspiring as the fact he’s yet to win the biggest one since.

“I get so excited, but I’m so competitive, which goes against me a lot because I take the losses and the pain we’ve had at the 500, and it feels personal,” Davies Dixon told IndyStar. “It’s horrible to be like that.”

Though he, his team owner and best friend of a teammate won’t admit it, Davies Dixon knows the truth about her husband. The Iceman loves to show a flash of elation in the highs and stay steely-faced in the lows, but Davies Dixon knows these last 13 500 starts have eaten away at her husband.

“I think it does. I think the most painful bit is where it’s looking good – looking beautiful – and it’s a late caution and out of his hands, or the pits weren’t open last year, and (his fuel) was bleeding dry,” she said. “That really hurts, and maybe it feels personal, but the champion in him just has to be like, ‘It just is what it is,’ and you have to bounce back.

“Otherwise, this place will take you down.”

'You can ride this wave a week, but it doesn’t really mean anything'

It started with the last rain-shortened 500, back in 2007, when Dixon was sitting pretty in 2nd with 40 laps to go after weathering a three-hour red flag period for rain. But three crashes in the span of 13 laps muddied his pursuit of eventual winner Dario Franchitti just before the race was called due to rain on Lap 166. Five years later, Dixon led with two to go before shuffling back to 3rd – and yet, when Takuma Sato spun inches away from Franchitti, the leader, in Turn 1, the carnage missed Dixon’s teammate.

Second again, robbed of a chance to fight to the very end due to the caution.

It would happen once more, in 2020 when, after a back-and-forth battle with Sato at the front, the yellow flag flew with six laps to go. Controversially, IndyCar race control elected to end the race under yellow instead of red-flagging it, making the necessary repairs to the pitlane wall, and throwing the green once more. And none of these include the years Dixon started on pole and either unceremoniously didn’t win (4th in 2015), suffered a horrendous crash under no fault of his own (32nd in 2017) or ran out of fuel due to a closed pitlane under caution ahead of his first scheduled stop (17th in 2021).

So the Dixon’s find themselves here, with Davies Dixon waving her arms up and down like an air traffic controller, directing her husband into pitlane after four laps at 234.046 mph, where before taking off his helmet, he held his wife’s head in his white-gloved hands and stared into her eyes. They’re enjoying this moment for a split-second, before Dixon says the frustrations of years’ past start to creep in. That first glorious pole seems so distant, compared to the three since that have only led to pain.

“I appreciate this one more than the first, cause the first time you don’t really know what you achieved,” he told IndyStar Sunday evening. “I’ve been here for a while now, and I’ve seen how much a big deal this is.

“But I guess the downside is, you can ride this wave a week, but it doesn’t really mean anything. Last year, we were wiped out with the first caution. You’re sitting in your car, and while the guys are trying to turn the engine over, you see the field go by once. ‘We can deal with that.’ And then it’s a second time, and you go, ‘Well, (expletive). That’s bad.’

“It’s weird. You kinda focus on the opportunities you missed, as opposed to enjoying the moments, I guess.”

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The best they can, though, Dixon and his wife made a point to come into Sunday – and this next week at-large - with a fresh mindset. Over Sunday morning breakfast, Davies Dixon tried her best to steer the conversation with her husband about blessings instead of loss. Though he doesn’t care much to address the feat of delivering some of his best racing at 41, Dixon’s wife is happy to shower him with praise.

“We still get to do this – that’s so amazing. Scott’s been doing this for 20 years, and we went into today saying, ‘Whatever happens, happens,’” she said. “A top-6 (start) will be useful, and that how we’re going into the 500, saying, ‘We’re so lucky to still be enjoying this place. What will be, will be.

“To me, he’s this phenomenal athlete. I see the guy away from the track and his dedication to the sport. He’s not 20 anymore. He has to put the work in, and we focus so much on that. He really deserves this today.”

Is this Scott Dixon's year?

But maybe – just maybe – the gods of IMS have begun to smile on Dixon’s No. 9 this month. Because had this been any other year – involving a Fast 9 run to the pole, instead of a Fast 12, followed by a Fast 6 – Sunday would’ve sadly been an off-day for Dixon, instead of one of the most historic achievements of his 22-year career. When Saturday’s results were declared complete, he four-lap average was only 10th-best.

Because the field only barely limped to 33 entries, and with a two-hour Sunday late-afternoon network TV window to fill, IndyCar opted to change up the qualifying procedures for the front row. Though you could argue it delivered more excitement and drama around the front of the field and largely filled the void Sunday of no last-row bumping, it’s hard to ignore the change was delivered as an entertainment ploy. And even then, after the field experienced a 90-minute rain and lightning delay Saturday afternoon, Dixon’s car was parked in Lane 2 of the cars wanting to give it another go as he sat in 10th. Six were lined up in the Fast Lane.

Unless he slid over into the back of the Fast Lane, he’d have to wait all of them out, along with any others that decided to roll up. Sitting and waiting in the cockpit, Dixon expected that once his time came, he’d have to bump his way back into the Top 12. And then rain came again, and he didn’t have to.

“We did a bad job (Saturday) and talked ourselves into changes we shouldn’t have done, and it put us close to that bubble,” he said. “I don’t know, we might’ve been able to scrape through, but I thought we’d definitely have to run again (to make the Fast 12).

“And there was a lot of frustration – especially since we’ve done this so much, been on pole. We did a lot of stuff we plainly just shouldn’t have in getting too conservative or looking too much into the weather and worrying about what happened three days ago. We should’ve had a more strong mind in understanding the process.”

It’s the continuation of a qualifying problem that has plagued Dixon nearly all year, admitting his car at Long Beach and Barber “was put together wrong” for qualifying. On the IMS road course, “we had the best run we’d have all weekend to start, and we just kept throwing things at it, and every time I got back in the car, it was just completely different.”

“It’s definitely not the way we should function,” he continued.

Clearly, Dixon had the car to beat, but for the first time in ages around the Racing Capital of the World, circumstances completely out of his and his team’s control finally turned in his favor, instead of away. And with that opportunity, he delivered what his wife called a “perfect” qualifying run – the best she’s ever seen of him.

“The other poles, a bit of movement, bit of correction, bit of change. This one was just beautiful,” she said. “You never want to be perfect in sport, because then you’re like, ‘What more is there?’ But that was pretty perfect.

“And you know what, when there’s something to celebrate, why not go crazy and get in the moment?”

That will be her goal all week long, to try and convince her husband to live in the present, and until that green flag Sunday, no one can argue that Scott Dixon conquered IMS the most recent time it mattered most. He has the fastest car ever to start up front for these 500 miles, and in how he got there, there may be a lesson in how to close it out.

When that 234.437 mph lap flashed on his dash as he crossed the Yard of Bricks his first time by in that final run Sunday, Dixon didn’t ignore it.

“But I don’t think I gave a little scream or anything,” he said. “I was excited and happy, but you’re so focused with on what you’ve got to hit. That one lap doesn’t really mean much. Because of the sequencing we have to do now, with so many changes of buttons and switches and controls and the weight jacker and roll bars, you’re busy. You’re consumed.

“Gone are the days where you would kind of just try to hit your apexes and enjoy the speed. There’s a lot going on, and if you miss one part of the sequence, it will take you out. It’s so stressful, but that first number is definitely what you want to see. It makes the rest go a little bit easier.”

Email IndyStar motor sports reporter Nathan Brown at nlbrown@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter: @By_NathanBrown.

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