Dandy Dixon wins in Edmonton

Scott Dixon took his first road course victory of the year at Edmonton on Saturday. The Indy 500 winner held off championship rival Helio Castroneves and Justin Wilson to take his fifth victory of the year. Amazingly Dixon didn’t win this race on the track itself; instead it was the quick stops made by his Target Chip Ganassi crew that won him the race.

"I'd sort of envisioned making a move on [Oriol] Servia early in the race, but it wasn't on." said Dixon. "He was quite a bit slower in race conditions than qualifying, so that enabled me to just stay behind him and save a lot of fuel. When the pit stop came we didn't need as much fuel as he did and so we got around him. It was kind of the same thing with the Penskes. I got behind Helio and Ryan, saved fuel and jumped them on the pit stop. That was the key moment of the race."

The race itself was not very interesting featuring very little battles up towards the front, but there were a few noticeable incidents including one in which Marco Andretti punted off his teammate Danica Patrick. Oh, how I wish I could have been a fly on the wall at the Andretti-Green transporter on Saturday evening especially when both Andretti and Patrick were chastised by the team for not letting thier teammate Tony Kannan by who was trying to work in an alternate stratgey.

Paul Tracy who made his return to the Indycar Series on Saturday finished a respectable 4th with a team that was pulled together only a few weeks ago.

"I'm just super excited for the team," said Tracy. "They prepared this car in about a week and a half and I gave it a first class effort. With a little more practice and me not sitting on the couch for the last six months, maybe we could do better!"

With another win Dixon now pads his lead over Castroneves to 65 points, but Dixon knows that the fat lady hasn’t sung just yet.

"There four races to go and a 65 point lead is not that big when you get 50 points for a win," he said. "But it is a big margin if we're still running at the end of every race. And if we can win one or two more, that'll really put the final nail in the coffin."

The Indycar Series next race is on Saturday, August 9th at Kentucky Speedway.

Dixon beats Castroneves in Canada [Autosport.com]