Dixon claims fourth checkered flag at Mid-Ohio

By ROB HAMILTON

Scott Dixon claimed his fourth vic­tory at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course on Sun­day dur­ing the Honda Indy 200.

Dixon topped Will Power by three-and-one-half sec­onds to take the check­ered flag. Rookie Simon Page­naud claimed third in the event. A total of 21 of the race’s 25 dri­vers fin­ished on the lead lap.

Dixon also has won at Mid-Ohio in 2007, 2009 and last year in the Indy­Car series. He also holds third-place (2008) and fifth-place (2010) fin­ishes in the six years since the series has returned to the Mor­row County road course.

Over­all, the race was cleanly run with no cau­tions and 24 of 25 cars still run­ning at the con­clu­sion of the 85 laps. Ryan Hunter-Reay, who went out on the 79th lap due to mechan­i­cal issues was the only exception.

Even though Dixon won the race, Power might have been the big win­ner of the day. His second-place fin­ish com­bined with Hunter-Reay’s 24th moved him to first place in the points standings.

Cur­rently, Power has 379 points, while Hunter-Reay is sec­ond with 374. Helio Cas­tron­eves (353) and Dixon (351) also are close to the points lead in third and fourth place, respectively.

The Honda Indy 200 was the weekend’s co-main event along with the Amer­i­can Le Mans series’ Mid-Ohio Sports Chal­lenge, which was con­tested Saturday.

There were three classes of Le Mans Pro­to­types and two Grand Tour­ing classes that all took the track for the 32-car race.

Lead­ing the way was the car dri­ven by Lucas Luhr and Klaus Graf. They com­pleted 123 laps to both win the P1 class and fin­ish first over­all. Sec­ond place went to the car dri­ven by Chris Dyson and Guy Smith, which also was in the P1 class. They com­pleted 122 laps.

Third over­all was the top P2 vehi­cle, which was dri­ven by Scott Tucker and Christophe Bouchut. They were fol­lowed by Mar­tin Plow­man and David Heine­meier Hans­son, who took fourth in a P2 class car.

The PC class was won by Rudy Junco and Marino Fran­chitti, who took sixth over­all. Plac­ing sev­enth over­all and sec­ond in this class was the duo of Alex Popow and Ryan Dalziel.

Lead­ing the way in the GT class was the 11th place team of Oliver Gavin and Tommy Mil­ner. Right behind them was Jorg Bergmeis­ter and Patrick Long.

The top car in the GTC class fin­ished 26th over­all and was dri­ven by Tim­o­thy Pap­pas and Jeroen Bleek­molen. Plac­ing 27th over­all was the GTC car of Al Carter and Spencer Pumpelly.

There also were two sup­port series at Mid-Ohio dur­ing the week­end which both raced on Sat­ur­day and Sunday.

On Sat­ur­day, Spencer Pigot led from the begin­ning in claim­ing the check­ered flag in a 20-lap race for the USF2000 National Cham­pi­onship. Scott Ander­son fin­ished sec­ond and Matthew Brab­ham ran third.

Due to incli­mate weather early on Sun­day, the sec­ond USF2000 race was short­ened to nine laps.

Ander­son improved his posi­tion from Sat­ur­day to claim first place in the Sun­day event. Matthew Di Leo took sec­ond place, while Trent Hind­man ran third.

Also being con­tested on both days was the Pirelli World Chal­lenge Cham­pi­onships. In the first race, Randy Pobst led all 30 laps to take first place. Jor­dan Tay­lor took sec­ond place in the race, while Johnny O’Connell ran third.

Pobst also led all 22 laps in the sec­ond race to take the win and sweep the week­end races, while Alex Figge claimed sec­ond place and Law­son Aschen­bach ran third.

Posted by Rob Hamilton on Aug 8 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.