When one of the eight cautions happened on lap 53, Dixon’s Chip Ganassi Racing Honda went to make his last pitstop three laps later.
Stopping early, with 44 laps left, was a thoughtful decision because there were many cautions on the 1.645-mile, nine-turn temporary street circuit.
Out of the 47 laps run under caution, 14 happened after Dixon’s last stop. He moved to the lead on lap 66 while others pitted under the last caution of the day.
But Dixon had to work hard to keep his lead, especially against his teammate Marcus Armstrong. Armstrong made four stops and, after earlier using wet tires for a few laps due to rain, made his final stop on the same lap as Dixon.
Polesitter Herta was also challenging Dixon to get his lap back, adding pressure. However, Herta couldn’t overtake Dixon, which allowed Armstrong and Marcus Ericsson, Herta’s teammate, to catch up as the laps went on.
Armstrong narrowed a gap of 3 seconds to just a couple of car lengths with six laps to go. Then, Dixon, still trying to save fuel, made a bold pass on Herta at Turn 3.
After being passed, Herta went to the pit for more fuel. Ericsson managed to get around Armstrong and closed the gap from 1.8 seconds to less than 0.9 seconds behind Dixon at the finish line.
“Colton made it definitely more difficult,” said Dixon. “The way that I might save fuel is different to him.”
“This race marked the second time of 2024 that Dixon, now the championship leader, pulled off a masterstroke with making fuel mileage, backing up his win at Long Beach in April.”
“I think some of today is a little bit of luck,” Dixon admitted. “I think [at] Long Beach, we took an aggressive approach. If we were lucky, we would have had some caution. We had to do it the very difficult way of having no caution. Today it kind of played out that way a little bit, but it was tight. A lot of people on our strategy didn’t make it.”
