Scott Dixon's IndyCar championship lead has almost halved with two races still remaining in the season.
Photo: Icon Sportswire
Defending series champion Josef Newgarden has shaved 32 points off Dixon's lead by winning this morning's race at Indianapolis, and now sits 40 points behind five-time series champion Dixon with two races remaining in 2020.
Newgarden won at Indy for the first time, with fellow American Alexander Rossi second and Dutch driver Rinus Veekay third.
Dixon limped home in ninth, after dropping two places on the penultimate lap.
He was sitting seventh with two laps to go, but pressure from Graham Rahal in the No 15 United Rentals Honda forced an error. Dixon went off course in turn seven and lost two positions.
"I'm not really sure what happened," the New Zealander said.
"We just really struggled on the primary tires with the PNC Bank car today. We had a really bad start where Rahal just moved us out of the way. Once that got us out of line, we just started to fall back, and that really hurt.
"The other stint on blacks just really hurt us again for some reason. We must have lost 15-20 seconds. But that's the way it goes some days, I guess. It was just really weird, and we need to get it figured out fast."
There is another race at Indianapolis tomorrow morning.
Dixon is chasing his sixth championship and second in three years.
-RNZ/IndyCar.com