{"id":10287,"date":"2017-06-10T16:36:54","date_gmt":"2017-06-10T21:36:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/?p=10287"},"modified":"2017-06-10T16:36:54","modified_gmt":"2017-06-10T21:36:54","slug":"battle-for-championship-continues-at-texas-for-dixon-and-castroneves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/2017\/06\/10\/battle-for-championship-continues-at-texas-for-dixon-and-castroneves\/","title":{"rendered":"Battle for championship continues at Texas for Dixon and Castroneves"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Josh Farmer<\/em><\/p>\n

FORT WORTH, Texas – Former Texas Motor Speedway<\/a> winners Scott Dixon<\/strong> and Helio Castroneves<\/strong> are truly the hunter and the hunted heading into tonight\u2019s Rainguard Water Sealers 600.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Scott Dixon and Helio Castroneves are locked in a tight battle for the 2017 Verizon IndyCar Series championship. Photo by Chris Jones<\/p><\/div>\n

Dixon has recovered from his fair share of adversity this season. The 36-year-old New Zealander walked away from a devastating crash with Jay Howard on lap 53 of the 101st running of the Indianapolis 500 presented by PennGrade Motor Oil.<\/p>\n

He rebounded to finish second and sixth in last week\u2019s doubleheader at Detroit, although he was challenging for the win in the second race until a fuel probe issue took him out of contention.<\/p>\n

By the end of the weekend, he to move into the points lead – eight over Castroneves.<\/p>\n

Despite the bad luck, Dixon is pleased how his team has rebounded.<\/p>\n

\u201cDetroit was a little frustrating just in the sheer fact that the race didn\u2019t go smoothly because we had the fuel probe issue. You keep thinking, we clearly would have been racing for second or first in that scenario.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Scott Dixon, driver of the No. NTT Data Honda, will start second in Saturday’s Rainguard 600 at Texas Motor Speedway. Photo by Michael C. Johnson<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cIt was definitely good points and I think to keep the points lead at that transition after the amount of work the team had and the wreck we had was good.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dixon, a two-time winner at TMS, was nipped by Chip Ganassi Racing teammate Charlie Kimball for the pole for tonight\u2019s race and will start second. With a new track surface and configuration, Dixon noted that staying on top of the changes will be crucial to success.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s always tough, the race evolves a lot throughout the night,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s all about keeping up with it. This year\u2019s a lot of unknowns. The track\u2019s different, the tire\u2019s different. We\u2019ll just have to play it out and move as quickly as we can to make changes.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 42-year-old Brazilian qualified 10th for tonight\u2019s race, his sixth top ten start of the season. He noted after qualifying while his starting spot could be better, the races here are always unpredictable.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Helio Castroneves, driver of the No. 3 AAA Insurance Team Penske Chevrolet, will start 10th on the grid for Saturday’s Rainguard 600 at Texas Motor Speedway. Photo by Michael C. Johnson<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cThe one thing about this track is that you never know what’s going to happen,\u201d he said. \u201cIt always has a surprise or two.”<\/p>\n

The driver of the No. 3 AAA Team Penske Chevrolet is not only chasing down Chip Ganassi Racing\u2019s Scott Dixon in the series championship, but he is also looking to end a 51 race winless streak. His last win came at Detroit in 2014, nearly three years ago.<\/p>\n

Castroneves has shown pace capable of winning this season but has not had luck on his side to put it all together. At Long Beach, he won the pole and set the fastest lap, but mechanical issues relegated him to ninth place.<\/p>\n

Untimely yellows have also cost him shots of victory at Phoenix and Detroit and he didn\u2019t have the raw speed to overtake Takuma Sato in the 101st running of the Indianapolis 500 presented by PennGrade Motor Oil. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s our Karma,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019ve qualified up front. We\u2019ve raced fast unfortunately the yellow comes at and it became an unexpected situation. The only thing that I can tell is the motivation is there. Our team, group especially with Chevy, AAA is there. We are going to keep pushing ourselves until we get the win.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of all the tracks on the Verizon IndyCar Series calendar, Texas Motor Speedway has proven to be one of Castroneves\u2019 best. He has scored four wins (2004, 2006, 2009 and 2013) in 19 starts at the 1.45-mile oval.<\/p>\n

For this race, Castroneves noted that while the new track configuration has taken some getting used to, he feels perky about the show tonight.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to work ourselves to make a great racecar,\u201d he said. \u201cThe second lane is a little bit harder than what we are expecting. Hopefully with some work from the track, the track will be a lot for fun to drive and also for the fans.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Josh Farmer FORT WORTH, Texas – Former Texas Motor Speedway winners Scott Dixon and Helio Castroneves are truly the hunter and the hunted heading into tonight\u2019s Rainguard Water Sealers 600. Dixon has recovered from his fair share of adversity this season. The 36-year-old New Zealander walked away from a devastating crash with Jay Howard […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10289,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[152,22,164,21,83],"class_list":["post-10287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-indycar","tag-helio-castroneves","tag-indycar","tag-scott-dixon","tag-texas-motor-speedway","tag-verizon-indycar-series"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/racedaysa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/04CJ1647A.jpg?fit=3660%2C2440&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7hzTZ-2FV","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10287"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10287\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10293,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10287\/revisions\/10293"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}