Motorsport: Dixon dominates in IndyCar win

KANSAS CITY - Scott Dixon took an early lead and never gave the other drivers much of a chance, cruising to his second straight IndyCar Series victory at Kansas Speedway today.

Dixon had a fast-off-the-truck car all weekend and an easy race day, making few changes and barely using his push-to-pass button to lead the final 150 of the 200 laps on the 1.5-mile oval.

Runner-up Dario Franchitti finished more than 3 seconds behind and Tony Kanaan was third.

Dixon takes the early lead in IndyCar's new oval championship and becomes a front-runner for the Indianapolis 500, a race he won in 2008. He's also the second straight repeat winner at Kansas, giving Target Chip Ganassi Racing four straight wins following Dan Wheldon's 2008 defence.

Dixon got the season off to a decent start on the road courses.

He opened with a sixth in Brazil and followed a disappointing 18th at St. Petersburg with two top-5 finishes, including a runner-up to Ryan Hunter-Reay in Long Beach two weeks ago.

All that was missing was a victory.

Back on the comfortable Kansas oval - he's finished in the top 4 each of the past five races there - Dixon was an uncatchable force.

The two-time IndyCar Series champ was fastest in the lone practice session Friday and lost a little speed in qualifying, though was still fast enough to start on the front row with pole-sitter Ryan Briscoe.

Dixon was fast from the opening green, passing Briscoe on Lap 33, holding his position after a green-flag pit stop and another on a caution midway through the race. A final pit with 22 laps left went smoothly and had the added bonus of being partially under yellow after Jay Howard folded up the right side of his car with a slide into the wall.

Dixon used his horsepower-boosting pass button just a handful of times during the race, his car good enough to push him to the Kansas checkers and give him momentum into Indianapolis.

Though Kansas is nothing like Indy, it is an oval and the last tuneup for the biggest race of the year.

A record 27 cars were in the field at Kansas and Indy figures to be wheel-to-wheel in a crowded field, so this was a chance to get the feel for running in traffic.

It also was an opportunity to see how the oval newbies - Mario Romanicini, Takuma Sato, Simona De Silvestro and Bertrand Baquette - would handle the high speeds and hold-your-line racing after four road-course races to start the season.

The inexperienced oval drivers were even warned during the morning drivers' meeting about the end of runs, when low fuel loads and worn tires would hamper handling.

There were no major mishaps, only a loose-into-the-wall crash by E.J. Viso on Lap 72, Howard's crash and a restart wreck involving Japanese drivers Hideki Mutoh and Sato with 14 left.

That kept the cars from bunching up on cautions most of the day, giving Dixon plenty of space to operate up front.

Not that it mattered. Dixon was so fast he joked over the radio with his crew that maybe they could save some of those push-to-passes for Indy.

Obviously, he can't, but he might not need it anyway.

- AP