Scott Dixon 'not surprised' to be only Honda in 2017 championship fight

Scott Dixon insists he didn't feel like an underdog despite going up against all for Penske entrants in the IndyCar championship-deciding Grand Prix of Sonoma last month.

Dixon was the only Honda runner realistically still in the championship fight at the season finale, something that didn't surprise the Chip Ganassi Racing driver given the struggles the Japanese manufacturer has endured during the brief manufactuer-specific aerokit era.

"I was not surprised. "When you see the aero deficiencies that we had, especially on high-downforce tracks and then short track ovals. You pick up a tonne of points in those configurations but also performance, so with analysis of the past few years we kind of knew what Honda were struggling with and it was very much the same when we were running one," Dixon admitted.

"It didn’t surprise me that there weren’t more up there but I think Honda definitely made some strides, especially on the engine side," he added. "[Alexander] Rossi was strong at the end, Graham [Rahal] was strong, but they had a lot of bad races too so the championship turned out how it did but I expected the fight to be with Penske and the other manufacturer.

In the end the championship went to Penske's Josef Newgarden, with the four Penske runners locking out four of the top five positions in the points. Dixon ultimately finished third, and felt it would've taken something dramatic for him to claim a fifth crown.

"I think for us our only hope was that they made a mistake or they had a mechanical issue, I think that was going to be our biggest chance of winning unless there was a massive flip in strategy which is something you can never rely on," he admitted. "We kind of knew the forecast and how it was going to be going into that last race."

"Penske had also done another day test the week before so that put all their eggs in one basket and it showed," Dixon continued. "They did a fantastic job as a team and how they placed the cars at the end with Pagenaud and making us fall back to third in the championship."

"We kind of knew that was how it was going to play out," he admitted. "We gave it all we had."



Images: Chris Owens (1), Joe Skibinski (2)/IndyCar Media