In a bizarre season finale which featured 35 laps of caution, Scott Dixon overcame an early drive-through penalty to secure his third win of the season, ahead of fellow countryman Scott McLaughlin in second, and champion Alex Palou in third.

All of the top 3 encountered trouble over the course of the day, with Dixon penalised for contact on lap 1 with Veekay. McLaughlin made contact with Ferrucci resulting in 2 separate penalties, and Palou dominated large portions of the race but fell out of favour on an ambitious 2 stop strategy after contact on a restart.

Will Power finished 4th after collecting a penalty for hitting Pedersen, and Callum Ilott spent at least half a minute backwards in pitlane due to a spin on lap 61, but still recovered to finish 5th whilst also making 6 pit stops. The fact that the top 5 all finished in their respective positions despite their collective struggles is testament to how wild the Indycar season finale was.

Christian Lundgaard completed a successful sophomore season by crossing the line in a strong 6th, as Alexander Rossi suffered a failure in the pits during the opening stint of the race, resigning him to 7th. Both Lundgaard and Rossi were penalised for taking emergency service whilst the pits were closed, causing them to restart on lap 36 from the back of the pack.

The rest of the top 10 was made up of rookie of the year winner Marcus Armstrong, Pato O’Ward and Ryan Hunter-Reay. Armstrong had to work hard for the accolade, especially when Augustin Canapino was running in 3rd and threatening to usurp Armstrong’s crown. However, Canapino hit Callum Ilott at the restart on lap 73, breaking his front wing and dropping him to 14th.

O’Ward looked to be in a strong position for long swathes of the race, but was forced into a late pitstop to run the red alternate tyres at the end of the race as he had not done so at any point. Hunter-Reay and Sting Ray Robb recorded their best finishes of the year at the final round, coming home in 10th and 12th respectively.

Dixon prevails again when the racing goes to disarray

The 2023 Firestone Grand Prix of Monterey is normally a quiet season finale, as historic races have boasted few cautions and strong wheel to wheel action around a tight and undulating road course. The highlight of the track is the picturesque Corkscrew corner, home to Alex Zanardi’s famous pass on Bryan Herta for the lead in 1996. The track is not known for chaos.

The first corners of the race saw crashes between McLaughlin, Newgarden, Armstrong, Ericsson, Malukas, Power, Vips and Rahal, causing the first of the 8 caution periods throughout the day, and the first run to the Andretti Hairpin set the tone for the rest of the day.

More time was spent under caution during this race than under green flag conditions. Only 1 driver made 2 stops, a strategy that pre-race was rendered impossible unless there are multiple safety car periods. Scott Dixon won after completing 4 stops, and Callum Ilott somehow finished 5th despite pitting 6 times, and being stationary on pit road for a good 30 seconds following his spin.

No one in the pack had a clean and uneventful race – 17 penalties were dished out, and McLaren CEO Zak Brown labelled the driving standards during the season finale as ‘amateurish’.

However, one constant is that when the NTT Indycar Series endures such a crazy race, more often than not Scott Dixon is the driver to take full advantage.

Dixon was penalised for contact on lap 1 with Rinus Veekay, yet he did not panic. He calmly made his way back towards the front combining clever strategy with strong pace and good execution.

On lap 26 he was 20th. By lap 42 he was up to 12th, and on lap 73 he was up to 3rd. Grosjean and O’Ward had to pit for a final time, allowing Dixon to take up an improbable lead when he passed the squabbling cars of Ilott and Canapino.

This was a lead that he would not relinquish. Following the lap 1 contact, Dixon kept his nose clean where others did not – experienced campaigners McLaughlin and Power both suffered incidents later in the race.

Dixon was not to be denied at Laguna Seca – his dreams of a 7th may have disappeared in Portland, but the Kiwi was determined to finish 2023 on a high.

‘Yeah, it was a wild day’ said Dixon after the race. ‘I think we had done a good job in qualifying…It was a tough race. But worked out for us. Strategy, wejust tried to keep it simple’

‘The restarts were very tough. Kind of between 10 and 11the way they would check up was difficult to get your space right.’

Palou dominates race but fall foul of ‘tough to predict’ caution periods

Behind Dixon came McLaughlin, Palou, Power and Ilott who all encountered their own difficulties, as Laguna Seca’s tight final corners caused problems for many drivers on restarts. The old adage that cautions breed cautions in Indycar came true once more, as the field seemed incapable of restarting without hitting one another.

After the lap 1 crash was cleared up, the early phases of the race were dominated by champion Alex Palou, who looked comfortable out front, sporting a 7 second advantage over the chasing McLarens of O’Ward and Rosenqvist.

Had it stayed green, Palou looked likely to repeat his domination of a year ago at this very track, where he won with the largest winning advantage of the aeroscreen era at 30.3 seconds.

Already the champion, Palou wanted to become the first driver in the series to win 6 races in a season since Will Power in 2011, and looked on course to do so until the caution periods began rolling out.

In his press conference, Palou said ‘We couldn’t really predict what was going to happen. I think it was third or fourth yellow, it hurt us a lot. We had to drop back to like 15th.’

‘I got into an accident when I was restarting in 15th. The car survived. We survived. Everything survived. I’m happy with the P3 honestly. I think it was the best we could have done today.’

Palou finished behind Mclaughlin who had an eventful day of his own, bumping into Santino Ferrucci on lap 38.

McLaughlin said ‘I think I hit everything but the pace car today. Certainly one of those crazy days, peak INDYCAR days.’

‘I knew if I finished second, I was most likely going to be top three in the championship. That ultimately was my goal coming into this weekend.’

McLaughlin’s seconds place allowed him to leapfrog O’Ward by 4 points and Newgarden by 9, and the latter crashed early in the race, bursting the bubble of the driver who was so successful on ovals in 2023.

Trouble brews as Leader’s circle payouts cause drama

With the championship already wrapped up, the main accolades left up for grabs were the Rookie of the year award and the leader’s circle bonus, a bonus of over 1 million dollars awarded to the top 22 full time entrants in the series, to help them fund their entries in 2024.

For Juncos Hollinger, they had an outside shot at rookie of the year with Augustin Canapino, and needed a strong result from the Argentine to usurp 2 of Devlin DeFrancesco, Juri Vips and Tom Blomqvist to scrape into the top 22.

Rookie of the year was far less attainable – Canapino needed to finish 26 points ahead of Marcus Armstrong, a feat nearly impossible as Armstrong was running in the top 10.

Despite this, with just 22 laps to go, it looked like Canapino was on to win the race. He had kept himself out of trouble for the entire race, and found himself running in third behind O’Ward and Grosjean, who both needed to make their final stops.

At the restart, however, Canapino came under pressure from Ilott, who made a fair move around the outside of his rookie teammate. Canapino lost control, hitting Ilott and damaging his wing in the process.

Canapino limped home to 14th, which would in the end prove enough to secure the leader’s circle bonus of a million dollars to help fund his entry for 2024.

Ilott was the target of horrendous abuse by some of Canapino’s fans for making what they deemed to be an overly aggressive move, but Ilott was only a victim of Canapino’s mistake. Ilott ended up finishing 5th.

With Canapino running strongly enough to take one of the final 22 spots with 180 points, attention turned to the battle between Blomqvist, DeFrancesco and Vips.

Blomqvist was not so lucky, crashing on lap 61 and ended up retiring on the spot, finishing the season on 171 points. Vips and DeFrancesco continued to race on, hoping to salvage the bonus for their teams.

Vips suffered a big crash on lap 1 through no fault of his own, forcing him to pit for repairs, and although he was 24 laps down, he continued on in the home of salvaging some crucial points. He ended up in 24th, meaning he earned 6 points for his efforts, moving him to 179 points.

DeFrancesco therefore needed a 21st place finish to secure the bonus. He was running strongly until he was hit in the gearbox, causing a failure in the back of his Andretti Steinbrenner Autosport car.

He pitted 3 times between lap 84 and lap 90, and was black flagged for being too slow, at around 11 seconds a lap off the pace. However, at his final stop, Indycar did not let him leave the pitlane, citing that there was too much damage to the car.

This decision meant DeFrancesco did not cross the line to start lap 91, and as a result was classified behind Josef Newgarden in 22nd, missing out on the bonus by a mere hundred yards, finishing the season on 178 points.

Indycar heads into off season

As the twin chequers flew at Laguna Seca, the sun set on another thrilling year of Indycar racing. Alex Palou came away as champion in 2023, and all eyes turn to 2024 where new storylines will develop, new rivalries will be born, new stars will emerge, and new chapters will be written.