Dixon able to put finishing touches on biggest victory

Scott Dixon, who led for 115 of 200 laps, gets to savor his first Indy 500 win the traditional way - by relaxing in Victory Lane with a bottle of milk. (Jonathan Ferrey/Getty Images)

INDIANAPOLIS - Even on the last lap of yesterday's 92d Indianapolis 500, Scott Dixon refused to let his mind wander. He refused to allow himself to imagine what it would be like to win the Greatest Spectacle in Racing.

Even as he built a comfortable two-second lead over runner-up Vitor Meira, Dixon wasn't about to begin daydreaming about what it would be like to be greeted in Victory Lane as the winner of the Indy 500. He never wondered what it would be like to have the laurel wreath draped upon him, or how quenching it would be to take a traditional sloppy swig from an ice cold bottle of milk, or how his visage would appear on the Borg-Warner Trophy.

Dixon was not about to make that mistake.

If last year's IndyCar Series finale at Chicagoland Speedway had taught him anything, it was that nothing is a given, even if you're leading the race heading to the last corner of the last lap. Dixon, after all, ran out of gas in the last corner of the last lap of the last year's finale and wound up handing the championship as a parting gift to NASCAR-bound driver Dario Franchitti, to whom Dixon also finished runner-up in last year's Indy 500.

And so when he took the white flag yesterday, signifying there was one to go in this 200-lap race, Dixon knew he still had a job to do, even if it looked like no one would catch him. He knew he could not lose focus.

"I think, for me, it was just always concentrating on the corner in front," said Dixon, who turned the fastest leading lap in 222.057 miles per hour on Lap 198, "and trying to make a perfect lap, every lap."

Especially the last lap.

It wasn't until he completed one last perfect tour of the 2 1/2-mile oval at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, taking the checkered flag at its conclusion, that Dixon allowed himself to soak up the biggest victory of his career by becoming the 19th driver in race history to win from the pole position.

"I think I was worried going into the race just because we had had such a smooth month," said Dixon, who was greeted in Victory Lane by his new wife, Emma, with whom he shared a plate of pancakes before the race and a passionate kiss afterward. "It was one of those things where you're sort of waiting for something to go wrong. We only had it coming down to Race Day and it's the last day you want something to go wrong. Going in, you always have high expectations, but in the back of your mind you're like what if we have a bad pit stop or we have a problem of some sort, mechanically, that's going to take you out of it, that's out of your hands.

"I think there was no point in the race where I knew we were overconfident or could win this thing easy, especially toward the end with maybe 20 or 40 laps to go when you have sleepers like Meira come out, and he was super fast."

And yet, the 27-year-old from Auckland, New Zealand, held off Meira and third-place finisher Marco Andretti to deliver car owner Chip Ganassi his third Indy 500 triumph to go with those he won in 1989 with Emerson Fittipaldi and co-owner Pat Patrick and in 2000 with driver Juan Pablo Montoya just four years into an open-wheel split between now-defunct Championship Auto Racing Teams and the upstart Indy Racing League.

It seemed only fitting, then, on a day open-wheel racing celebrated unity by staging its first Indy 500 since the unification of the sport, that the owner who led the first trickle back of CART car owners was crowned the winner.

"We all lived and died a lot in those [12] years of the split," Ganassi said. "Thank God - can we please all put this behind us? Put a period on that thing and let's move forward. You know, we lived during that time but we died, too. So I'd just as soon forget about everything that's behind us in that respect. I'm happy that we're back together. I'm happy that there's one IndyCar Series. Unification is great, but, you know, it's IndyCar racing again, OK?"

That much was evident by the crowd - estimated between 325,000-350,000 - that flocked back to the Speedway on a resplendent Memorial Day weekend afternoon. Why, even Jim Nabors, who sent a video last year when he was laid low by an illness, came back to croon the traditional prerace anthem "Back Home Again in Indiana."

After Julianne Hough, the other half of Helio Castroneves's winning "Dances with the Stars" partnership, delivered the national anthem and Kristi Yamaguchi, the newly crowned celebrity dance champion, threw the green flag, it was game on for Dixon, who led seven times for 115 laps in a race that was marred by eight cautions, four involving rookies, for 69 laps.

When he pulled into Victory Lane, and climbed out of the cockpit of his sleek Indy car, the look on Dixon's face seemed to say it all.

"I was shocked," he said, trying to describe his emotions. "I think just almost dumbfounded. It's such a strange feeling, and for me I don't show emotions too much. I don't know, it's almost like you're in a dreamland. It was quite crazy. It's something that you sort of expect somebody to maybe pinch you and you wake up and you're sleeping in your bed back home.

"It still hasn't sunk in yet and it feels so special. I think the parade lap and seeing everybody still out there and driving around such a magnificent circuit, everybody sort of yelling your name . . . it makes you want to go and win this race once again."