Dixon wins! Kiwi ends IndyCar Series victory drought

It's been a history-making morning for Scott Dixon — his 42nd career victory in the Verizon IndyCar Series moving him to third equal on the overall winners list, tied with Michael Andretti. 

The win, coming at the first of two races at the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix, sees Dixon leap to second place in the points standings; five points behind series leader Alexander Rossi. 

Dixon sat in second for the early phase of the race, ironically behind Michael Andretti's son Marco. He took the lead after undercutting Andretti in the opening wave of pit-stops, and from there was the car to beat. 

"We tried to save a bit of fuel, we wanted to get off the red [tyres] as soon as possible but we wanted to get that overlap on Marco and we were just biding our time there," Dixon said. 

A lap 47 crash for Graham Rahal bunched up the field, many of whom had made their last pit-stop in the few laps prior. That included Dixon, who restarted from the lead of the race. 

With 17 laps to go, Dixon held onto the lead for the remainder of the race despite the best efforts of nearest rival Ryan Hunter-Reay. He eventually won by just over two seconds, with Hunter-Reay and Rossi rounding out the podium.

"PNC Bank came on board this year and they've had a lot of support this season early on, and it's nice to get that first win out of the way," he said.

"We came up short in the last couple of races, but super proud of this team and Honda's been working extremely hard to bounce back after last week. 

"This is awesome, it's always good to be back in the winner's circle. Right now for us the IndyCar Series, the competition is just so tough."

Andretti, Takuma Sato, Ed Jones, last weekend's Indy 500 winner Will Power, Robert Wickens, Josef Newgarden, and Spencer Pigot rounded out the top 10. 

The second race of the Detroit Grand Prix takes place tomorrow morning at 7.30am NZST.