Wrong-footed in Q1 by Josef Newgarden spinning and causing a red flag and then Kyle Kirkwood ahead of him limiting his ability to warm up his tires on his sole chance to go for a flyer, Dixon was left down in 13th on the grid.
While he has proved able to storm through from mid-grid positions to reach the podium – as recently as Nashville he climbed from 14th to win in a damaged car, and in Portland he went from 16th to third. But today at Laguna Seca, that wasn’t feasible.
