Mid-Ohio only rewards the best when it comes to IndyCar

• Mid-Ohio’s list of IndyCar/CART winners reads like a who’s who.
• Scott Dixon has won five times in Lexington with Emerson Fittipaldi doing it three times.
• Mid-Ohio’s difficulty lies in its narrowness, elevation changes and the variety of its 13 turns.
• The Honda Indy 200 at Mid-Ohio will be Sunday at 2 with practice Friday and qualifying Saturday.

LEXINGTON – Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course is a finicky place. Hacks never win and flukes rarely happen.

When it comes to major league open-wheel racing, only all-time greats, those who will be in the hall of fame or truly gifted road racers are rewarded with checkered flags.

“It’s demanding. It’s hard. You’ve got to save a lot of fuel. You’ve got to be quick. You have to be really balanced with the car. And it’s very physical,” said Graham Rahal, who is searching for his first win at Mid-Ohio, but whose father Bobby Rahal won twice in CART at Mid-Ohio. “You’ve got to hit your marks. If you make a mistake there, it’s going to bite you.”

Verizon IndyCar Series driver Simon Pagenaud was third at Mid-Ohio in 2012 and runner-up the following year. He has a theory on why only the best of the best win at the 2.25-mile permanent road course.

“In all those cases, fitness comes into play. The dedication you have to your sport to be at this level, only the greats dedicate that much time and that much preparation,” the Team Penske driver said. “It really shows at Mid-Ohio because it’s a very physical track. It is one track where you can push the car to its very, very far limits because of the way the tarmac’s grip provides you.

“You have to be really smart on how you set the car up. When you go for a qualifying lap, you really have to be one with your car.”

No one does it better than Scott Dixon. Since IndyCar’s return to the track in 2007, the New Zealand native has won the Honda Indy 200 at Mid-Ohio five times, including three of the last four events. He is the all-time winningest IndyCar/CART driver at Mid-Ohio.

“I don’t know, but I just have a lot of fun there. There are places you just click with and things just flow a lot easier,” he said.

Since 1996, Chip Ganassi Racing has posted 10 victories, including the last six races.

“I think a lot of the credit goes to the team. The team has won there a lot in a fairly short span,” Dixon said. “Also, the track suits my style quite a bit. I think you get rewarded there with a very neutral car with lots of front grip in general. It’s a place you can get really aggressive with once it rubbers in.

“It’s such a hard track because it’s continuously changing with the surface there. The first couple of practices it’s so slippery, but every lap you can get a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more. Mid-Ohio is a different beast.”

It’s a track that demands much from the drivers, but also the engineers in charge of the car setups. There are high-speed corners like the first turn and at the end of the backstraight; there are slow turns like in the Keyhole and Carousel; there are rhythm corners like in the Esses and entering Thunder Valley.

“It’s a very unique track,” Pagenaud said. “There are a lot of different techniques depending on the corners. Most tracks you only need to use one or two techniques, but at Mid-Ohio you really have to pull your tricks in every corner if you can.”

Track president Craig Rust has presided over ovals and road courses in his career, but he’s never seen anyone as dominant as Dixon at Mid-Ohio.

“It’s not an easy place to figure out,” Rust said. “It’s such a flowy place. If you miss on a turn, it takes you two or three laps to get back into it. You’ve got to be consistent around there to set people up to pass. It’s hard enough on the road courses and street races to pass, but man he is good.”

Dixon is so good that he won from the last spot on the starting grid last year. Before that, no Mid-Ohio winner started further back than the fourth row.

“Last year was a lot of luck,” Dixon admitted. “Timing is a lot of things and we found ourselves pretty quickly in a rut in that race. We pitted and shifted strategies, and (Ryan) Hunter-Reay was a key point when he caused that yellow. It opened us right up for the window. Days like that, things fall into place, but still at the end, we had to get really obscene fuel mileage and still get fast lap times.

“You can get a little luck, but you still have to finish it off.”

And yet it’s only champions and multi-race winners (with the exception of Charlie Kimball) that have shown the ability to finish it off at Mid-Ohio.

“When you look at who has won, it’s a who’s who. It says you’ve got to be a top-tier driver to be able to win,” Rust said.

The roll-call of winners doesn’t lie.

rmccurdy@gannett.com

419-521-7241

Twitter: @McMotorsport

CART/IndyCar Mid-Ohio Winners

•5 times: Scott Dixon (2007, 2009, 2011, 2012, 2014).

•3 times: Emerson Fittipaldi (1988, 1992, 1993).

•2 times: Teo Fabi (1983, 1989), Bobby Rahal (1985, 1986), Michael Andretti (1990, 1991), Al Unser Jr. (1994, 1995), Alex Zanardi (1996, 1997), Helio Castroneves (2000, 2001).

•1 time: Johnny Rutherford (1980), Mario Andretti (1984), Roberto Guerrero (1987), Adrian Fernandez (1998), Juan Pablo Montoya (1999), Patrick Carpentier (2002), Paul Tracy (2003), Ryan Briscoe (2008), Dario Franchitti (2010), Charlie Kimball (2013).

— Verizon IndyCar Series