An argument can be made that Scott Dixon and the crew of Chip Ganassi Racing’s No. 9 PNC Bank Honda delivered one of their best races of 2024 in winning last year’s Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach.

Mike Hull, the organization’s general manager who has long served as Dixon’s race day strategist, certainly agrees with that.

“Yes, absolutely, and it all worked out,” he said. “But you have to put yourself in position to win races. In one sentence, that’s what that race – or any race – is all about.

“Then you have to win it.”

Dixon had started the 85-lap race from the eighth position, a sign that he didn’t have the outright pace of other of the NTT INDYCAR SERIES’ top contenders. But he and his team made the most of their opportunities in the race and then delivered the necessary speed when it was required of them.

For example, they collectively decided to make their second pit stop on Lap 51 with the thought they could make a third and final stop when a caution came later. When that yellow didn’t come, Dixon did the best he could, staying on the track and delivering as a six-time series champion can.

Having assumed the lead when Colton Herta and Alex Palou made their last stops 10 laps later, Dixon conserved his Firestone Firehawk tires and the fuel still onboard until it was time for the final sprint, and then he sprinted.

With 10 laps remaining, Josef Newgarden was stalking Dixon’s rear wing. But the Team Penske driver got dropped to fourth place following a bump from Herta in Long Beach’s famous hairpin, leaving the Andretti Global driver clearance to pursue Dixon. In neither case did Dixon flinch.

A year removed, Dixon concedes it was one of the most challenging finishes of his 58 career victories, although as is his norm, he downplayed his role in it.

“Because we had saved fuel and saved a ton of (tire wear), we were in a great position to win that race,” he said. “We also had trimmed the car out (aerodynamically) because of where we started (deeper in the field than is ideal). All of those factors combined made it extremely tough (for Newgarden, Herta and Palou) to get by.

“It was a case of everything aligning, but man was it stressful.”

Hull wasn’t surprised by Dixon’s excellence down the stretch in Long Beach because he has made a career of executing a strategy amid challenging circumstances.

“What Dixon does a really good job of is, he understands how to go fast and make fuel (last),” Hull said. “There are a lot of drivers who make fuel, but they don’t know how to put the laps together and still be fast. Everybody throws darts at that dart board – ‘Oh, Scott just saves fuel (better than others)’ – but if they’d look at the comparative lap times, they’d see he’s going fast, too.

“Last year at Long Beach, we knew that we had to run like that to win that race, and we knew that we were going to be (in for a battle) late in the race. Then those guys fought so hard among themselves that it didn’t happen for them.”

Then Hull got to the money quote sums up Dixon and the group supporting the 9 car.

“We did what we had to do,” he said. “They didn’t.”

The NTT INDYCAR SERIES continues to be the most competitive series on the planet even as Palou has won three of the past four season championships and the first two races of this season. Dixon said it continues to be imperative to choose the right strategy to get the lead, then a driver must hold it.

Dixon was positioned to win the season-opening Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg presented by RP Funding on March 2 had his final pit stop occurred at the same time as Palou. But because Dixon had lost radio communication with his crew, he waited to pit until the fuel light came on. Meanwhile, Palou stopped a lap earlier and overtook his teammate as a lack of traffic allowed him to run a quicker out lap.

In this season’s second race, The Thermal Club INDYCAR Grand Prix, Dixon’s group made a couple of decisions – the order in which they used their tire compounds and pitting later than they should have in at least one instance – that led them to finishing 10th. Dixon said that shows that things don’t always work out as they did last year in Long Beach.

“Yeah, you can definitely mess the strategy up,” said Dixon, who is third in the standings, 41 points behind Palou. “If we’d have done (a couple of) things differently at Thermal, we could have progressed (through the field) as (Will) Power did (in finishing sixth).

“But the 9 car group always does a great job. I think our misses are small compared to those of others.”

The field returns to Long Beach’s 11-turn, 1.968-mile street circuit next week for the 50th running of the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach (Sunday, April 13, 3 p.m. ET, FOX, FOX Sports App, INDYCAR Radio Network). Dixon also won the race in 2015 and will be inducted in the Long Beach Motorsports Walk of Fame.