Dixon won by less than half a second from Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing’s Graham Rahal and Arrow McLaren’s Pato O’Ward.
Title contenders Alex Palou (Chip Ganassi Racing) and Josef Newgarden (Team Penske) endured a wild first lap in which both made contact with Marcus Armstrong, with Newgarden losing a lap as Palou escaped relatively unscathed and finished in the top six.
Poleman Rahal led the 27-car field to the rolling start, leading team-mate Christian Lundgaard from the front row, but Andretti Autosport’s Devlin DeFrancesco made an unbelievable lunge around the outside from fifth on the grid to snatch the lead.
Chaos then unfolded further around the track, as the cars fanned out four-wide on the approach to Turn 7. Palou backed out but, at the apex, team-mate Armstrong turned across his bows and they made contact, with the third Ganassi car of Dixon getting spun around as he got into the back of Palou and was hit from behind by Romain Grosjean (Andretti).
Armstrong also spun and was stranded across the track, where he was collected by first Grosjean and then Newgarden, who bounced up on top of Armstrong’s nose and got stuck.
From 25th on the grid, after he qualified 19th and took a six-place grid penalty for an engine change, Newgarden lost a lap getting restarted and returned to pits with no nose section.
Dixon pitted under yellow on lap five, but all was not lost as his poor qualifying would pay back in the race as he had extra sets of unused alternate tyres to enjoy throughout his burn from the stern.
At the restart on lap 8, DeFrancesco led Rahal, O’Ward, Lundgaard, the McLarens of Alexander Rossi and Felix Rosenqvist and Scott McLaughlin (Penske). Kyle Kirkwood (Andretti) was eighth, despite a scare getting started off the dummy grid, ahead of Palou.
Rossi passed Lundgaard for fourth at Turn 1 straight after the restart, while Rahal left it a lap longer to pass DeFrancesco for the lead. Making good use of his alternate tyres, Rossi mirrored his earlier move on team-mate O’Ward on lap 9 and then passed DeFrancesco for second.
O’Ward overtook DeFrancesco at Turn 1 on lap 11 to head the primary starters in third, with Lundgaard also moving past DeFrancesco on the same tour at Turn 7, and Rosenqvist demoting him further a lap later.
Lundgaard passed O’Ward for third, while Palou stumbled over getting around DeFrancesco, the two banging wheels and allowing Kirkwood to slip past him for eighth. Kirkwood then dived into pitlane for an early first stop on lap 15, ditching his primaries for the preferable alternates. O’Ward stopped from fourth a couple of laps later to do likewise.
Source: Autosport