MOTORSPORT: 'Aussie' Dixon steals IndyCar title

Australian-born New Zealander Scott Dixon has snatched the IndyCar title from Juan Pablo Montoya's grasp at the final race of the North American open-wheeler series in California.

The pair finished equal on 556 points, after Dixon was third and 47 points behind going into the finale at Sonoma Raceway, but the Kiwi was awarded the title on a countback, because he had three wins this season to Colombian Montoya's two.

The last race carried double points, as did the Indianapolis 500 in May, which Montoya won.

Australians contributed to him missing out on the season crown.

Sydneysider Ryan Briscoe, driving for Schmidt Peterson Motorsports, crossed the finish line 1.2 seconds ahead of Montoya in fifth – the place he needed, with Dixon already having won the race, to be champion.

Mid-race Montoya had bumped the right rear tyre of Penske teammate and Toowoomba's defending series champion Will Power, necessitating both of them pitting.

"It doesn't matter what happened," Montoya said. "We had a few ways to win the championship and we just threw it away. We didn't close it."

Power ended up seventh in the race and third in the series – 63 points behind Dixon and Montoya.

American Ryan Hunter-Reay was second at Sonoma for Andretti Autosports and two of Dixon's Chip Ganassi Racing teammates, American Charlie Kimball and Brazilian Tony Kanaan, were third and fourth – but most crucially ahead of Montoya.

Dixon's victory was his 38th in Indy racing and Ganassi's 100th as a team owner – second only to Roger Penske's 178. Ganassi's first victory as an owner came at the 1994 Gold Coast Indy with Michael Andretti as the driver.

Dixon, born in Brisbane in mid-1980, is now a four-time Indy racing champion – like American greats A.J. Foyt and Mario Andretti, Scot Dario Franchitti and Frenchman Sebastien Bourdais, who is headed to Australia for the V8 Supercar enduros as co-driver to Lee Holdsworth in a Walkinshaw Performance Holden Commodore.

It is Ganassi's 11th top-level American open-wheeler title, just one short of Penske – although "The Captain", Penske, has a record 16 Indianapolis 500 victories, four times as many as Ganassi.

However, Penske drivers have now failed to win an Indy racing championship at the season finale nine times since 2002.

Montoya, who won the 1999 CART (Championship Auto Racing Teams) title with Ganassi during the great split in American open-wheeler racing and before his six years in Formula 1, which yielded seven wins, had led this year's Indy series since winning the opening round on the streets of St Petersburg in Florida.

The finale on the Sonoma road course came just a week after the race on the tri-oval at Pocono, Pennsylvania, in which British driver Justin Wilson suffered the severe head injury from flying debris that claimed his life a day later. There were many tributes to Wilson at Sonoma and all competing drivers have donated the helmets they wore there to an eBay auction to raise money for the late seven-time IndyCar race winner's two young daughters.

Dixon's first thoughts were for Wilson and he said he had been "a longshot" for the title, with American Graham Rahal second to Montoya – 34 points behind – going into the Sonoma race.

"There was still a chance and that was what I was hoping for," Dixon said. "This season we had some big races and this was the biggest.

"My teammates were phenomenal. They helped all year and we won this together.

"The car was strong. We were getting fuel mileage so easy, which was key.

"You never know until the last lap.

"We had to do our best job and that's what we did. Luckily enough it worked out."

Montoya said he had had a good car, got a good start and "we did everything we needed to do at the beginning".

Of the incident with Power midrace, he said: "Will overshot and I was fighting with Josef Newgarden (an American and one of the six championship contenders), we shot the corner, we got inside and he cut across and I was there. We touched and that was it."

Montoya's crew had to replace his damaged front wing while Power took on fresh tyres.

The pair was then in the middle of the field for much of the race.

"We came from behind and did our best, but it just wasn't enough," Montoya said.

Power had started from pole position, led 26 of the 85 laps and was "gutted" that a Team Penske driver did not emerge champion when it had three in contention – Brazilian Helio Castroneves was the third.

Five of the title contenders were powered by Chevrolet, whose 2.2-litre, twin-turbocharged V6 engines won 10 of the season's 16 races – giving the bowtie brand its fourth straight IndyCar manufacturers title since returning to the sport in 2012.

The sole Honda-powered contender, Rahal, finished only 18th after he was hit in the rear end by Bourdais, who copped a drive-through penalty.

Power complained that race control had too much influence on the Sonoma outcome because of long caution periods.

Al Unser Junior, a two-time Indianapolis 500 winner and series champion who has battled alcoholism, is a frontrunner to be the new IndyCar race director following the exit of Scotsman and former team owner Derrick Walker.