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Double points would have added drama but not changed the title outcome
There would not have been a different champion if the NTT IndyCar Series had awarded double points in Sunday's season finale at St. Petersburg, but there certainly would have been a lot of chewed-up fingernails in the Ganassi pit.
Even using double points for the last race, which IndyCar had done the past several years, Scott Dixon still would have captured his sixth championship for Chip Ganassi by finishing third.
But he would have only beaten Josef Newgarden by one point!
Trailing by 32 points heading into the Florida weekend, Newgarden did all he could –- storming from eighth to win his fourth race of 2020 –- yet the Penske driver still lost out on what would have been his third IndyCar title by 16 points. He accumulated 51 points (50 for winning and one for leading a lap) while Dixon, who also made a dramatic charge from 12th to third, collected 35 points.
With double points, Newgarden would have racked up 101 to Dixon's 70.
In 14 races, both drivers scored four wins with Dixie taking three additional podiums and Newgarden getting two. The 29-year-old native of Tennessee also claimed three pole positions.
If there had been double points, two of the top 10 in points would have swapped places, with Pato O'Ward's second-place leap-frogging him over Colton Herta into third in the season standings and teammates Ryan Hunter-Reay and Alex Rossi swapping ninth and tenth.
Robin Miller
Robin Miller flunked out of Ball State after two quarters, but got a job stooging for Jim Hurtubise at the 1968 Indianapolis 500 when Herk's was the last roadster to ever make the race. He got hired at The Indianapolis Star a month later and talked his way into the sports department, where he began covering USAC and IndyCar racing. He got fired at The Star for being anti-Tony George, but ESPN hired him to write and do RPM2Nite. Then he went to SPEED and worked on WIND TUNNEL and SPEED REPORT. He started at RACER when SPEED folded, and went on to write for RACER.com and RACER magazine while also working for NBCSN on IndyCar telecasts.
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