Both Colton Herta and Alex Palou admit they are slightly baffled by how Scott Dixon managed to produce a couple of 33- and 34-lap stints at a pace fast enough to win the 49th running of the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach.

Dixon was among five front-runners to commit to an alternate strategy when the caution flew for Christian Rasmussen’s shunt on lap 15. Although all runners were planning to make a two-stop strategy for the 85-lap race, the ideal pit window would have seen the first round of stops around lap 28. Instead, by pitting at the end of lap 17 Dixon committed to stints that ran from laps 18-51 and from 52-85.

Despite having to run lean, saving fuel while maintaining huge momentum, the six-time champion was able to hold off everything that Josef Newgarden and Colton Herta were able to throw at him in the final stint and score his 57th victory.

Herta commented: “I still don’t completely now how Dixon made it to the front. I imagine he pitted on yellow and did 34-lap stints, 33-lap stints. I mean, that was pretty impressive. From where we were, we thought the best option was staying out there. I think we made the most out of that strategy. I was happy with how the car was. We were super fast.

“Yeah, sometimes you need a little bit more than just speed in IndyCar racing. We saw that today…”

Two-time and reigning IndyCar champion Palou admitted that he couldn’t have emulated his teammate’s fuel-sipping ability, and was more than happy to go with the “regular” strategy.

“Different strategies,” he said. “We also thought that the best thing was to stay out. I think it was the best thing for the No. 10 car. I don’t think I could have made it work like Scott did. I was not surprised that he took it because he knows he can make it work. I don’t know how. Yeah, I’ll study that probably tonight…

“Once he took it, I was like, ‘He’s going to make it work.’ I don’t know. It’s super tough if you know the numbers he has to get, what he has to do driving-wise… You see other people did it. [Will] Power I think is the second driver that did it.

“It’s tough, man. I don’t know how. Probably he’s cheating and he has an extra fuel cell that I don’t know yet! Yeah, that’s it… I’m joking, obviously, just in case.”

Herta explained that his problem in closing on Dixon was partly down to grip, but also the fact that the Ganassi driver had saved enough fuel to occasionally stab his push-to-pass boost button.

“I think my tires were pretty much done,” said the Andretti Global driver, who won at Long Beach in 2021. “I was close a few times, but I didn’t have enough. He still had push to pass. Exiting the corners, it was hard to get a run on him because he could use it, kind of sprint away, have nice big lifts at the end of the straight. It made it hard from my perspective to choose what time to use my push to pass and what time to save it…

“It was a pretty impressive win to have to do that many laps. We know the fuel numbers that he was doing because we’re in the car doing two laps less than him. It’s impressive, for sure.”

Asked if he thought anyone but Dixon could have won with that strategy, he replied, “I think it depends. You need to be good at fuel saving, but you also need a good car to do that. I think there’s a few guys in the series that are probably capable of doing it, but they need a lot of things to go right, a lot of things for their car to be able to handle saving fuel.

“I think it’s possible. Obviously seems like Dixon is the only one that goes for these things sometimes, and they always work out. If he didn’t go for it, we would have won the race. The great thing about IndyCar is there’s so many options, so many different things that can happen.”