There was contrasting fortunes for New Zealand drivers Scott Dixon and Scott McLaughlin in the IndyCar championship battle.
Dixon kept himself in the thick of it, putting on another fuel-conserving clinic to finish third at the IndyCar Toronto street race on Sunday (Monday NZ Time), while McLaughlin was shunting out late to finish 16th.
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With his fourth podium result and ninth top-10 of the season, Dixon moved up one spot, overtaking Pato O'Ward in the drivers' standings, to third, trailing leader and Chip Ganassi teammate Alex Palou by 53 points.
Starting 15th after a disappointing qualifying run on Saturday (Sunday NZT), Dixon went long on his first stint thanks to a couple of early cautions, leading three laps, to move up into sixth, just behind McLaughlin after the first cycle of pit stops.
"We were a little bit confused when everybody decided to go with the black tyres at the start," said Dixon said.
"That threw us off a little bit but we continued to just save fuel. We probably made a pass, or four or five, on the start and then the restart and then as soon as we got clean air, we were able to run low-61s out of the box.
After 40 laps, three Kiwis were running in the top-10, with McLaughlin fifth, Dixon sixth and Dixon's teammate Marcus Armstrong 10th. The fourth Kiwi on the grid, rookie Hunter McElrea, who picked up his first drive for Dayle Coyne Racing, was 19th.
On lap 53, the quartet was all running in the top-11, however, soon after McElrea hit the pits again and was ruled out on lap 57, finishing 24th.
On a restart with 14 laps remaining, Dixon was third and McLaughlin fourth before a big crash on lap 72 involving six cars when Pato O'Ward spun and his stalled car was hit by four drivers, with Santino Ferrucci getting airborne.
After a lengthy delay to clean up the track, McLaughlin was out of the race on the first lap after the restart, being put into the wall by his dive-bombing teammate Will Power at turn five. Power was issued a drive-through penalty, while McLaughlin finished 16th.
McLaughlin dropped one place to sixth overall, overtaken by race winner Colton Herta, now 83 points adrift of Palou.
Getting going again with five laps left, Dixon was unable to make any ground on the two Andretti Global entries up front, with pole-sitter Herta holding off Kyle Kirkwood for his first victory in 41 races.
The late carnage allowed Armstrong to finish fifth for the third time in his second season, moving up three spots to 14th in the standings.
In an incident-filled race, just 15 cars of 27 were running at the end, with only 12 on the lead lap.
With the incident involving McLaughlin and Power, and Indy 500 champion Josef Newgarden suffering a tyre puncture on the same lap, Palou was able to finish fourth, with Dixon only taking four points out of his series lead.
"Some people cleared out of the way in the last 10 laps for him," said Dixon, who is just four points behind second-placed Power.
"We'll keep at it. 50 points, I think at this point last year I was 100-something points back, so we've closed that gap by 50 points. We'll try."
IndyCar takes the next three weekends off before returning for the final five-race stint, starting with an oval race at World Wide Technology Raceway in Illinois on August 17.
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