Takuma Sato responded to magnanimous comments from Scott Dixon over how much fuel each driver had to left in the final laps of the Indianapolis 500.
Sato joined an elite club of two-time Indy 500 winners on Sunday when the final five laps of the race were run under caution in the wake of Spencer Pigot’s heavy crash.
Dixon congratulated Sato on the win but felt he had the upper hand on fuel for the final few laps, commenting: “This is a hard one to swallow. On fuel mileage, I really can’t see how Sato was going to make it.
“We pitted a lap later, and the numbers they had to get, it was going to be very difficult. I thought they [race control] were going to throw a red flag, which would have been interesting for the last four or five laps.”
Sato had overhauled long-time race leader Dixon and gradually pulled away as they encountered lapped traffic in the closing stages.
“I knew towards the end of the stint I had very good speed,” added Sato. “However, after the restart, when I got lead, yeah, I got a voice from the pit basically using too much fuel.
“I had to back off with leaner mixture, which as you can see immediately Scott caught me and tried to give it a go. At that point I had to switch back to the maximum power. He was three cars, four cars behind, [so] I went with the leaner mixture.
“We were close. Even without it [the caution], I was hitting a number. If you scan my radio, we were on the number. Even if the race stayed green, I think we [would have been] okay.
“However, I thought I would be threatened from Dixie in the last few laps, where he would be probably [be at] 100 per cent power, which I had some of that in the pocket, but otherwise it was very, very close.”
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