Scott Dixon has confirmed the widely-held belief that winning this year's IndyCar Series title would mean more than his previous success, in 2003, following the unification of open-wheel racing in the United States.
Despite appearing to be the dominant force in this year's series, with a record-equalling six wins and a new mark for laps led in one season, Dixon admitted that his task had been made all the harder by the influx of talent from the now-defunct Champ Car World Series, which nearly doubled the size of the field and provided some of the campaign's first-time winners.
"You know, it means a
lot more," the Kiwi confirmed, "I think this year is
much tougher. The 2003 championship was a tough one to win, but I've always said that we didn't really know what we had won then. It was the rookie season for me in the IRL, and for the team at that point as well. Going into the last race with five guys that could mathematically could win it, that we came out on top was definitely staggering. We'd definitely jumped pretty deep into that hole, and I still, to this day, wasn't really sure what we had won.
"I think after '04 and '05, it makes you cherish things a lot more, definitely race wins as a whole, but a championship much more. And knowing the guys who have been with Team Ganassi now for about seven years - and a lot of those guys have been with me the whole time - knowing what they go through, knowing what work they put into the cars, it does mean a ton more than the first year.
"I think to accomplish the disciplines that we have now - with short ovals, medium-sized tracks, superspeedways, street courses, road courses - you'll definitely get a true champion out of that. For us to be the first to win it on that kind of level I think is pretty special.
![Scott Dixon (Target Chip Ganassi Racing) celebrates his IndyCar Series title [pic credit: IRL/Payne]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/489298.jpg)
