SONOMA, Calif. — The IndyCar series closed out a troubled 2015 season here on Sunday, crowning a champion, while grieving the death of one its most popular drivers in a freak accident a week earlier, and trying to weather the latest round of criticism of the sport’s inherent dangers.
Scott Dixon, with a victory in the finale, tied the sixth-place finisher, Juan Pablo Montoya, in points for the championship, but Dixon was crowned with his fourth career series title by virtue of a tiebreaker. Dixon won three races during the season to Montoya’s two.
The racing community has at least a seven-month layoff before the still-coalescing 2016 season begins — and a relatively long time to contemplate the future of a sport that seems ruinously expensive, dangerously fast and often racked by controversy; no doubt there will be much introspection into what lessons might be learned from a season that always seemed poised on the edge of disaster.