You can forgive Scott Dixon for wanting to come out of the blocks like he did this season. His run at the 2007 IRL title included an amazing run of three wins on the trot and, but for an ounce of fuel, he would have been celebrating winning his second title 12 months ago. But, for whatever reason, most experts dismissed Dixon's performance and said this season would see a 'Brazilian battle' as Tony Kanaan and Helio Castroneves would be the ones to beat.

You can also forgive him for thoroughly dominating the Indy 500. After all, the last three seasons have seen the person who wins that race, wins the championship. But there was more to it than that. Scott's first visit to the famous track wound up in bitter disappointment in 2003 as he suffered the embarrassment of crashing out of the race while weaving behind the pace car warming up his tyres.

You can even forgive him for breaking his 'ice man' persona and showing frustration at Sonoma where he could have, potentially, wrapped up the title, but racing luck had clearly deserted him that day. The next race saw Helio further cut into Scott's lead leading to today's finale in Chicagoland and we've all heard this before to the leader going into a title deciding race; "all you have to do is..."

That meant that Dixon had two ways to race this thing; like Jimmie Johnson has done the last two races at Homestead in the Cup series, or to go for it.

Now, it's probably safe to say that Scott did take the first half of the race reasonably easy. After all, there's no point in overstressing the car when you're the one with the most to lose. However, that bad pit stop which dropped him into his 'dangerzone' was possibly the best thing to have happened since it forced Dixon to do what he'd done all season long; race.

His pit crew also made up for it by getting him out in front at the final stop and from there we were treated to a battle royale between Scott and Helio that produced the second closest ever finish in IRL history.

Scott celebrates on the podium.

So I guess you should also forgive Scott for not bothering to listen to reason and race for the points...after all, he hasn't done that all year so why should he have started today?

Congratulations, Scott, you've made Kiwis the world over very proud.