Scott Dixon aims at a new target

IndyCar racer Scott Dixon first shot a gun at a bachelor party.

“Not at the actual party,” he clarified. “It was one of those three-day bachelor parties with a number of activities.”

One of which just happened to be shooting. That was less than a year ago and the two-time IndyCar champ found that he rather liked the sport. So he bought his own shotgun and has since been trap- and skeet shooting several times.

When the promoters of the MAVTV American Real 500 Oct. 19 at the Auto Club Speedway in fabulous Fontana, Calif., needed prerace publicity for their IndyCar race, someone in the publicity department remembered reading an article “somewhere” about local skeet shooting Olympian and car enthusiast Kim Rhode, of nearby El Monte, Calif. (Could that have been OUR Kim Rhode article?) From there, it was a few phone calls to get Rhode and Dixon together on the range.

Thus, there we all were at the Oak Tree Gun Club in Newhall, Calif., watching five-time Olympic medalist Rhode giving pointers to two-time IndyCar champion Dixon.

Blam!

Blam! Blam!

Dixon was quite good, hitting more of the international orange clay pigeons than he missed. Rhode, for her part, proved to be quite the good instructor. First of all she determined, through a very simple test, that Dixon was left-eye-dominant, something the right-handed Dixon had never known.

“I'm now angry at the guy who sold me my [right-handed] gun,” he said.

Rhode showed Dixon pointers on leading the target, proper stance, and when to pull the trigger.

“He picked it up very quickly,” said Rhode. “He takes direction very well. I guess it's the same as they do from those guys on the radio, what do you call them?”

Spotters? Crew chiefs?

“Yeah.”

Dixon shot from several positions on the skeet range, as well as from the slightly easier trap, where the clays fly out away from you and sort of linger in the air for a bit like tiny frisbees.

Does he forsee any way to combine his two interests, perhaps mounting paintball guns on IndyCars?

“I'd be out of ammo after 20 laps,” he said.

By Mark Vaughn