Dixon led the most laps and extended his points lead with a runner-up finish. (LAT Photo) » More Photos

Much of the race was about Dixon, who commanded control of 136 of the first 177 laps, at times running away from the rest of the 26-car field. “It was the most fun I've had in a long time, to be honest,” Dixon said. “It was a hell of a race down to the end.”

On the next-to-last stint, Briscoe moved past Castroneves for second place and began pressing Dixon. With 48 laps remaining, Briscoe made his move, passing Dixon’s No. 9 Target Chip Ganassi Racing Dallara-Honda and taking the lead.

Afterward, Dixon, who was born in Australia and raised in New Zealand, expressed his happiness over the first win by Briscoe, an Australian and former teammate of Dixon.

“I’m real happy for the guy,” Dixon said. “Ryan definitely has a lot of talent. It’s just been a strange start for him. It’s just been bad luck. It’s just snowballed, and he’s gotten beat up by the media more than anything. That might play on the guy.”

On the 194th lap, Briscoe pitted under green, a call by Penske that allowed Briscoe to pursue Dixon with fresh tires for a longer period of time. When Dixon finally came into the pits under green on the 205th lap and Castroneves and Kanaan followed two laps later, Briscoe had cycled back ahead of Dixon.

“I said, ‘Let’s roll the dice and come in now and get fresh tires on the car so we’d have five or six or seven laps on fresh tires,” Penske said. “We were a lot faster, as you could see. It helped us get ahead of those guys after they pitted.”

Briscoe is the 15th driver to win an IndyCar race for Penske’s team. “It’s pretty special,“ Briscoe said. “There are some pretty big names on that list. It would have been more difficult to live with not being a winner for Team Penske. It definitely feels good to get that first win.”

While Briscoe and Dixon were commanding most of the attention, Servia may have had the most impressive run of the day. After losing a lap to repair a damaged front wing -- possibly because of contact with Bernoldi -- Servia rallied by getting his lap back and driving through most of the field to finish sixth.

“We’re getting closer to the established IndyCar teams, and that is encouraging,“ Servia said of his KV Racing Technology team. “But we still have a long way to go on the bigger ovals.”

Kanaan’s podium also served a timely purpose, moving him closer in the points race. He‘s now 60 points behind Dixon in fourth place, just 11 points behind third-place Dan Wheldon.

“When you don‘t have the car to win, you have to understand what you have in your hands,“ Kanaan said. “That’s what we had today. To think championship, you have to finish in the top three. The way these guys are going, it’s how it has to be.”

ABC SUPPLY/A.J. FOYT 225 RESULTS