Dixon unhurt in Fontana shunt.

CART Rookie of the Year Scott Dixon emerged without injury from the accident which brought Sunday's Marlboro 500 to a premature close under yellow flags.

For the second year in succession, the FedEx Championship's million-dollar finale ended in the slowest possible fashion, but greater concern was focused on Kiwi Dixon, who slammed into the wall after suffering a mechanical problem on his PacWest Reynard in the closing laps of the shortened 220-lap event.

Dixon and team-mate Mauricio Gugelmin had been cruising through the 500-mile marathon to conserve fuel when their luck began to fail. Gugelmin departed the fray on lap 154 with engine failure but, with five laps to go, Dixon was climbing the leader board fast, and running in fifth position.

Then, an unspecified failure on his Nextel-backed entry saw the New Zealander make heavy contact with the turn four wall and came to rest in the grass at the entry to pit lane.

" I'm fine," Dixon said, "The CART Safety Team guy's said that I was smoking coming out of turn three and that I may have cut a tyre."

"I don't know what happened, but I got loose and started drifting towards the wall. The lap before my crash, I lost a little momentum on the track and I was just starting to get back in the groove. I definitely think we would have had enough power to get us back up to the lead pack. I don't know if I could have won the race, but [the finish] would have been interesting."

The newly crowned Rookie of the Year was classified 17th.