ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Scott Dixon couldn’t hear his crew during the INDYCAR season opener Sunday at St. Petersburg.
In some racing series, that might be considered a safety issue. But for Dixon, he feels it cost him the race.
Just imagine a quarterback not knowing the play or the basketball player not hearing the defensive switch. That’s what the six-time INDYCAR champion dealt with on the 1.8-mile street course.
Dixon saw his Chip Ganassi Racing teammate and two-time defending series champion Alex Palou win the race, and Dixon — a six-time series champion — felt if he could hear his crew, he could have pitted a lap earlier, which potentially would have allowed him to challenge Palou.
“You know when the car is going to run out,” Dixon said. “I didn’t know if they could hear me, so I was just telling them I’m just go to run to the light and see what happens.
“Ultimately, I think for me, it was just one lap too long. I should have pitted maybe when I saw the 10 car [of Palou] coming in.”
His team owner agreed.
“If everything was 100 percent, he would have won,” Ganassi said. “It was simple. He would have won the race. The race was over. It was one stop to go, and we pitted a lap later than we wanted him to.
“That was the race. That was the difference between he and Palou.”
INDYCAR rules state “During all on-track events, radio communication between the driver and the entrant’s pit box is required at all times.” INDYCAR says that their audio track recorded two-way communications during the race so therefore Dixon was not forced to pit.
Ganassi said they could hear it go in and out throughout the race. Obviously it didn’t rise as an issue for INDYCAR (or they weren’t aware of the issue).
“It kind of worked on the warmup laps and kind of for the first 10 and that was about it,” Dixon said.
Communication is required on ovals but is not required on road and street courses in INDYCAR. Teams still use spotters, who buy tickets at some of the best locations on the course as far as being able to see as much of the track as possible.
Dixon didn’t seem concerned from a safety standpoint, just from an information standpoint.
“I think when I caught [Alexander] Rossi and maybe [Christian] Lundgaard, I kept trying to ask how many laps have they got to go before we can get some clean air and kind of push because it’s very tough to just get a pass going here,” Dixon said.
“None of that information [got to me]. I just had to kind of guesstimate that they were maybe five or six laps offset from us, which it seemed like the 20 [of Rossi] was, but the 7 [of Lundgaard] wasn’t. He went a couple laps more. It makes it difficult because especially with mileage, for us on the IMSA side or sports-car side, you kind of have a pretty good gauge for understanding where you need to be — but with this thing you have no idea.”
Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR and IndyCar for FOX Sports. He has spent decades covering motorsports, including over 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass.
