Dixon angered by “fabricated” St. Pete running order
Four-time IndyCar champion Scott Dixon was left furious at IndyCar Race Control for calling a full-course caution that flipped the race order around, favoring those who started near the back of the field.
Photo by: Scott R LePage / Motorsport Images
The yellows flew on Lap 26 when Dixon’s Chip Ganassi Racing teammate Tony Kanaan made hard contact with Mikhail Aleshin’s Schmidt Peterson Motorsports car at Turn 4. The caution period bunched up the field so that drivers on conventional strategies, led (ironically) by Kanaan’s and Aleshin’s teammates, James Hinchcliffe and Dixon, pitted from first and second, and emerged behind all those who had gone off strategy in the early stages. It mean Dixon took the restart from 11th.
Sebastien Bourdais, who had started last for Dale Coyne Racing, went on to win the race, while Team Penske’s Simon Pagenaud who had started 14th went on to finish second.
“Yeah, I had a car that could have won,” Dixon told Motorsport.com. “The way Bourdais got to the front was fabricated. You might as well draw the running order out of a hat if that’s what they’re going to do strategy-wise in Race Control.
“There was no debris there. Actually there was a small piece but you’d have had to hit the wall to get to it. So I don’t know what the yellow was for.
“Normally those guys understand that it's a critical stage of the race and they’ve got to let that go. It’s not like [the debris] was on a part of the track that you race on, so you can’t have them flipping the field, otherwise qualifying is meaningless.
“I’m not taking it away from Bourdais. We all fall into these situations sometimes, and he did a good job and congrats on the win. But for us it definitely changed the race.
“So I’m off to see them to ask why they threw the caution.”
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