Chip Ganassi Racing clarifies Dixon's radio problem

Today at 08:04 PM

Scott Dixon didn't spend all of Sunday's 100-lap race without the ability to communicate with his team on pit lane. But the eventual second-place finisher did lose contact with his Chip Ganassi Racing team somewhere past the halfway point of the opening IndyCar Series race of the season, and thanks to the malfunction, the six-time champion also lost the lead to teammate Alex Palou, who went on to claim the victory.

Speaking to the media after the race, Dixon said the radio problems arose sooner than the halfway point.

"(It) kind of worked on the warm-up laps and kind of for the first 10 and that was about it, but ultimately cost us the race, I think – not coming in when I should have, maybe the same lap as Alex," he said. "We caught that traffic with about five or six cars and lost about two or three seconds on that in lap, so that was a bit of a nightmare."

Dixon's race strategist, CGR managing director Mike Hull, says two-way communication held until later in the race.

"The radio worked fine before the race where we do our communications checks, and then it worked fine in the race going into the first pit stop," Hull told RACER. "We did three total pit stops with Scott in the race. He came to us on pit lane for the first stop when we called him on that first yellow, and all was good there. And he pitted on lap 38 when we called him, and then it started getting sounded like wax paper was wrapped around the microphone in his helmet.

Depending on the track, the assistant race engineer could set the warning at a threshold where the driver knows to pit at the end of the lap, or to give the driver more advanced warning of the tank drawing close to being empty. In each instance, the driver will be given pre-race instructions for how many laps they have left to run once the warning appears. Dixon pitted for his final stop when he saw the warning, which came one lap after the No. 9 Honda team made the call to pit that went unheard.

According to section 7.4.3 in IndyCar's rule book titled 'Radio Communication', a clear directive is listed under Rule 7.4.3.1 which states, "During all on-track Events, radio communication between the Driver and the Entrant's Pit Box is required at all times."

Based on the team's and the driver's acknowledgement that they couldn't hear each other in the latter stage of the race, the No. 9 car would appear to be in breach of the regulations. In reading the single sentence for Rule 7.4.3.1, it's also worth nothing that no guidelines follow the rule with instructions for what must be done by a team if communications fail during a session or race.

The obvious expectation would be for the team to ask for the car to be black-flagged and ordered to the pits so the matter can be rectified, if possible. But there are no rules that say the team must self-report the issue to IndyCar. IndyCar also monitors and records all radio channels, which would give it the ability to detect if a communication breakdown between team and driver, or spotter and driver, takes place.

But with no known detection or enforcement policies written on the matter, it would appear to be an area that will come under review for the next round of rule book updates. It's also worth considering a revision to Rule 7.4.3.1 to further define "radio communication between the Driver and the Entrant's Pit Box is required at all times" as meaning functional, easy-to-understand communications, since the team and driver in this instance lost that ability while the race was ongoing.

According to IndyCar, and despite the admitted absence of in-race communication between Dixon and the No. 9 team, the series said there's no action to be taken.