Scott Dixon places second in IndyCar opener after racing without radio comms: ‘Cost us the race'

New York Times

03-03-2025

Six-time IndyCar champion Scott Dixon ran the series' season opener Sunday without radio communications throughout the entire race in St. Petersburg, Fla., and said the issue likely cost him first place.
The New Zealand driver could not hear his team throughout the race at the 1.8-mile, 14-turn circuit that partly ran through the streets of downtown St. Petersburg. His team could hear him intermittently, team owner Chip Ganassi said.
Advertisement
The technological mishap caused Dixon to pit too late, he said after the race Sunday. Dixon pitted based on his fuel gauge but said not having the radio 'ultimately cost us the race.'
'I'm pretty pissed off,' Dixon said Sunday. 'We had a good race going and we didn't get it done, so it doesn't feel good, that's for sure.'
Dixon, 44, trailed only winner Alex Palou, 27, in a 1-2 punch for Chip Ganassi Racing. It was Dixon's fifth runner-up finish in St. Petersburg, where he's never taken the top spot, and his first career race fully ran without radio communications.
'With not (pitting) when I should have, I think with about maybe the same lap as Alex, we caught that traffic with about five or six cars and lost about two or three seconds on that lap, so that was a bit of a nightmare,' Dixon said. 'You have a fuel light so you know when the car is going to run out. I didn't know if they could hear me, so I was just telling them, 'I'm just going 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 (Palou) coming in.'
Starting the season with a 1-2 punch 👊 pic.twitter.com/uioAVkqsBD
— Chip Ganassi Racing (@CGRTeams) March 2, 2025
Ganassi said, 'If everything was 100 percent, (Dixon) would have won — it was simple.'
'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 (Dixon) and Palou.'
Palou won three of the last four IndyCar championships, including the last two. He now has a 10-point lead over Dixon heading into the next event, slated for March 23 at The Thermal Club in Thermal, Calif.