IndyCar: Scott Dixon has gotten the short end of the stick at Long Beach before

By Asher Fair | Apr 17, 2019

LONG BEACH, CA - APRIL 19: Scott Dixon of New Zealand driver of the #9 Target Chip Ganassi Racing Chevrolet Dallara during the Verizon IndyCar Series Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach on April 19, 2015 on the streets of Long Beach, California. (Photo by Robert Laberge/Getty Images) /

While Scott Dixon benefited from IndyCar’s controversial ruling against Graham Rahal on Sunday, it certainly had nothing to do with who he is; he has gotten the short end of the stick at Long Beach before.

On the final lap of Sunday’s 85-lap Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach, the fourth race on the 17-race 2019 IndyCar schedule, Chip Ganassi Racing’s Scott Dixon tried to pass the clearly slower car of Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing’s Graham Rahal.

Rahal blocked Dixon coming off of turn eight of the 11-turn, 1.968-mile (3.167-kilometer) temporary street circuit on the streets of Long Beach, California, and he held him off by just 0.1156 to finish the race in third place.

But IndyCar controversially ruled that Rahal’s blocking move was one in which he moved in reaction to Dixon. As a result, they awarded Dixon third place and demoted Rahal to fourth.

While a knee-jerk reaction to the penalty would make it easy to say that this was a simple case of IndyCar controversially helping Dixon because he is a five-time champion and has been a staple of the series and of one of the series most successful teams for more than a decade and a half, this simply isn’t the case.

In fact, IndyCar did a lot more than cost him a podium finish at this particular race before, and quite recently as well.

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In 2016 — in fact, three years ago today — they cost him the victory.

Chip Ganassi Racing’s Charlie Kimball had not yet made his final pit stop with 26 of the race’s 80 laps remaining, so while the battle involving Dixon and Team Penske’s Simon Pagenaud was technically for second place, it was effectively for the race lead.

Dixon had already made his final pit stop, whereas Pagenaud made his final pit stop at the start of lap 55. As Pagenaud was exiting the pits, Dixon was closing quickly. Pagenaud then cut the yellow/red pit exit line far too early to barely hold off the driver of the #9 Chevrolet in turn one.

Per IndyCar’s rules, drivers were required to keep at least two tires inside of that yellow/red pit exit line before going back out onto the track. Pagenaud clearly had none of his four tires on the inside of it.

Here is a video of his controversial move (start at 1:27:00).

Had Pagenaud kept at least two tires inside of this line before coming back onto the track, Dixon would have cleared him and probably pulled away with an easy victory, as he was clearly faster than him during the final stint. But because Pagenaud didn’t, he couldn’t quite manage to pull off the pass.

Dixon ended up failing to pass him Pagenaud the course of the race’s final 26 laps, and he finished in second place just 0.303 seconds behind Pagenaud, marking the closest finish in IndyCar history at the historic venue in the race’s 42nd annual running.

At the start of the 2016 season, a new panel was put in place by IndyCar to review all incidents, and that panel declared that no warnings would be given throughout the season, just penalties. Everyone had agreed that rules needed to enforced and there needed to be consistency given the level of controversy and inconsistency that existed in several seasons prior.

Pagenaud ended up not being penalized despite the fact that he clearly violated the rule regarding exiting the pits, costing Dixon what would have been his second consecutive and second career victory on the streets of Long Beach.

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So while the penalty that IndyCar issued to Graham Rahal was highly questionable if not totally ridiculous, it certainly wasn’t made with any favoritism in mind toward Scott Dixon, although that may be how it seemed at first given all the evidence pointing toward Rahal’s move being a completely legal one. Past history at Long Beach pretty much proves this.