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A bit like Webber in Korea 2010, but then everyone said he didn't do it on purpose...

Webbers car was damaged, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. Dixon deliberately turned the wheel on purpose. I think it was Mattzel (might be wrong) who provided slow-mo and frame by frame of the Dixon incident back in the day.

As for the Sonoma incident, whilst Dixon did technically go into that pit stall, if the rule is you can't do that then so did Will Power. The crew member was slowly wandering back with a tyre whilst a car was right behind him. The crew member showed an amazing lack of awareness of what was going on around him.

I'm with you on this ellis. That pit crew member showed a scary amount of complacency.

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The race was decent I thought. As for the penalty... At first glance, it looked ridiculous. However, on further review, I understand where race control is coming from and I do agree that a car is not allowed to just drive through another pit stall while stops are underway. Was the way the tire changer was carrying the tire idiotic? Yes. Did he himself show a rather large lack of awareness as to his surroundings? Yes. Should this have been a penalty against Dixon for hitting pit equipment that was still wholly contained in a cometitor's pitstall? Based on that, yes.

At the end of the day, in principle, it's no different then when the teams layout for a pistop intentially wide in order to make their opponents pitstops more difficult. In this case, it bit both Power's crew and Dixon in the ass.

I do agree with Dallenbach though, if the Target guys thought the penalty was bullshit then I wouldn't have brought Dixon in, at least not right away. Gotta fight race control on that one if they thought it was really bull.

Had a look at the incident a few times... even though I'm a Dixon fan... rules are rules and he hit someone in the pits so a penalty was the right call... however the beef I have is that should Scott have even been put in a position where by simply exiting his pitstall he'd hit someone? I'm not sure what the rules are around how they set the pits up but it seems to happen fairly often in US racing and it sucks that something like this has potentially decided the championship outcome.

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I like how Barfield was playing the safety card to cover his ass. Yea, we get it, we all want to protect the crewmen but what do you do when the crewman is callous/suicidal like that? Should have penalized Penske for that more than anything.

I agree with the last 2 posts. Yes technically what Dixon did means a penalty. But rules should be applied with common sense. This was 95% that crew members fault, it's just that the rule book doesn't take into account potential stupidity like that. I guess because nobody expects a crew member to be that stupid.

Rules should be applied with common sense, rather than blindly by the letter of the law. But this is something which IndyCar has always struggled with. We've seen a lot of penalties, usually regarding blocking and minor contact which technically were illegal, but shouldn't have been penalties.

On the other hand it wasn't the crewman who wondered outside his box. Dixon still cut through Powers box and therein lies the problem. I think if you do that then you are responsibe for the outcome even if the crewman on the other team is walking around rather lost.

That said, Indycar needs to sort out the pits better since there are no lines to designate the Indycar boxes, which was why people were quick to state that said spaced out crewman was outside the box. Plus I think they sould keep an eye out on the marks that the teams set out so they don't inhibit another team.

Actually watching it again and again, Dixon would have hit him if he was still changing the tyre. Look very closely at the NASCAR pit lines. The overhead view especially.

It also looks as if the crewman is being more mindful of not tripping over the other crewmans legs then Dixons car.

If anyone actually thinks the mechanic stood in the way of Dixon needs to get his head checked or have not actually been at a racetrack.

I doubt he did it on purpose. He was just being a moron. He acts like there isn't a massive big race car within inches of him whilst he slowly wanders around, holding a tyre hanging out the side.

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He wasn't a moron, he was complacent. Although the act of complacency was moronic.

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Formula Fun Cup Champion 2013
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