[autotag]Josef Newgarden[/autotag] started the 2024 NTT IndyCar Series season on the right note by winning the opening event. However, it quickly went downhill after the IndyCar Series announced that Newgarden and Scott McLaughlin were disqualified from St. Petersburg after breaking the rules with Push to Pass. Also, Will Power was docked 10 points.
Instead of releasing a press release, Newgarden spoke to the media in a press conference on Friday morning. The 2023 Indianapolis 500 winner talked about the situation and was really emotional as he held back tears.
“The tricky thing about this whole situation is I didn’t know I did anything wrong until Monday after Long Beach,” Newgarden said. “It’s the first time I heard that I broke the rules. You guys can call me every name in the book – you can call me incompetent, call me an idiot, call me an [expletive], call me stupid, whatever you want to call me, but I’m not a liar.”
Josef Newgarden says you can call him all sorts of names, and he concedes it's not a believable story, but these are the facts about his overtake assist usage at St Pete.
The team says code was accidently left in the engine that bypassed the hold from a hybrid testing session. pic.twitter.com/Hb82an8cC0
— Matt Weaver (@MattWeaverRA) April 26, 2024
“The story that I know, which is the truth, is almost too convenient to be believable. So to answer your question, no, I didn’t leave St. Pete thinking we pulled something over on somebody. I didn’t know that we did something wrong until this week. The key difference on the No. 2 car, which is important to understand, is that somehow we convinced ourselves that there was a rule change to restarts specifically with overtake usage.”
At the end of the day, no one knows whether Team Penske was truly attempting to break the rules or not. Yet, Newgarden and McLaughlin’s results won’t change, and the team faces the consequences of their actions. It will be tough to put this story behind them, but Team Penske must focus forward and climb out of this massive points hole.
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