It was a hot and humid 80-degree afternoon in Alabama as the IndyCar Series field headed out to qualify for Sunday’s 90-lap race at Barber Motorsports Park. Adjusting to the rising temperature was a big part of how some teams and drivers thrived and …
It was a hot and humid 80-degree afternoon in Alabama as the IndyCar Series field headed out to qualify for Sunday’s 90-lap race at Barber Motorsports Park. Adjusting to the rising temperature was a big part of how some teams and drivers thrived and others struggled, and with the clock wound down to the final minute, it was Team Penske’s Scott McLaughlin who took pole, knocking teammate Will Power off of the top starting spot by a scant 0.0970s.
For McLaughlin, who won last year’s Barber race, it was his sixth career IndyCar pole position, and comes after a tough week for the New Zealander and the rest of Team Penske.
“The car today was just phenomenal,” McLaughlin said. “We’ve hardly changed it. When you arrive here, you drop it out of the truck, you don’t have to change it that much, you build more confidence, more confidence, more confidence. You just find the limit, know the limit. Thankfully the car was really good on that final set of reds. We were able to put her up the front.”
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With McLaughlin’s lap of 1m05.9490s setting the standard, only Power and Rahal Letterman Lanigan’s Christian Lundgaard were close (+0.1328s) to the Kiwi. Arrow McLaren’s Pato O’Ward staved off a bad day for the entire team by claiming fourth (+0.3450s) as his teammates qualified 16th or lower.
Meyer Shank Racing’s Felix Rosenqvist — with a fresh engine after his Honda motor failed in the morning practice — continued his strong season of Saturday runs by capturing fifth (+0.5034s) and like O’Ward with his team, Chip Ganassi Racing’s Marcus Armstrong offered the one ray of hope after securing sixth (+0.9532s) as the lone member of the five-car team to crack the Firestone Fast Six.
The opening phase of the Firestone Fast 12 saw Alex Palou lead the 13-car group, followed by Pato O’Ward, Marcus Armstrong, Graham Rahal, Romain Grosjean, and Kyle Kirkwood transfer into the next round. Among the surprises were Long Beach winner Scott Dixon and runner-up Colton Herta, who missed the cut and will start 13th and 15th respectively.
“It is what it is,” Dixon said. “We just missed it. We need to find out why we didn’t have the speed.”
IndyCar newcomer Luca Ghiotto showed well, qualifying 21st in the 27-deep field on his second day in an Indy car.
The second phase of qualifying with the other 14 cars was led by McLaughlin, Power, Josef Newgarden, Lundgaard, Rosenqvist and Tom Blomqvist.
The surprises were found with Alexander Rossi and Marcus Ericsson, who will roll off in 16th and 18th respectively.
“We’re missing something and it’s a bit strange because the car feels OK to drive,” Ericsson said.
Rinus VeeKay, fastest in the morning practice session, was unable to make a proper qualifying attempt when an issue at the back of his car kept him on pit lane.
“We were losing power, but it’s because of an electrical issue,” VeeKay said.
The third round of qualifying — the Fast 12 — sent Lundgaard, Power, McLaughlin, Armstrong, O’Ward and Rosenqvist through to fight for pole.
Seventh through 12th was set with Rahal and four straight surprises in Newgarden, Kirkwood, Palou and Grosjean; Blomqvist completed the group.
“I didn’t do a great lap. It’s a decent spot for us,” Newgarden said.
ONe IndyCar team owner has blasted Team Penske for cheating at St. Petersburg. Check out what the IndyCar owner had to say about Penske!
[autotag]Team Penske[/autotag] was caught cheating at St. Petersburg, and the consequences matched the crime. Josef Newgarden and Scott McLaughlin were disqualified after Team Penske manipulated the Push to Pass parameters. Tim Cindric, the President of Team Penske, claimed it was an accident, but others are not convinced that was the case.
One IndyCar team owner, who was granted anonymity, talked to IndyStar and gave their opinion on Cindric’s statement. Overall, most of the team owners are upset and believe it is not true.
“The statement that Cindric put out is a bold-faced lie, and everyone knows that,” the IndyCar team owner said. “For teams to read that, it’s, ‘Are you kidding me?’ If you tell the lie enough times, it doesn’t make it true.”
This has been a massive story in racing over the week as Team Penske is arguably IndyCar’s most controversial team due to the conflict of interests. However, the damage has been for Newgarden, McLaughlin, and Team Penske. It remains seen how this story develops moving forward but it’s not going away anytime soon.
Josef Newgarden has taken responsibility for the irregular usage of push-to-pass (P2P) at IndyCar’s season opener at St. Petersburg last month, which resulted in his victory being disqualified when the issued came to light at Long Beach. Newgarden …
Josef Newgarden has taken responsibility for the irregular usage of push-to-pass (P2P) at IndyCar’s season opener at St. Petersburg last month, which resulted in his victory being disqualified when the issued came to light at Long Beach.
Newgarden was determined to have used the P2P three times during restarts, when it was supposed to have been deactivated. Team Penske teammate Scott McLaughlin, who used it illegally once, was also disqualified from third. Will Power was issued a points deduction for having full-time P2P enabled on his car, although he did not use it.
The ability for the Penske cars to use P2P at times when it should have been inactive has been traced to a software oversight by the team, and McLaughlin is thought to have inadvertently hit the button out of habit. Newgarden’s usage was intentional, which he says was due him misunderstanding the rules.
“I think at this point it’s really important to look at the facts of what happened, and the facts are extremely clear. There’s no doubt that we were in breach of the rules at St. Petersburg. I used push to pass at an unauthorized time twice on two different restarts,” he said while publicly addressing the issue for the first time on Friday.
“There’s really nothing else to it other than that those are the rules, and we did not adhere to them. For me, what’s really important about that is, there’s only one person sitting in the car. It’s just me. And so that responsibility and the use of the push to pass in the correct manner falls completely on me. It is my responsibility to know the rules and the regulations at all points, and to make sure that I get that right. And with that regard, I failed my team miserably. Complete failure from my side to get that right. You know, it’s my job as the leader of the No.2 car to not make mistakes like that. You cannot make a mistake at this level in that situation.
“There’s no room for it. There’s no room for that type of mistake anywhere, certainly not at the top level of motorsports. And I don’t want to hide from that. It’s an embarrassing situation to have to go through, to see what’s transpired. It’s demoralizing in a lot of ways. And there’s nothing that I can say that changes the fact of what happened. I mean, it’s pretty clear. That’s why I say I think the facts are most important right now. That’s what really matters. I also think the truth is important, and I think that there can be space for both of those things. So if there’s anything that I wanted to come say… I want to deeply apologize to our fans, our partners, my teammates, the competitors that I race against, anybody that’s in our community.
“I’ve worked my entire career to hold myself to an incredibly high standard. And clearly I’ve fallen very short of that in this respect. Once again, I can’t overstate, it’s a difficult thing to wrestle with. It’s a very embarrassing process to go through and I hope we can find a way forward after this. I mean, that’s really all you can do, is try and find a way forward after the fact.”
Newgarden says he believed until Long Beach that his use of P2P at St. Petersburg had been permissible. Josh Tons/Motorsport Images
Newgarden reiterated that his use of the P2P at St. Pete was deliberate, but said that he remained unaware that he was doing anything wrong until the series brought the issue to the team’s attention at Long Beach. Instead, he says he was under the mistaken impression that the series had introduced a change in restart procedures as they relate to P2P.
“The tricky thing about this whole situation is, I didn’t know I did anything wrong until Monday after Long Beach. It’s the first time I heard that I broke the rules,” he said.
“You guys call me every name of the book. You can call me incompetent. Call me an idiot, call me an a**hole, call me stupid, whatever you want to call me, but I’m not a liar. And the story, that I know is the truth, is almost too convenient to be believable. So, no, I, 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.
“I know what happened. I know why it happened, and I don’t think it’s very believable. Even when I try and tell the story back, I don’t think any of us believe it’ll be believable to somebody, but it’s the truth. So, no, I didn’t know I did something wrong in St. Pete. The key difference on the No.2 car, which is important to understand, is that somehow, some way, we convinced ourselves that there was a rule change to restart, specifically with overtake usage. And you say, well, how do you come up with this? This never happened before. The only place that this got introduced was with the Thermal exhibition race. It’s the only time in my time in IndyCar where we’ve actually had a legitimate legal change of the push to pass system where it’s going to be operatable at a time, other than at the alt start/finish line. It was going to be usable in qualifying, too.
“There was a lot of discussion around it, and we somehow genuinely believed and convinced ourselves that at St. Pete, the rule was, now you can use it immediately on restarts. You don’t have to wait til the alt start/finish line. It’s going to be available immediately. I even wanted the team to remind me of this so that I didn’t forget.”
The problem came to light during Sunday morning’s warmup session at Long Beach when it became apparent that Penske’s drivers were using P2P at a time when it should have been unavailable to the entire field due to a technical error in race control. This was fixed, but Newgarden still went into the Long Beach race believing that there had been a change to the restart rules. He admits that he actually tried to use the system again during the Long Beach start.
“The craziest part of the story is the software issue that no one knew about. It just perpetuated that belief even further,” he said. “So then you go through St. Pete, you go through Thermal, where it’s an actual change and everybody’s using it. And then you go to Long Beach and it’s still in the car. And the first time that any of us hear about this software issue or mistake is the warmup. And the even crazier part of that is, even when you learn about the software issue that no one knew about, and it was fixed, I still believed the procedural difference on restarts applied for Long Beach. I tried to do the exact same thing leading the race at Long Beach. I even pushed the button — I came over the radio; I said, ‘Hey, the guys, the overtake’s not working correctly.’
“I said it throughout the whole first lap because it wasn’t working. I don’t know why in your right mind you would do that. Did I try and come up with a conspiracy and then cover… it’s not. The truth is, somehow we got that mixed up and it somehow got entangled with a mistake, and it’s created some ridiculously unbelievable storyline. But the facts of the matter are, I used it illegally. I wasn’t allowed to. And I can’t change that. Whatever I say going forward will not change those facts. And it kills me that it doesn’t. I wish I could go back in time and somehow reverse all this, but I can’t.”
In addition to Newgarden’s confusion about the regulations, the other major failure in the process was the existence of the code in the electronics chain on the Penske cars that allowed P2P to be freely available in the first place.
“On Sunday morning of Long Beach, I was like, ‘Oh, well, we had an issue.’ I’m learning about this an hour before the race,” he said. “No one panicked. There was no deep dive into this. I still didn’t know that there was anything amiss — certainly not from St. Pete. So, you know, we fix all that. We go through the race. When I learned there was a real issue here, I go, ‘How is this possible? Who safeguards this stuff?’ And then I learn after the fact that this has been possible for anybody at any point. So it’s also not complex. It’s very simple. If you break down exactly what happened, it’s extremely simple. And it kind of baffled me that anybody could have done that. There was no sort of checks and balance in place. And I’m not trying to point the finger at everybody. It doesn’t absolve us from anything. But I was shocked to learn that there was no safeguard in place. It was just that this could have happened at any point, and no one knew about it.
“No one genuinely believed we had done anything wrong. No one was looking for something inaccurate. It’s not something that just jumps out like a silver bullet. It’s easy to, especially now learning how the software piece works, it’s something on the team side where it’s literally built into your preferences on your dash. There’s a digit there that literally sends this signal. I don’t think it’s something that we were looking for.”
Newgarden also addressed the question of how the irregularity at St. Pete was not spotted in the data studied by the drivers and engineers.
“That’s not data that you look at after the race,” he said. “I didn’t review any of that stuff after the race. I mean, it was a good weekend. I did my notes. I watched the race back. I didn’t assume anything was off, or anything was different. I mean, there’s a reason that Will didn’t use it. The only person in-car that was under the belief that there was a rule change was in the No. 2 car. You know, there’s a reason Scott only used it 1.9 seconds, too. I mean, he truly is just hitting it out of habit, which does happen. I think I hit the thing 29 times (in 2023).”
While Newgarden is keen to make his accountability for the situation clear, he also recognizes that he has some work to do to regain the trust of some of his competitors.
“I don’t know how you do that,” he admitted. “It is important to state. I think it’s the truth. I don’t know that anybody’s going to believe what I’ve told you here today. And that’s OK. I mean, it’s a crazy set of circumstances to try and just reason with. It’s certainly not going come from words, you know? It’s just going to take repetitive action. That’s all you can do is just repetitive action, and hopefully I can stand on that in the future. So however long it takes or how many years, if I’m given the time, I’ll just try and earn it through action.
“I saw (IndyCar president ) Jay Frye for the first time yesterday — he asked me to come see him, and I think he was just being nice. I think he wanted to be a friend. And I told Jay the story too, you know — I was like, ‘Jay, this is what happened.’ The saddest thing about it was, no one did this on purpose. And even me telling Jay the story, I could tell looking at him that even he was having a hard time believing it. I’m like, what are you going to do? If, if this guy has a hard time believing it, how is anybody going to believe it? And I can’t affect that. So after today I’m not going to concern myself with it, because I just can’t control it.”
While the St Petersburg disqualification puts Newgarden into an early hole with regard to his championship aspirations, he said that the series was correct to strip him of the win.
“I do believe the integrity of the series is absolutely paramount,” he said. “You know, the series has to hold everybody accountable regardless of the circumstance, regardless of the intent, and they’ve done the right thing by trying to throw the book at us. They should. It just doesn’t matter what the intent was. If you broke a rule, you broke a rule, and you should suffer the consequences and this series has to uphold that standard. It makes me proud that I’m a part of this series that does that — that’s a series I want to be a part of. So I think the penalty’s fair. It’s crushing. I mean, I’m going to look back on it too and say, ‘Well, I don’t want that win on my books either.’ I don’t want it. I’m glad they’re taking it away. If it was tainted, then I don’t want to be near it. And unfortunately it is.
“We hold ourselves to a really high standard. I mean, everybody knows that. And we have no room to deviate from that. So whether you meant to make a mistake or, you just did, it doesn’t matter, you know? If it’s by accident or by design, it’s not acceptable. And so it’s hard to wrestle with it when it happens, regardless of the circumstances. I can’t speak on Roger [Penske]’s behalf, but just from my side, I think we hold ourselves to a really high standard, and certainly, I fell short of it, and I just apologize to anybody that we’ve offended with it. I can’t say much more than that. I’m sorry it happened.”
Team Penske is working on a contract extension that would keep Josef Newgarden in the No. 2 Chevy after his current contract expires at the end of this year. “I think we are making good progress,” Team Penske president Tim Cindric told RACER. Having …
Team Penske is working on a contract extension that would keep Josef Newgarden in the No. 2 Chevy after his current contract expires at the end of this year.
“I think we are making good progress,” Team Penske president Tim Cindric told RACER.
Having joined Penske in 2017, Newgarden has reached the highest level of success in IndyCar after winning championships in 2017 and ’19, and the Indianapolis 500 in 2023. With a desire to receive a greater level of compensation, Newgarden is known to have explored free agency, and as RACER learned last weekend from one of his potential destinations in the paddock, the embattled 33-year-old is tipped to stay with the Cindric-led team in 2025. It’s unclear whether the Tennessean is seeking a one- or multi-year extension with the team.
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Newgarden’s title hopes took a shot this week when he was stripped of his win at the opening race in St. Petersburg after he was found to have illegally used IndyCar’s push-to-pass system when it was disabled for other teams during starts and restarts.
The disqualification demoted Newgarden from first in the championship to 11th entering Sunday’s race at Barber Motorsports Park.
In an intensive 45-minute phone call on Thursday between RACER, Team Penske president Tim Cindric and managing director Ron Ruzewski – the two senior-most leaders of Roger Penske’s IndyCar Series program – explained their side of the push-to-pass …
In an intensive 45-minute phone call on Thursday between RACER, Team Penske president Tim Cindric and managing director Ron Ruzewski — the two senior-most leaders of Roger Penske’s IndyCar Series program — explained their side of the push-to-pass (P2P) saga that has brought embarrassment to the team and the series owned by Roger Penske.
Caught by IndyCar during Sunday’s morning warmup at Long Beach, the findings of improper uses of 50hp shots of power from the P2P system when the systems were deactivated led to championship leader Josef Newgarden losing his victory from the opening race of the year at St. Petersburg, teammate Scott McLaughlin being disqualified from his third-place result, and Will Power — whose car was capable of exploiting the system but it went unused — being stripped of 10 championship points.
In the case of Newgarden, who has maintained his silence since the penalties were announced Wednesday morning, the Tennessean is due to speak with the assembled media on Friday morning at Barber Motorsports Park. For McLaughlin, an urgency to protect his reputation led to a social media post on Wednesday night. Power followed suit with his own statement on Thursday.
But Team Penske has not given an in-depth explanation of what happened from a procedural and technical standpoint until now, which Cindric and Ruzewski offer below.
“We want to clear it up to where we’ll put it on a platter and expose it to everybody,” Cindric told RACER. “There’s nothing here to hide. We screwed up a process and it went undetected by us and everyone else, which to me is still surprising. But it did. And thankfully this thing happened in the warmup or we’d be talking about Long Beach.”
THE INFRACTIONS
Before we cover off the operational aspects of how Team Penske says its three cars were erroneously set up to bypass the P2P controls created by IndyCar to disable the system during race starts and restarts, let’s get the instances of illegal P2P use at St. Petersburg out of the way.
“Number one, none of our drivers used it on the start,” Cindric said, which RACER has independently verified. “It would have probably been a lot easier to see because everybody is set at 200 seconds of use or whatever the number is, and if it shows 170 or 180 for us and it shows 200 for everybody else, which is what happened in the warmup, it would be pretty obvious what happened.
“Individually, car 2 (Newgarden) used it three times for a total of nine seconds, all during restarts. There’s three seconds of push-to-pass on the restart on lap 30 on the front straight. There were 2.4 seconds going into Turn 4 (on the same lap), and that’s when the 2 overtook the 26 (Andretti Global’s Colton Herta).
“Josef used the push-to-pass for 3.6 seconds on the restart on lap 72 when he was leading. Scott used it out of Turn 9 on lap 30 for 1.9 seconds.”
Newgarden’s three uses for nine seconds and McLaughlin’s single use for 1.9 seconds were also externally verified to RACER as being accurate.
INVESTIGATION
IndyCar called Team Penske to its operations trailer Sunday morning after the cars were found to be out of compliance in the warmup and began its investigation into the matter. Ruzewski says he led the charge internally to assist the series with the process.
“As soon as we were aware of it at Long Beach, as soon as the race got done, we started going through stuff,” he added. “It was Monday when Tim presented all the information to IndyCar. We were forthcoming and said, ‘Here’s what happened at St. Pete,’ because this (P2P usage) was in there. This has been in there. There was no waiting for accusations or whatever from the series. We were like, ‘Holy s••t, this is bad. This is wrong.’”
”We were forthcoming and said, ‘Here’s what happened at St. Pete,’ because this (P2P usage) was in there. This has been in there. There was no waiting for accusations or whatever from the series,”Ruzewski says. “We were like, ‘Holy s••t, this is bad,” Michael Levitt/Motorsport Images
HOW THEY SAY IT HAPPENED
The ability to bypass IndyCar’s control of its P2P system is centered on two electronic boxes, the CLU (Central Logger Unit) and the MyLaps timing and scoring transponder, which works together with the CLU in sending on or off instructions to the ECU (engine control module).
A deeper explanation exists in Wednesday’s analysis story for those who are interested, so to avoid repetition, just know that the CLU/MyLaps boxes behave as the gatekeepers to whether the ECU is instructed to give or take P2P away from the drivers.
As some engine technicians and data engineers believe, Team Penske spoofed the “on” signal IndyCar sends remotely and wirelessly through the CLU/MyLaps communications path to trick the ECU to give Penske’s drivers a live button on starts and restarts.
Given an open forum to explain how IndyCar’s P2P controls were circumvented, Cindric says it was a case of shortcuts being taken by the team and a legacy of incorrect settings being carried over from hybrid engine testing in August of 2023 at Sebring.
“From my perspective, it is not any one person,” Cindric said as he started an extended narrative. “The process in which we got there was flawed. But we’re certainly not here to hide anything about what happened, because it’s important for us to be completely transparent with everybody.
“The number one thing I wanted to understand, that Roger [Penske] wanted to understand collectively is, was this done on purpose? And if so, who, what, where and why? Who would think that they would even remotely get away with something like this? And if we did, for how long? You know, people are gonna believe what they want to believe at this point. It’s a sensational story. As you know, in a competitive environment — nobody’s really your friend as far as your competitors.
“We tested at Sebring with a hybrid car. There were multiple iterations of software coming through on a pretty consistent basis. I wasn’t at this test, but one thing I understand is that there was a need to have the (P2P) button operational, independent of the hybrid deployment. And in the (CLU), there’s a way to do that. That’s accessible to all teams. So there’s an equation in there and a line that if you change the value to ‘1’ then push-to-pass is available all the time, provided that the ECU has been loaded with push-to-pass. And we did all the hybrid testing with this.
“And when it came time to run our race cars, there were so many things that had changed with channels, nomenclature, electronics and software, all that stuff. And at that point in time, we loaded the software in, basically the same file that was in the hybrid cars, instead of rewriting all the different nomenclature, labels, and whatever else.
“Somebody made the decision that it was easiest just to cut and paste out of that and load that into the three race cars. So now all the cars are loaded with this same push-to-pass equation, which is a constant. At that point, it’s just simply if you push the button, then you end up with push-to-pass active.”
“The process in which we got there was flawed. But we’re certainly not here to hide anything about what happened, because it’s important for us to be completely transparent with everybody,” Cindric says. Josh Tons/Motorsport Images
THE TECH SIDE
According to Cindric, the team did not do anything that was intentionally devious like setting the CLU/MyLaps gateway to show it had the correct string of P2P code in the software while circumventing the gateway through other means.
In fact, Cindric says that instead of having the proper string of CLE code of “Choose(MYL_Overtake Staus ==3,1,0)” entered which would have given IndyCar full control over the use of P2P, its three cars competed at St. Petersburg through the time it was caught last weekend with that code replaced by the illegal “1” that gave the ECU a constant green light to give their drivers P2P whenever they wanted.
“They called me in and said we were defeating their control and showed me the equation,” Ruzewski said. “They said this (P2P) status equals ‘1’ all the time, which says you can operate it in a way where I was surprised. This is what caught me off guard because I had no idea. So I had to educate myself a little bit on how it was controlled, and once I found out, yep, that’s the case. It was as easy as that.
“We just literally took what we did from the hybrid, because it was so many new data streams, and we finally got to test everything and get everything working. And then it was a cut and paste error. An oversight.”
NEWGARDEN AND McLAUGHLIN
With a single use of the illegally-available P2P on a restart, McLaughlin’s assertion in his statement that it was done without forethought or malice has credible tones since it wasn’t used a second time. The 1.9s burst of extra power was, without question, an unfair advantage from Turn 9 to Turn 11, but did not result in his ability to make a pass.
Newgarden’s repeated use of illegal P2P at St. Petersburg is more complicated.
Some drivers make a habit of pressing the P2P button on starts and restarts in the off chance the system has been mistakenly activated by the series. Newgarden, in particular, is well-known within the driver group for frequently hitting the inactive P2P button on starts and restarts and did so prior to joining Team Penske.
Out of curiosity, Cindric asked his engineering team to create a report that would identify how many times his drivers pressed the P2P button in 2023 while it was disabled — use of the button, whether it’s active or inactive, is logged in the data — and the results were telling.
“I got the answer I expected, to be honest,” Cindric said. “Last year, Newgarden pushed the button 29 times on either starts or restarts. Power did it 12 times. And McLaughlin did it seven times. And the next thing that I wanted to understand is why is one driver doing it more than the others?”
Cindric points to the individual steering wheel dash arrangement preferences of his IndyCar trio as the likely reason why McLaughlin and Power do less of the habitual button pressing.
“In Will and Scott’s case, they asked for gray bars on the right and left side of their dash that are lit when push-to-pass is inactive,” he added. “In other words, on starts or restarts, it basically tells them, ‘Hey, it’s inactive.’ And Newgarden doesn’t want that. He doesn’t want those bars. He’ll probably tell you that he just pushes the button whenever he thinks he can use it, whether it works or doesn’t work.”
Having used the illegal P2P power to pull away from the field at the first restart and again on the final restart, Newgarden’s practice of stabbing away at the button when it shouldn’t be working would fit a long-held pattern of optimism-filled behavior.
Where the pattern is broken is on the first restart, where Newgarden made a second use of P2P, and not entering the front straight as the green flag waved where he’s known to press the button, but later in the lap to pass Herta at Turn 4.
The deployment of P2P power once more after that restart, and while the system had yet to be activated by IndyCar, raises questions of Newgarden’s awareness of the ability to exploit the illegal advantage and willingness to use it twice on lap 30.
He also elected to not use it on the second restart, which raises more questions as to why the advantage was used twice on the first restart for a combined 5.4s, skipped on the second restart, and used for 3.6s on the third and final restart on lap 72 to streak away from Pato O’Ward and eventually win by 7.9121s.
NOBODY KNEW DURING OR AFTER THE RACE?
Among the most critical aspects of this issue to understand is whether Team Penske was alerted to the ability to use P2P when it was meant to be disabled during the St. Petersburg race.
The question itself assumes the team and its drivers were ignorant of the situation before the race, which Cindric, Ruzewski, McLaughlin and Power say is true. Following that line of thinking, it should have come as a surprise to Newgarden and McLaughlin when it did work. McLaughlin, again, says he didn’t know it had been used.
Due to Newgarden’s silence prior to the Friday press conference, his ignorance of or complicity in the ordeal was unknown at the time of writing.
Left to ask if Newgarden, the team’s most active illegal user of P2P at the race, informed Cindric — his race strategist — or anyone else associated with the No. 2 Chevy during or after the race about the button being active, Cindric said, “It never came up in our debrief.”
AND NOBODY CAUGHT IT IN THE MONTH-PLUS LEADING INTO LONG BEACH?
The hardest item to process is notion that Team Penske — North America’s gold standard in motor racing with championships in IndyCar, IMSA, and NASCAR, plus countless wins at all of the country’s biggest events, who abide by the “Penske Perfect” ethos — missed all of the warning signs about its illegal P2P configuration and all of the irregularities captured in the race data of the Nos. 2 and 3 at St. Petersburg.
The same concern applies to Team Chevy and its engine technicians, who were also seemingly unaware of the illegal uses of P2P that were present in their ECU data.
Add up the amount of people on the team and manufacturer side who didn’t see or raise a red flag after St. Petersburg, and it’s easier to understand the reasoning behind IndyCar’s aggressive punishment and the wave of criticism and disbelief aimed at the team.
As well, the fact that all of the team’s systems/data engineers went more than a month with the anytime P2P value of “1” entered into the software on all three cars without noticing is remarkable.
Such a longstanding oversight would be more readily accepted from a smaller and lesser team.
OLD DATA AND VIDEO REVIEW
Since RACER posted its initial analysis of the situation and closed with a question of whether the series will look back to previous years and investigate whether Team Penske has used P2P illegally, RACER has learned this already took place — prior to the current scandal — and the team was cleared of any wrongdoing. It’s unknown whether IndyCar will take a second look in response to this week’s events.
As noted in the first analysis piece, one team told RACER it supplied onboard video clips to IndyCar in 2023 which depicted what it felt was suspicious uses of P2P.
“I definitely want to clear that up,” Cindric said. “If there was anything in 2023, IndyCar has all that data and everything there. There is zero chance that any of this current occurred in 2023. And they can go through all the data and look at it at any point in time.”
According to Cindric, there was another identical allegation leveled against the team in 2022 which he says resulted in the team being cleared by IndyCar.
“We also want to address this 2022 video,” he continued. “There were some questions in the past about whether or not we were using push-to-pass illegally. There was an inquiry in 2022. McLaughlin was moving his thumb at the button in qualifying, but the ECU wouldn’t have had any push-to-pass even loaded in it.
“IndyCar came and looked at our steering wheel because he was moving his finger around, which is something that he does. The wheel was completely disassembled and found to have no issues or infractions. So I just want to clear that up because it was reviewed and IndyCar did come and confiscate our steering wheel and go through all that stuff.”
FINAL
Having consulted with a current championship-winning IndyCar data engineer on the CLU/MyLaps explanation and Penske’s excuse of leaving of a “1” instead of the correct “Choose(MYL_Overtake Staus ==3,1,0)” string in the software that opened the door to anytime P2P, they agreed that it was possible, albeit not something they would expect from Team Penske, and said it could have happened as simply as Cindric and Ruzewski have outlined.
Team Penske’s Scott McLaughlin wants to clear the air after he was disqualified from March’s NTT IndyCar Series season opener in St. Petersburg, where he stood on the podium in third place. He and his race-winning teammate Josef Newgarden in the No. …
Team Penske’s Scott McLaughlin wants to clear the air after he was disqualified from March’s NTT IndyCar Series season opener in St. Petersburg, where he stood on the podium in third place.
He and his race-winning teammate Josef Newgarden in the No. 2 Chevy were found to have made illegal use of IndyCar’s push-to-pass system when it was deactivated by the series.
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What the New Zealander shared in an evening post to social media aligns with what RACER has been told regarding the specific actions with his No. 3 Chevy team.
“First and foremost, I am proud to be a member of Team Penske,” he wrote. “I fully stand with everyone one of my teammates. Simply put, a mistake was made. I have the highest level of integrity and it is important to protect both my own reputation and that of the team.
“I was not aware of the situation with the software. In this instance, I used a single, very brief (1.9-second) deployment of push to pass in a section of the track, (the) exit of Turn 9, where it is typically utilized throughout the race. I hit the button out of habit, but I did not pass any cars, nor did I gain any time advantage.
“The data, which IndyCar has, confirms all of this information. While I accept the penalty, I want to be clear that I did not gain an advantage over my competitors.
“IndyCar’s competition is the best in the world and I would take no pleasure in achieving success in any way other than honestly. We will all press forward from here and focus on the task at hand this weekend at Barber.”
The IndyCar Series has disqualified Josef Newgarden from the season-opening race in St. Petersburg which he won handily, disqualified teammate Scott McLaughlin from third and penalized Will Power with the loss of 10 points after determining Team …
The IndyCar Series has disqualified Josef Newgarden from the season-opening race in St. Petersburg which he won handily, disqualified teammate Scott McLaughlin from third and penalized Will Power with the loss of 10 points after determining Team Penske, the team owned by IndyCar Series owner Roger Penske, violated the series’ push-to-pass rules.
Second-place finisher Pato O’Ward of Arrow McLaren has been promoted to first and awarded the win.
IndyCar’s longstanding practice in its road and street course races is to disable the push-to-pass system, which gives drivers an extra shot of 50hp or so, prior to starts and restarts. The system only becomes active when the series enables the buttons on the steering wheel to command the engines to deliver the extra power.
During last weekend’s event in Long Beach, the series found the three cars from Team Penske were able to bypass that software restriction and use push-to-pass at any time.
“During the Sunday, April 21 warmup session ahead of the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach, IndyCar discovered the team’s possible rules violation,” the series stated.
“An extensive review of data from the race on the streets of St. Petersburg revealed that Team Penske manipulated the overtake system so that the No. 2, 3 and 12 cars had the ability to use Push to Pass on starts and restarts. According to the IndyCar rulebook, use of overtake is not available during championship races until the car reaches the alternate start-finish line. It was determined that the No. 2 and the No. 3 gained a competitive advantage by using Push to Pass on restarts while the No. 12 did not. Additionally, all three entries have been fined $25,000 and will forfeit all prize money associated with the streets of St. Petersburg race.”
IndyCar president Jay Frye says the push-to-pass issue was rectified before Sunday’s race won by Chip Ganassi Racing’s Scott Dixon.
“The integrity of the IndyCar Series championship is critical to everything we do,” Frye said. “While the violation went undetected at St. Petersburg, IndyCar discovered the manipulation during Sunday’s warmup in Long Beach and immediately addressed it ensuring all cars were compliant for the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach. Beginning with this week’s race at Barber Motorsports Park, new technical inspection procedures will be in place to deter this violation.”
Team Penske issued a statement through president Tim Cindric after the matter was made public by the series and blamed a software oversight for the problem and subsequent advantage that was seen when Newgarden streaked away from the field at St. Petersburg to win by more than eight seconds.
“Unfortunately, the push-to-pass software was not removed as it should have been, following recently completed hybrid testing in the Team Penske Indy cars,” Cindric said. “This software allowed for push-to-pass to be deployed during restarts at the St. Petersburg Grand Prix race, when it should not have been permitted.”
Cindric also acknowledged Newgarden and McLaughlin chose to use the illegal access to push-to-pass power, which calls into question whether the unfair advantage was known to exist in advance.
“The No. 2 car driven by Josef Newgarden and the No. 3 car driven by Scott McLaughlin, both deployed push-to-pass on a restart, which violated IndyCar rules,” he added. “Team Penske accepts the penalties applied by IndyCar.”
Ryan Blaney’s No. 12 team does not have crew chief Jonathan Hassler with them at Talladega Superspeedway, but he will still be plugged in for the GEICO 500. Hassler stayed home in North Carolina after the birth of his daughter this week. Blaney …
Ryan Blaney’s No. 12 team does not have crew chief Jonathan Hassler with them at Talladega Superspeedway, but he will still be plugged in for the GEICO 500.
Hassler stayed home in North Carolina after the birth of his daughter this week. Blaney will have engineer Tony Palmer and competition director Travis Geisler on the pit box for Sunday’s race. However, Hassler will be in the command center at the race shop and have the ability to communicate with his team.
“He was involved in everything [leading into Talladega] and he’s calling in for the race,” Blaney said Saturday. “He’ll be in those guys’ ear, but he was involved in prep like normal. He’s just not here.”
The use of a command center or war room has become common in recent years. It is a dedicated area in the race shop for top Cup Series teams where engineers and other team members have access to live in-race data and information, and can communicate with those at the racetrack.
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Blaney is a three-time Talladega Superspeedway winner, including last fall to advance into the third round of the playoffs. In the last three Talladega races, Blaney has finished no worse than second. He’s also led 109 laps in the last four Cup Series races there.
The reigning series champion has no concerns about who is on the pit box for Sunday.
“Tony is great,” Blaney said. “He obviously works with Jonathan every single weekend and through the week and obviously Travis Geisler being the competition director and ex-crew chief, he knows everything. I’m really comfortable with those guys.
“I’m happy Jonathan can be there for his daughter and enjoy his time at home and take that all in, so I’m looking forward to working with those guys this weekend. They’ll be great.”
Ryan Blaney took a Ford Mustang Dark Horse he described as not doing anything right less than 60 laps into Sunday’s race at Martinsville Speedway to a hard-fought fifth-place finish. “I’m proud of the fight back,” Blaney said. “It was going to be a …
Ryan Blaney took a Ford Mustang Dark Horse he described as not doing anything right less than 60 laps into Sunday’s race at Martinsville Speedway to a hard-fought fifth-place finish.
“I’m proud of the fight back,” Blaney said. “It was going to be a long day for a while, and it ended up not being a terrible day. It was still a long day, but nice to get a good finish.”
Believe it or not, a potential loose wheel, big adjustments and a two-tire call aided Blaney’s team. The reigning series champion started ninth and fell to 11th at the end of the first stage. Blaney fought loose, being unable to put the power down and struggled for rear grip. During this stage, he told his team the car was doing “nothing good, currently.”
At the end of the first stage, Blaney made his pit stop with the rest of the leaders but then returned to pit road because of issues with the lug nut on the left rear. During the second stop, the Penske team took big swings on adjustments for the No. 12 entry.
“I knew it really, really hard to pass,” Blaney said of losing his track position because of the additional pit stop. “In my head, I was like, ‘Man, this is going to be a really tall task to try to get back up there,’ because no one could pass anybody all day. It was super tough. Luckily, I knew we were going to have to get creative, and we did, and that’s just a good job by [crew chief Jonathan Hassler].”
Blaney ended the second stage in the 20th position, but the car started coming around. The creativity came when Hassler called for two tires going into the final stage, which jumped the team into eighth place.
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“I thought it just took a little bit to get back up [there], and the two-tire call was a good call,” Blaney said. “We were able to hang decent and all that. And then I was proud of our pace. Our pace after the green flag stop was really good. We went from 10th and got to fifth and then was all over the No. 11 (Denny Hamlin) and just kind of used my stuff up getting there, and you get hit traffic and slow down 0.3s.”
Once inside the top 10 with track position, Blaney never fell behind again. It was just a tougher day than anticipated after he dominated and won at Martinsville Speedway in the fall.
“We changed some stuff up a little bit just trying to learn and evolve, and it was a little bit different package, too,” Blaney said. “But I was kind of that way in practice yesterday; felt the same, and we just didn’t adjust enough for the race.
“The temperature was fairly similar to the fall, but a little bit different package, and we tried some new things. Just trying to learn for [this] fall.”
Blaney was running fifth when the final caution came out with three laps to go. The leaders stayed on track, and Blaney chose the outside lane, which put him fourth for the restart. He lost a spot to Bubba Wallace in the final two laps.
“I didn’t think we were very good early and struggled, and then was going to have a loose wheel and had to come back pit road and just kind of weren’t going anywhere,” Blaney said. “Jonathan made a good call to put two tires on it, kind of established us, and then the green flag run, I was pretty good. I drove up from 10th all the way to fifth.
“That [last] restart, I thought I was going to be able to clear the No. 5 (Kyle Larson) and the No. 9 (Chase Elliott) got in there and checked up hard in the middle of [Turns] 1 and 2, and I bumped into him. But overall, really proud of the effort. [It was an] up and down day, and it’s nice to end it with some pace. That’s nice.”
Joey Logano isn’t going to deny it’s been a rough start to the NASCAR Cup Series season for his Team Penske group, and part of the problem is accepting some of the results. Logano had speed at the two superspeedway races to start the season, Daytona …
Joey Logano isn’t going to deny it’s been a rough start to the NASCAR Cup Series season for his Team Penske group, and part of the problem is accepting some of the results.
Logano had speed at the two superspeedway races to start the season, Daytona and Atlanta, before a mediocre run (his words) at Las Vegas. But that mediocre run netted Logano’s only top-10 finish thus far. Bristol Motor Speedway was a day of tire attrition and in hindsight, Logano should have pitted when he ran his tires down to the cords instead of waiting for a caution that never came.
“I rode around over three seconds off a lap — that clicks off pretty quick in 15-second laps — and I lost two laps doing that,” Logano said Thursday during his one-hour appearance on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. “So that stunk. And then last week at (Circuit of The Americas) we were OK. Nothing special. We had a horrible qualifying run that was on me and then we scratched and clawed from 35th to 11th, so not too bad.
“That’s kind of the problem, if I’m being honest with you right now. We looked at 11th and said, ‘That’s not too bad.’ That’s a problem. We want to be pissed off about 11th. That’s where we want to get to.”
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Las Vegas and COTA are Logano’s only top-20 finishes. Logano failed to finish the Daytona 500 and at Phoenix Raceway and is 22nd in the championship standings.
“It’s a slow climb back to the top — it always is,” Logano continued. “But you have to start slowly, grabbing the little victories here and there. Little things that we’re doing well on and off the track. And there is, and we’re slowing grabbing some points back up through the ranks a little bit.
“We’re going to Richmond this weekend (and) that is one of my favorite racetracks, one of our best racetracks — maybe our best racetrack as the 22 team. So I look forward to having a solid run there, scoring some stage points, putting ourselves in position to win. That’ll be key. I feel more confident at Richmond than I have at really any other track this year, so hopefully we can have a solid run.”
Given how close the competition is, Logano believes it won’t take much to turn things around. But it’s not just one hurdle Logano’s No. 22 team is fighting because he said it’s been something different every weekend.
“The speed knob is one of them that we have to tune up the most right now because that’s the one that puts you in position the most,” Logano said. “I’m not in panic mode. I’m concerned, obviously, by where we’re at but I’m not in panic mode. Everything usually averages out.
“We’re still 20 races or so from the playoffs starting. We have time to get ourselves back up there. … We’re scratching and clawing back up there and we’ll get there.”
Logano feels there are “definitely some gains” from the new-for-2024 Mustang bodywork, but “I don’t think we’re maximizing the potential out of the car yet.” Rusty Jarrett/Motorsport Images
In his 12th year driving for Roger Penske, Logano said this is the worst start his team has ever had to a season. Another variable is the new Ford Mustang Dark Horse, which Logano said teams don’t completely understand yet. Since the offseason, Logano has preached that while things looked good on paper, it will be different when on the racetrack.
“We need to understand what those differences are,” Logano said. “I think in some ways there’s definitely some gains (with the new body), and in other ways, I don’t think we’re maximizing the potential out of the car yet because I don’t think we completely understand everything about it.
“Engine-wise, we need help there, for sure. We need to try to move forward in that department as much as we can to stay competitive.”
Six other Ford drivers are sitting higher in the Cup Series point standings than Logano. However, only one — reigning champion, Ryan Blaney — is inside the top 10. Of the three manufacturers, Ford is the only one that has not won a race.
“I’m not telling any secrets here, we’re definitely off right now,” Logano said. “We don’t have a Ford up there winning races consistently at all. Or even in the threat of doing that right now outside of superspeedways. That’s our strength for sure — we’re great at those. We’re the best cars at superspeedways, no doubt in my mind.
“That’s not enough races. We need to be good at some other ones, too. We’re working at it. It’s never a quick turnaround, but the first thing we have to do is pinpoint exactly where we are off (and) in what areas. Not (just) saying engine or downforce — what areas and be very specific in what areas we need to work on so we can focus on those things, and it then takes time to develop and apply those developments to the race car.”
Logano has three straight top-10 finishes in the last three Richmond races. In 29 starts, Logano has an average finish of 10th at Richmond with two victories.
