Q: What has Honda said about the P2P scandal? Will this have an effect on its decision to stay or leave IndyCar?
Ericglo
MP: I’ve had multiple conversations with Honda about it, and while I haven’t asked for an on-the-record response, I feel comfortable in saying the situation hasn’t helped.
Q: Any changes to how confident are you that Penske’s use of P2P in 2023 was within the rules? P2P would have been useful on the final restart at Indy last year. The law firm investigation and suspensions announced this week might be indicative of new information being uncovered.
Kyle
MP: I won’t be vouching for the state of legality of the team’s cars at any point in time because I don’t have the data or facts in hand to make any statements of confidence on the topic. I’ve had plenty of folks tell me all the ways they believe Penske’s cheated with P2P in the past, but no evidence has been provided.
Q: I read the interview with Roger Penske with interest, hoping to find some resolution to my disgust at this situation. The lack of an independent investigation and Penske’s steadfast insistence that he wasn’t aware of the situation because he was in the UK strains belief. His handling of this puts other teams in a hard position to explain to much-needed sponsors why they should spend money to compete against a team that has an illegitimate, built-in unfair advantage.
Perhaps this will be the biggest Indy 500 since the 100th anniversary; but I won’t be there. My ticket, hotel room and other expenses will unused or cancelled. I reckon I’ll only end up losing $800 on the trip. It’s a small price to pay for keeping my personal integrity.
P. Worth Thompson
MP: Hate to hear we won’t have you there.
Q: Do you think with the suspensions of Cindric and Ruzewski that Kyle Moyer will be the lead man for Team Penske at Indy in May? He had that role for many years for Andretti Autosport before joining Team Penske.
Don H. Indianapolis
MP: Yes, in theory. But his bosses — the suspended ones — can still lead the team when the cars aren’t on track, according to the team.
Q: It’s good to see RP take some rather stiff sanctions, but he left one out: Newgarden. He admitted he knowingly cheated, and in my view should receive the same penalties.
Indytom
MP: Back to the “taking things seriously”…
Q: Big Possum has already stated his opinion on the Penske miscalculation on the P2P software but it seems others have it living in their brain, so Big Possum will give it another try. To all those wringing their hands over “cheating,” Big Possum thinks they are new to racing. Working to outsmart the rule book is as old as motor racing and is a respected and honorable pursuit among real racers.
Those crying and wringing their hands over the Penske situation must be primarily tea-sipping bridge players where cheating must be a horrible act — same group that writes in to the Mailbag fretting about the series needing new cars and hybrids and such. To those tech nerds, Big Possum refers them to sprint car racing, where the basic chassis has not changed in 50 years and provides the best racing on the planet.
As an example, when Big Possum and his son were kart racing, we devised the chicken bone trick to allow us to run light — karts were weighed after the race. We hid some green painted lead weights out on the circuit (green so they would blend into the grass and not draw attention) after the checker and on the cooldown lap, the driver would appear to be stricken and coughing as if a chicken bone was lodged in his throat, would stop conveniently on the track were the green lead was waiting, get on his hands and knees with a coughing fit, put the green lead in his pocket, appear to recover and proceed to the scales to pass with the correct weight. Worked perfectly until the driver forgot where the extra weight was on the track, scaled light and was DQed — the moral of the story is the driver is always the weakest link.
Get over the Penske situation, boys. Roger and Team Penske are the pinnacle of motor racing and we owe him for saving the Speedway and the series. Anyway it’s May, best month of the year. Let’s go racing and leave all the fretting over alleged rules stretching to golfers, tennis players, bridge players and other such manly sports.
BTW Marshall, Big Possum is trying to contact his old high school English teacher for help on writing in the fourth person — look for it in the next submission.
Big Possum
MP: Wait until I ask for a fifth-person submission.
Q: Related to the recent mention of Zak Brown joining the IndyCar marketing taskforce, there were a couple of interesting snippets that Zak said that perked up my ears, namely about IndyCar’s last valuation event (Roger buying the series) putting IndyCar at $300 million-ish. But the other thing he called out was a specific need for more marquee street races.
Out of curiosity, do you know why the proposed Port Imperial street race just outside of N.Y. in New Jersey wouldn’t work for IndyCar? (This was the one that Vettel did a demo run on in 2012-13).
To me, it seems like a much better fit for an IndyCar race than an F1 race given that it lacks a lot of the glamor that F1 demands (and rightly gets). For instance, I’m not sure that course would hold up to driving down the literal Las Vegas Strip.
But is there a reason that you know of that the deal fell apart that would mean it won’t work for IndyCar also?
Elliott
MP: Since it was never associated with a series I cover, learning the details of its failure was never a priority. As for why it wouldn’t work as an IndyCar race, it was never conceived as an IndyCar race, so there was no interest by a promoter to make that happen.