Q: With Tim Cindric suspended by Team Penske for the month of May, I trust he will have no place in pits or paddock or spotters’ decks for the Indy 500. I’d think a VIP place in one of the many executive suites at the track wouldn’t pass a smell test, either. Will he be watching the race from home, or dealing with the scalpers on Georgetown Street for a grandstand seat? Serious question. Has anyone asked where he will be on race day?
A. Jenkins, Speedway, IN, Turn 3, (May, 2024 only)
MP: I saw Tim at Laguna Seca on Friday at the IMSA race and chatted briefly in passing. This wasn’t a topic that was raised. His team’s PR rep said the four “suspended” members weren’t going to be in Indy, so I assume they’ll be at home or at the shop.
Q: I appreciate the hard questions you asked Roger Penske regarding the PTP suspensions. I was a Penske Racing employee during the ’70s and I can assure you that had we been caught cheating on either our Cup or Indy team, heads would have rolled! Roger never would have side-stepped the issues as he did in your interview, and I’m extremely disappointed in his responses to your raising the issue of conflicts of interest.
Knowing the fear and respect all his employees have for the Captain, it’s more than reasonable to believe any decision made by IndyCar would have been tainted by his ownership title. No one in the Penske organizations makes critical decisions without his direct involvement. In my view, feet were dragged until a “politically correct” response could be drafted. A two-race, one-month suspension is laughable, especially given Penske’s ownership of all parties involved.
To instill the integrity of the series, the team and the Penske brand, all should have been fired! That would have alleviated the issue once and for all and demonstrated to the motorsport world of his integrity to the sport. I’m sure that would have been his decision in the earlier years of Penske Racing when he was more hands-on. I’m extremely disappointed in the man I considered a mentor and beyond reproach in all his business dealings, but his response is unacceptable.
Bill
MP: I appreciated the outreach from Penske Entertainment asking if I wanted to interview him. I also appreciated Roger’s willingness to be interviewed with no conditions or handlers intruding on the phone call. I wrote a number of questions, posed them, and he answered them however he wanted, as is his right. Pretty straightforward.
Q: Reading Michael Yarnell’s letter, what’s the deal with IndyCar and Watkins Glen not getting together? If they can get a decent turnout for the IMSA Six Hour — we drive up from DC most years — I am sure they could pull a crowd for IndyCar. But other than the 2016 race, nothing. Is it because ISC and IndyCar don’t like each other?
Jonathan Gitlin, Washington, D.C.
MP: It’s because WGI hasn’t, to my knowledge, tried to get IndyCar back. Since it isn’t a track owned by Penske Entertainment, WGI would need to pursue this to happen, if it wanted to, and based on the lack of movement there, we probably have our answer.
Q: I wonder about the ethics of racing. Especially in the U.S., where we have three major series: IndyCar, NASCAR and IMSA; the latter two basically being the same company. (Every time I see “NASCAR” pop up on my phone I know it’s time to renew my tickets to an IMSA race).
In NASCAR and IMSA we see the series owning the tracks for a large portion of the schedule, as well as the CEO of NASCAR owning an IMSA team. In IndyCar, the owner of the series owns the venue for the marquis event as well as one of the top teams.
It’s concerning to me that the sanctioning bodies of these three great series also own the playing field and are fielding teams (except in NASCAR proper), especially when you get into talk of charters, revenue shares, etc. The organizations may have different CEOs/presidents, but does it concern you that ethically there are certainly opportunities for impropriaties, or the perception of them hurting the motorsports we all love?
Also, since it seems to be a required topic, is the perception of institutional cross-pollination having an effect on the current reactions to the Penske P2P incidents?
Big Nick
MP: The France family founded NASCAR, and IMSA as well with the Bishop family. The fact that the France family continue to own both doesn’t not bother me. Jim France does own the Action Express IMSA team, and he’s listed as the chairman of IMSA, but he is not centrally involved in decision-making matters with IMSA. That’s the key difference between France/IMSA and Penske/IndyCar, where all major Penske Entertainment/IndyCar decisions go through or come from Penske.
My brain is too sleepy to process the last question.
Q: For John M. Lee from last week, unfortunately for his taste in racing styles, changing the race measurement from laps to time does not inherently reduce fuel strategy coming into play. This is most easily seen by watching IMSA, where I specifically remember Robert Wickens losing the TCR lead at CTMP last year because of fuel concerns, in a two-hour race.
Whether your measurement of the race is completing the most distance in a fixed time, or completing a fixed distance in the least time, your strategy will always be a compromise of running as fast as possible while trying not to excessively pit for tires and fuel. If you change the race distance to try to eliminate the fuel-saving strategy, it could always come back through the timing of a yellow, or simply by teams short-filling to get out of pit lane sooner.
The only way around this is to mandate that the cars start the race full, and then shorten the race so that they couldn’t possibly burn everything they have. We got this at Thermal, but then it just meant tire strategy mattered instead. You just can’t force teams to run at 100% if that’s not a good strategy for that race.
Mike, California
MP: Thanks, Mike.