Several Team Penske IndyCar officials suspended over Indy 500 cheating scandal

Team Penske will be without several senior members of its IndyCar program at the start of May, the team announced Tuesday, as fallout from the push-to-pass scandal uncovered nearly two weeks ago continues.

Josef Newgarden and Will Power will be without their respective strategists at Indianapolis Motor Speedway this month, as team president Tim Cindric (Newgarden) and program executive director Ron Ruzewski (Power) lead a list of several team members suspended for multiple events this week. According to the team, following an internal review of the matter, Newgarden’s race engineer Luke Mason and Power’s data engineer Robbie Atkinson were also suspended.

“After a complete and comprehensive analysis of the information, Team Penske determined that there were significant errors in our processes and internal communications,” the team’s statement said.

The news was first reported by Trackside Online.

“I recognize the magnitude of what happened and the impact it continues to have on the sport to which I have dedicated so many decades,” Roger Penske said in the press release. “Everyone at Team Penske, as well as our fans and business partners, should know that I apologize and deeply regret the mistakes made.”

The internal penalties stem from a team-wide violation in which the setup software of all three of Team Penske’s IndyCar entries in the season opener in St. Pete was incorrectly coded, giving Newgarden, Power and Scott McLaughlin the opportunity to push-to-pass to use boost during starts and restarts – something that has long been banned in the series. The team claims that coding was added to the software last August at the start of intensive manufacturer hybrid testing and then accidentally copied and pasted into the 2024 regular season setups, allowing Newgarden to overtake from the pole three times (9 seconds total) during his stunning victory ), while its competitors only had typical horsepower.

“The Honest Truth”:Cindric explains how the IndyCar team accidentally broke the rules

McLaughlin pressed the button once for 1.9 seconds, and it was determined that Power had not used it at all. Newgarden and McLaughlin, who finished third in the season opener, were disqualified. Performance was reduced by 10 points. The violation, shrouded in multiple conflicting stories between team personnel and its drivers about what led to the series’ harshest penalties in recent memory, was entirely accidental, Cindric told IndyStar a day after IndyCar announced the penalties.

“The difficulty with this whole situation is that people expect that we tried to get around the rules with the software, and frankly we didn’t,” Cindric told IndyStar on April 25. “I know it sounds like we’re just making this up, but it’s the truth.

“If we were trying to gain an advantage, why would we do that when the push-to-pass and RPM data is visible to everyone, and why would we think that no one would notice? These are things you can’t hide.” “So if we say we did this on purpose to gain an advantage, I don’t know how you can come to that conclusion unless you want to believe.”

“You think we’re all stupid?”:IndyCar responds to rule violations by Team Penske

In an emotional 25-minute press conference to kick off the race weekend at Barber Motorsports Park, Newgarden claimed that the staff in his No. 2 car – apparently not just him, but possibly Cindric and others as well – misunderstood the rules for push-to-pass the 2024 season. The 2023 Indy 500 winner said he understood that overtaking on starts and restarts had been legalized across the entire schedule, and not just for the $1 Million Challenge exhibition at the Thermal Club on March 24, St .Pete, and it worked, he didn’t think anything of it.

Finally, Newgarden told reporters, he even asked his team to remind him of the perceived rule change, which further strained his strategist. “Whenever you get something new as a driver, you say, ‘Please remind me,'” Newgarden said of his message to his team members. “With everything that happens in the car, I quickly forget it. I specifically asked for this too. We all knew that.”

How one of the sport’s most meticulous drivers, driving for one of the most successful team officials the sport has ever seen – for a team owned by Roger Penske, no less – convinced himself that a rule change had occurred when it hadn’t It is unclear when Power and McLauglin told reporters that such a change was never discussed team-wide. Newgarden himself acknowledged that the argument lacked credibility and should in no way be viewed as a worthwhile apology.

“I know what happened. I know why it happened. I don’t think it’s very believable even if I try to tell the story. I don’t think any of us believe it will be believable to anyone, but it is the truth,” he said. “The facts are that I used it illegally and I cannot change that. Whatever I say in the future will not change these facts.”

“It kills me that that’s not the case. I wish I could go back in time and somehow undo all of this, but I can’t.”

“I don’t think it’s very credible”:Newgarden responds to allegations of fraud

Implicated in this – along with the fact that McLaughlin claims he didn’t notice the extra 50 horsepower boost his No. 3 Chevy received when he unknowingly hit the pass button – is the fact that there are no engineers Neither Team Penske nor Chevy /Ilmor’s side noticed any anomalies in Newgarden’s or McLaughlin’s data during traditional internal post-race reviews – a handful of rival drivers and team officials told IndyStar that it should have been a simple snag. The IndyCar team at the track, led by series president Jay Frye, also admitted that it had not taken advantage of the coding advantage in the six weeks between the first and second points races of the year until race management realized that the drivers of the Team Penske used Push-to-Pass during warmups Sunday morning in Long Beach when the feature was not enabled on the field.

In a media tussle at Barber, Frye and Penske Entertainment president and CEO Mark Miles told reporters that the series had looked through all of Team Penske’s data for 2023 and found no evidence of extended racing violations outside of St. Pete this year. They considered their investigation to be complete and the sentences determined.

Most of the paddock believes that something intentional, or at least unethical, has occurred at Team Penske. Team leaders in the paddock disagree as to whether Penske himself, who also owns the series and has committed to ensuring safeguards between himself and his team’s daily competition team since taking over, actually knew about the alleged fraud. But few, if any, believe that the story is clearly one of accidents, oversights and misunderstandings.

“I don’t really believe the story”:Ex-Penske employee on team’s efforts to eliminate violations

“Roger has his own house to clean up,” Dale Coyne told IndyStar at Barber after Penske held a private meeting with representatives from the nine other teams to apologize and take responsibility for his team’s mistakes.

Amid speculation about whether its own engineers either actively and deliberately gave Team Penske drivers an advantage early this season or whether they kept it quiet after St. Pete, General Motors President Mark Reuss announced last week that the company hired an outside law firm to “conduct a thorough review” of Chevy’s guilt. They found no evidence of wrongdoing, Reuss said in a statement on Friday.

“We respect IndyCar’s decision and actions as well as Team Penske’s commitment to improving its processes and controls,” Reuss said in the release, noting that no Chevy employee “had any knowledge of or involvement in the matter “.

“Chevy looks forward to working with IndyCar and our partner racing teams to assist with any improvements that will further support the integrity of IndyCar competition.”

“Roger needs to clean up his house”:IndyCar owners meet with Penske over scandal

Even without an admission of intentional wrongdoing, Team Penske’s announcement of severe internal punishments on Tuesday represents a quick turnaround after several team members talked about banding together and closing ranks following McLaughlin’s win and Power’s runner-up finish at Barber, where Ruzewski competed told IndyStar that he and others were unable to completely quell outside chatter from their rivals, suggesting Team Penske was intentionally cheating. Still, there are no internal “hidden agendas” or “lies” that need to be covered up, he said. “Haters will always hate and will always try to find something to bring you down, but we won’t let that get us down,” Ruzewski told IndyStar at Barber.

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