INDIANAPOLIS – Marcus Ericsson isn’t saying Josef Newgarden’s 2023 Indianapolis 500 win was tainted. Zak Brown doesn’t think Team Penske’s front-row lockout of this year’s 500 came from ill-begotten means. Tony Kanaan isn’t of the mind that Newgarden’s last-lap pass on Pato O’Ward for last weekend’s 500 victory came from anything other than a legally faster car.
But that any of those questions even come to mind, those three (and others) say, represents the fallout of Team Penske’s push-to-pass scandal as the IndyCar paddock presses on from what was a tumultuous month-plus for Roger Penske’s race team.
As four suspended Team Penske team members – including program managing director Ron Ruzewski and president Tim Cindric – return to their posts this weekend after missing two races, talk of the team’s cheating scandal – or its “process” and “communication” errors, depending on who’s framing them – have somewhat faded into the background.
Penske scandal:Penske’s Josef Newgarden knows explanation for push to pass violation isn’t believable
Those who’ve moved on will continue doing so. Similarly, Penske’s detractors are likely to continue privately simmering – upset at what happened, disappointed in how it was addressed and largely unmoved in how the team attempted to explain it all away.
“I don’t think it has anything to do with (Indy 500 qualifying) but it does have people ask the question, ‘Was that legit?’” Brown, the McLaren Racing CEO, said to a small group of reporters on Carb Day at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. “I think it was, but that wouldn’t have been asked or posed if all this hadn’t happened. That’s not healthy.
“I know how great that team is, and to have just left software in there, like ‘whoops,’ that’s a big whoops. For an awesome organization to have no systems or protocols in place (to catch that), it’s not like one guy was like, ‘Oh, I forgot to make the coffee!’”
Brown is not alone.
Newgarden kept more than just a handful of supporters throughout his epic rollercoaster where he lost his season-opening win at St. Pete April 24 and clinched his second-straight 500 victory May 26. But some feel Newgarden was positioned as Team Penske’s public fall guy with his emotional press conference and inconceivable explanation of the scandal.
Newgarden has declined to give any more insight into what took place internally in the leadup to IndyCar’s most extreme penalties in recent memory.
So the paddock attempts to move on with three Penske drivers still well within the championship fight that takes center-stage starting this weekend.
“We want to know more, but we’ll never know everything,” Conor Daly told reporters during 500 practice week. “I believe (Josef), but there’s other things. You can’t know someone’s actual thoughts in their minds about what they did and how they did it. I think there’s more innocence than you think.”
For Penske rivals, lingering questions remain
For Ericsson, it was hard not to let his mind go to a dark place that Wednesday morning in late-April when IndyCar dropped its bombshell. The self-professed ‘glass half full’ competitor told reporters at Barber that he does his best to “think the best of everyone,” but even the Andretti Global driver struggled to come to terms with the accusations levied at Team Penske’ and the ways in which Cindric, Newgarden and company attempted to explain them.
“I could understand some of that in some way, but also, just the way Penske runs things and the way Josef is, it’s just hard to believe they just ‘missed’ something like this that’s so significant,” Ericsson said. “And then maybe a little bit, you think back to (the 2023 500). I don’t like to go there with my mind, but a lot of people have.
“Let’s put it this way. That’s a problem with a thing like this. It’s easy for people to question what happened before. It’s really easy to open that book of speculation and conspiracies, and that’s not good for anyone.”
IndyCar president Jay Frye and Penske Entertainment president and CEO Mark Miles assured reporters an extensive review of Penske’s 2023 data had been done. No irregularities, they said, were found, and IndyCar’s case against the team was closed.
Still, there remain whispers about data irregularities, and some high-ranking officials within the paddock, but outside the sanctioning body, have urged the series to keep digging.
At the heart of the infractions is Team Penske data engineer Robbie Atkinson’s move to alter the team’s software related to driver setup profiles during early stages of hybrid testing in August. The move, according to the team, gave the team unlimited access to push-to-pass during testing, so that Team Penske could properly analyze the interaction of IndyCar’s current overtake system with the soon-to-debut hybrid assist.
Members from the other teams most involved with Chevy and Honda’s hybrid testing programs all uniformly assert Arrow McLaren, Andretti Global and Chip Ganassi Racing didn’t feel it necessary to perform such coding alterations.
“I don’t know where they’re going with that one,” CGR veteran Scott Dixon told reporters last month at Barber.
Added Arrow McLaren team principal Gavin Ward: “I don’t really believe their story, and I know that’s true for a lot of people.”
Questions then extend to Newgarden’s curious explanation that he and others on his No. 2 Chevy program – which includes Cindric, who serves as his strategist while also the greater team’s president – had convinced themselves IndyCar had changed rules for push-to-pass in the offseason that made its use during starts and restarts at all races legal.
During his Barber press conference, even Newgarden admitted how ridiculous the claim would sound to the outside world. Many of Newgarden’s rivals agreed.
Colton Herta: “That’s (expletive). If he thought that, why didn’t (Josef) push (the overtake button) at the start in St. Pete? Because he didn’t. He only pushed it on restarts. You’d think that when everyone’s stacked up the most, you’d push it, so that’s just a lie. I can believe St. Pete could be a mistake with a coding error. I could totally believe that, but what’s not possible is then going to Long Beach with the intent to use it again.”
Pato O’Ward: “When they engaged overtake, their (steering wheel) lights are off. (I think) they’re purposefully turned off, because they know they’re doing something wrong.”
Team Penske’s Scott McLaughlin didn’t claim to have the same rules misunderstanding. He only hit and successfully used the overtake button once during St. Pete when its use is barred but some competitors raised similar questions for the eventual 2024 Barber race-winner and 500 polesitter.
“You’re telling me a driver doesn’t feel 50 extra horsepower in the race car?” Herta questioned. “And then they can feel 16 thousandths of an inch of change in tow in the rear (of the car)? It’s astounding to me that that’s possible.”
Ward’s biggest question, having stood on Team Penske timing stands not long ago as a title-winning race engineer for Newgarden, was this: “You’re telling me no one on that stand was aware of the correct rules? I’ve been on a lot of different timing stands on several different teams, and every single time a driver presses overtake, somebody is on the intercom on that stand saying ‘on the button.’ It’s a flag on everybody’s telemetry. Everyone knows when you’re using overtake, so you’re telling me none of them realized that wasn’t in the rules?”
‘Everything about the explanations are suspect’
Brown’s biggest complaint – and he had several – was the punishment levied by Penske himself was far from steep enough.
Though some drivers echoed that the loss of one’s strategist for the biggest race on the calendar would no doubt be noticeable – Helio Castroneves, after all, credits Cindric alone for a last-second call not to pit that saved his 2002 500 victory – some wondered just how far that ouster of Cindric, Ruzewski, Atkinson and Newgarden race engineer Luke Mason truly went.
According to Penske, all four were banned from being on the grounds at IMS this month and could not be on team communications during on-track action, but nothing barred them from being involved in debriefs or private communications with their respective drivers or related team personnel.
Newgarden was asked at the start of practice week if he’d communicated with Cindric at all in recent weeks and said he’d only called to lament his poor finish in the Sonsio Grand Prix. By 500 qualifying weekend, the eventual two-time winner said they’d talked once more – about how he could pick up his pace car from the year prior.
“Do I think Tim Cindric is engaged during May? Yes,” Brown insisted. “In what way? I don’t know, but do I believe Tim Cindric is sitting on the couch, turning on the (500) and watching it like five or six million others are?”
The smirk on the McLaren CEO’s face said everything about his rhetorical question.
“If you think Josef isn’t going to be calling his engineer at night,” Herta said ahead of the Sonsio Grand Prix, “you’re delusional.”
Brown, and others, were frustrated that Cindric was allowed to keep executing his non-IndyCar-related duties immediately – including being spotted at Laguna Seca with Penske’s Porsche IMSA GTP program days after the suspensions were levied.
With Cindric on the timing stand and Penske in attendance, Mathieu Jaminet and Nick Tandy steered the No. 6 entry to victory.
“I thought the punishments were light,” Brown said. “If you draw the NASCAR comparison and their history dealing with these things, it would’ve been much more severe, and I don’t think this was. It certainly wasn’t a good look that Tim showed up at another race a week later, when you also know how talented (Penske’s IndyCar drivers) are in being dialed in and knowing rules.
“Everything about the explanations are suspect.”
Penske believers: Paddock simply fueling fire
In spite of it all, there are those that have come to Penske’s, Cindric’s and Newgarden’s defense. Among them, Palou cautioned diving too deep into others’ controversy that he said, similar to his series of contractual issues with Ganassi (2022) and McLaren (2023), outsiders are likely to know very little about.
As a one-time veteran Team Penske driver, Castroneves said he’s “100% behind” Team Penske and his former teammate, Newgarden. “I know it was a mistake. Even though I’m not in the organization anymore, I’ve worked there so many years, and I just know it has to be a small, unfortunate mistake,” the four-time 500 winner said.
“To be honest, I think the opinion of everyone (in the paddock) is the same, however, everyone is trying to put a little more fuel to the fire, which is fine – but I’m 100% behind Team Penske.”
Despite Newgarden’s alleged icy interactions with his on-track competitors, Daly told reporters mid-May that after the controversial driver insulated himself at Barber, he approached Daly and Alexander Rossi during the Sonsio Grand Prix weekend like nothing had changed.
“He just came up to us, and Alex was like, ‘Okay, so you’re going to talk to all of us now?’” Daly said. “This is going to be a paddock joke for at least a decade. That’s the problem. It’s funny to say, ‘Look at those guys…’”
Others still don’t entirely know what to think or feel.
“I don’t ever recall not having a great feeling on one side or the other of what went down,” Ryan Hunter-Reay told reporters in May. “I just know that when you push that button, you know that’s happening.”
Added Ed Carpenter: “Certainly Josef played his role in this, but I think back to Barber and his press conference and the statements, and I feel like I would’ve handled it differently as a team. I felt like they really let a lot fall on (Newgarden’s) shoulders in the aftermath of it all. He, for sure, played a role, but it’s not like he was alone.”
For much of IndyCar paddock, frustration lingers
And so the paddock moves on, largely separated into two factions and seemingly unmoved since the early hours after IndyCar’s first serious, some-would-argue-substantiated allegations of outright cheating in recent memory. With the kickoff of this weekend’s Detroit Grand Prix, all penalties have been served.
With just two finishes inside the top-15 through five points-paying races, Newgarden remains well in contention for the third championship that has long alluded him. With six oval races over the final eight events, it will take quite a lot for IndyCar’s oval racing king to be eliminated before the finale. Teammates Will Power (3rd-place, 26 points back) and McLaughlin (6th, 52 points back) remain similarly in the hunt with defending champ Palou out front.
Should Newgarden, especially, overcome essentially a missed weekend and become the first driver since Dario Franchitti in 2010 to win the 500 and championship in the same season, most of the paddock will begrudgingly accept his astounding achievement at face value. Some ‘boos’ may rain down at Nashville Superspeedway, as they did in spurts Sunday at IMS, but IndyCar’s massive talent who both despises being positioned as its superstar or its black hat, will have certainly done so on a level playing field.
And yet, that there would be any need to assert such a fact shows you where this scandal leaves Team Penske: Beyond the realm of unquestioned credibility. Only time can repair those wounds.
“Were we satisfied with what happened? Absolutely not. No way,” CGR managing director Mike Hull told reporters during a Fast Friday press conference. “Was it handled correctly? That depends (on who you ask). Hopefully everybody learned from that. Hopefully the sanctioning body learned from that. Hopefully they do something about it going forward to make us all better.
“But it’s amazing to me that in this day-and-age that that happened. I’ll leave it at that.”
