Team Penski is looking for their record-extending 19th victory at The Brickyard. Josef Newgarden won his second Borg Warner Trophy last year, but his crew is at the center of the biggest scandal in IndyCar racing in decades.
Four Penske members were suspended two races each, which include the Indy 500 itself, due to illegal software found on the cars of Newgarden, Will Power, and Scott McLaughlin.
President Tim Cindric, managing director Ron Ruzewski, and engineers Luke Mason and Robbie Atkinson admitted to being part of the scandal, putting their drivers in crosshairs on the track, and questions the sanctity of the owners of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway off of it.
After the IndyCar season-opening race at the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg, which was initially won by Newgarten, IndyCar discovered a glitch in the onboard software that disables the push-to-pass system on all cars upon starts and restarts. The issue was not discovered until morning warm-ups for the Grand Prix of Long Beach, over a month later.
The push-to-pass mechanism generates additional horsepower for 150-200 seconds per race, in bursts of up to 20 seconds each time. The mechanism gained great recognition in recent years for its use in Formula One. IndyCar uses more oval tracks on its schedule than Formula One, which is primarily a road course circuit, leading to faster lap times, and more passes (or “overtakes”) on straightaways.
Newgarden admitted to using the system illegally three times on restarts in St. Petersburg, and Scott McLaughlin once. Power was found not to have used the system illegally, but all three drivers were docked $25,000, and docked 10 points in the overall standings. Power ended up finishing second, with Pato O’Ward later being established as the official winner.
As a two-time series champion, Newgarden found the way to exploit the system after knowing it was still active on the Penske machines. Cindric is the chief strategist for Newgarden, so his temporary replacement will have the hardest job of anyone in Indianapolis on Memorial Day weekend…figuring out how to keep his driver from being spun into the wall within the first five laps.
There are reports that IndyCar is working with a new hybrid chassis that will go into cars for the 2025 season, if not later this season. The new chassis has been in development for over seven years, and will result in nearly 50 kg being removed from the existing Dallara chassis that has been in place since 2012.
To put the time frame in perspective, the driver who was employed by IndyCar to test the current Dallara chassis was the legendary Dan Wheldon, who tragically passed away during the 2011 season-ending race in Las Vegas.
The new chassis will incorporate an electronic powertrain, providing 48 volts to the engine, while reducing the need for fuel dramatically during pit stops. In Formula One, one tank of fuel is usually enough to get a machine through the entire race, which is why pit stops only involve tires, and are done in under three seconds.
Cindric stated that the software was left on the cars since August, as the Penske cars were the primary test subjects for the new engines.
While the fine is not pleasant, it was the docking of standings points that hurt Penske the most. Newgarden went from having a victory and being in the top three overall, to currently sitting in a tie for 15th with Graham Rahal and Christian Lundgaard (48). McLaughlin sits ninth with 59 points after winning the Grand Prix of Alabama on April 28.
Power’s 100 points are one behind Colton Herta for the overall lead, with both registering top 10 finishes in all three races thus far, and a pair of top five finishes each. The Australian was the 2018 Indy 500 champion, and won the series title in 2014 and 2022.
As the calendar has changed to May, the entire month sees the circuit in Indianapolis. The first race the four team members will miss is this weekend's Sonsio Grand Prix, where since 2014, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway is converted to a road course a few weeks before the most attended auto race in the country. The Daytona 500 may pull better television ratings, but more than 300,000 fans in attendance at Indy far exceed the 105,000 seating capacity at Daytona.
Newgarden originally stated he did not know any rules were being broken, before later apologizing. If he knew that the mechanism could not be used on restarts, why was his thumb anywhere near the button on his steering wheel then? Additionally, you would think the three drivers, in addition to the pit staff, would have warned IndyCar of the error when they found their drivers had an unfair advantage. The cars may have been able to be altered without any delay, or at worst be given a stop-and-go penalty each for the violation. Instead, Newgarden needs to play catchup early in the season if he wants to finish in the top five for a ninth consecutive season.
-JC24