Josef Garden and Team Penske are telling a story that all involved knows is hard to believe.
Newgarden, alongside teammate Scott McLaughlin, had their first and third place finishes from the season opening Grand Prix of St. Petersburg disqualified earlier in the week on the charges of using a software program that permitted them to use their overtake assist button immediately on a restart.
Will Power, in the third Penske car, was deducted the loss of 10 championship points because his car had the same bypass but he did not use overtake assist before he was permitted in that race.
Pato O’Ward of Arrow McLaren inherited the win as a result.
The official story, from Team Penske president Tim Cindric, is that the team never removed a line of code from their engines from the offseason hybrid extension tests. Factually, Newgarden used the ‘push-to-pass button’ three times for a combined 3.6 seconds on the Lap 72 restart and McLaughlin used it once for 1.9 seconds out of Turn 9.
Overtake assists provides roughly a 50 horsepower boost for as long as a driver is on the button but there are also limits to the number of seconds a driver has access to it … and it can not be used before the alternative start-finish line.
The latter is what Newgarden and McLaughlin have been charged with.
The how is complex, and detailed in this RACER.com story, but the short version is that the engine has a line of code that provides an overtake assist block to race control and that the team did not put that code back in after testing.
Cindric claims it was an oversight.
“The number one thing I wanted to understand, that Roger [Penske] wanted to understand collectively is, was this done on purpose? And if so, who, what, where and why? Who would think that they would even remotely get away with something like this? And if we did, for how long? You know, people are gonna believe what they want to believe at this point. It’s a sensational story. As you know, in a competitive environment — nobody’s really your friend as far as your competitors.
“We tested at Sebring with a hybrid car. There were multiple iterations of software coming through on a pretty consistent basis. I wasn’t at this test, but one thing I understand is that there was a need to have the (P2P) button operational, independent of the hybrid deployment. And in the (CLU), there’s a way to do that. That’s accessible to all teams. So there’s an equation in there and a line that if you change the value to ‘1’ then push-to-pass is available all the time, provided that the ECU has been loaded with push-to-pass. And we did all the hybrid testing with this.
“And when it came time to run our race cars, there were so many things that had changed with channels, nomenclature, electronics and software, all that stuff. And at that point in time, we loaded the software in, basically the same file that was in the hybrid cars, instead of rewriting all the different nomenclature, labels, and whatever else.
“Somebody made the decision that it was easiest just to cut and paste out of that and load that into the three race cars. So now all the cars are loaded with this same push-to-pass equation, which is a constant. At that point, it’s just simply if you push the button, then you end up with push-to-pass active.”
Tim Cindric, speaking to RACER
That general explanation has not gone over well with their peers and competitors throughout the paddock.
As one anonymous team owner told the Indianapolis Star on Friday morning.
“The statement Cindric put out is a bold-faced lie, and everyone knows that,” said the the owner. “For teams to read that, it’s like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ If you tell the lie enough times, it doesn’t make it true.”
This team manager and his championship driver turned competition director were less anonymous.
To wit, teams have gone back over the past two years to sow doubt over proper usage of push-to-pass from the Penske team.
Cindric says this is exclusive to 2024 and the series can back it up.
“I definitely want to clear that up,” Cindric told RACER. “If there was anything in 2023, IndyCar has all that data and everything there. There is zero chance that any of this current occurred in 2023. And they can go through all the data and look at it at any point in time.”
There is also a video floating around of what appears to be McLaughlin suspiciously using the button in 2022.
“There were some questions in the past about whether or not we were using push-to-pass illegally,” Cindric said. “There was an inquiry in 2022. McLaughlin was moving his thumb at the button in qualifying, but the ECU wouldn’t have had any push-to-pass even loaded in it.
“IndyCar came and looked at our steering wheel because he was moving his finger around, which is something that he does. The wheel was completely disassembled and found to have no issues or infractions. So I just want to clear that up because it was reviewed and IndyCar did come and confiscate our steering wheel and go through all that stuff.”
McLaughlin and Power put out statements throughout the week but Newgarden chose to speak during a press conference on Friday morning before the Grand Prix of Alabama outside of Birmingham, preferring a candid conversational approach to detailing his perspective.
Fighting back tears, appearing genuine, Newgarden says he adamantly didn’t know he was doing anything wrong in real time and not until the matter became public following the most recent race weekend at Long Beach.
“I knew if getting to this part was going to be difficult for me,” Newgarden said, choking up. “You guys can call me every name in the book. You can call me incompetent, call me an idiot, call me an asshole, call me stupid, whatever you want to call me but I’m not a liar.
“The story that I know, which is the truth, is almost too convenient to be believable. … I didn’t leave St. Pete thinking we pulled something over on somebody. I didn’t know that we did something wrong until this week.
“Then I’ve had to wrestle with the fact that, how do you explain a situation to people? I know what happened. I know why it happened. I don’t think it’s very believable, even when I try to tell the story back. I don’t think any of us believe it will be believable to somebody. But it’s the truth.”
Newgarden said ‘we convinced ourselves that there was a rule change to restarts specifically with overtake usage.’
He said he even wanted to be reminded over the weekend at St. Petersburg that he can now use the button before the alternate start-finish line. He said he didn’t even know about the impending penalty during the race at Long Beach.
“I tried to do the exact same thing leading the race at Long Beach,” Newgarden said. “I even pushed the button. I came over the radio, ‘Hey, guys, the overtake isn’t working correctly.’ I said it throughout the whole first lap because it wasn’t working right.
“I don’t know how or in your right mind you would do that. Did I try to come up with a conspiracy and then cover? It’s not.
“The truth is, somehow we got that mixed up. It got entangled with the mistake. It’s created some ridiculously unbelievable storyline now.
“The facts are that I used it illegally, I wasn’t allowed to. I can’t change that. Whatever I say going forward will not change those facts. It kills me that it doesn’t. I wish I could go back in time and somehow reverse all this, but I can’t.”
Newgarden says he was called into the IndyCar Series hauler on Friday morning at Barber to speak with series president Jay Frye. Newgarden says he believes Frye just wanted to be a friendly face to try to take some of the edge off his presence at the track.
“I told Jay the story, too,” he said. “I was like, ‘Jay, this is what happened. The sad thing about it was no one did this on purpose. That’s the saddest thing.’
“Even me telling Jay the story, I could tell looking at him that even he was having a hard time believing it.
“What are you going to do? If this guy has a hard time believing it, how is anybody going to believe it? I can’t affect that. I can’t affect that. So after today, I’m not going to concern myself with it because I just can’t control it.”
The story has an added layer of complication because team owner Roger Penske has owned both the series and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway since the autumn of 2019. Penske has made great strides to keep himself separate from the team, deferring day-to-day operations to Cindric, but it’s an especially bad look that the team owned by the series owner is embroiled in such a scandal.
Chip Ganassi, who owns an eponymous team in the series, expressed great disappointment earlier in the week. He defended Penske against Michael Andretti, who earlier in the spring suggested the series needed to be sold to someone else in the face of marketing and engagement woes.
“This is a blemish on his team, their organization, and the series,” Ganassi told the Associated Press. “Very disappointing as a fellow owner and competitor in the series.”
Penske himself echoed those sentiments to the AP.
“Very disappointing,” Penske said. “I am embarrassed.”
And Newgarden himself had to face that man, and as a leader of the team, had to explain it to the boss.
“I have spoken to him,” Newgarden said. “I’ve spoken to him once. He did not take it well, whatsoever, as you can imagine. I was interrogated at first. I don’t want to speak on his behalf, but I’ve not met somebody with higher integrity than that man. I mean that.
“Yeah, it wasn’t taken well.”
Ultimately, Newgarden says he wholeheartedly agrees with the disqualification, even if he is adamant that it’s a hard to believe mistake.
“I do believe the integrity of the series is absolutely paramount,” Newgarden said. “The series has to hold everybody accountable regardless of the circumstance, regardless of the intent. They’ve done the right thing by trying to throw the book at us, and they should.
“It just doesn’t matter what the intent was. If you broke a rule, you broke a rule, and you should suffer the consequences. The series has to uphold that standard. It makes me proud that I’m part of a series that does that. That’s a series I want to be a part of. I think the penalty is fair.
“It’s crushing. I’m going to look back on it, too, and say I don’t want that win on my books either. I don’t want it. I’m glad they’re taking it away. If it was tainted, I don’t want to be near it. Unfortunately, it is. I can’t reverse that.
“It’s good what’s happened. I’m really pleased about that part of it.”
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.