In the wake of the latest Team Penske cheating scandal, Roger Penske spoke directly to Fox Sports' Jamie Little after the team parted ways with three of their top men: Tim Cindric, Ron Ruzewski, and Kyle Moyer.
This scandal emerged after the attenuators on the No. 2 Chevrolet of Josef Newgarden and the No. 12 Chevrolet of Will Power were found to have been altered illegally ahead of the Top 12 qualifying session for the 109th running of the Indy 500 this past Sunday.
Given the nature of the scandal, plus the fact that Team Penske was caught cheating last year with their illegal access of the push-to-pass overtake system on restarts in the season opener on the streets of St. Petersburg, Florida, it led some fans to dig into their photos to look at Newgarden's 2024 race-winning car.
Those photos, coupled with the car's unchanged backside in the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum, led to the same conclusion: Newgarden's car was illegal.
Josef Newgarden won 2024 Indy 500 with illegal car, Penske confirms
Of course, the car passed tech inspection, and Newgarden, who also won it in 2023, is the official race winner. But while making note of that, Penske himself confirmed the fact that Newgarden's No. 2 Chevrolet did have, by rule, an illegally altered attenuator in last year's running of the "Greatest Spectacle in Racing".
Indianapolis Motor Speedway and newly appointed IndyCar president Doug Boles, who dropped the hammer on the team for the violations by sending Newgarden and Power to the back of this year's field of 33, even after they had already qualified inside the first four rows, confirmed that last year's result won't change.
But the fact that Penske effectively admitted to the crime in his interview with Little has Pato O'Ward fans, and a lot of other IndyCar fans, outraged.
Is O'Ward the real Indy 500 winner from 2024?
Of course, if you're O'Ward, you don't want to win an Indy 500 that way, due to a technicality only discovered 12 months later. And Penske was sure to reiterate that the car did pass inspection. Newgarden himself is certainly not the bad guy here.
O'Ward, who was passed by Newgarden on the final lap of last year's race, even admitted that he doesn't want his face on the Borg-Warner Trophy for 2024. He accepts defeat because he believes that Newgarden beat him straight-up, and I can't say that I disagree with his point of view.
However, while the argument that the modifications may not have given Team Penske the aerodynamic advantage that many had initially thought they were pursuing does make some sense, in theory, the fact remains that there is absolutely no way in the world they would have risked being penalized by making an illegal change to what is more of a safety device, rather than a performance device, with the knowledge that it would be any kind of detriment to the car.
The changes were clearly made for a purpose, and as Fox IndyCar announcer Will Buxton pointed out in a scathing response to Cindric's now-infamous "arbitrary" remark, the rule is indeed "black and white", and Team Penske saw fit to ignore it for an extended period of time.
And O'Ward, like his entire fanbase, is sick of it, regardless of the "why" behind it, a "why" that fans may never truly know.
Plus, perhaps this raises even bigger questions: how did IndyCar's inspection team ignore this issue for so long, what else are they ignoring, and after last year's push-to-pass shenanigans, what else might Team Penske be doing to gain an unfair advantage on the competition?
Perhaps some of those questions don't actually have answers. At least that's what we can hope for.
In the minds of many fans, O'Ward is now the rightful winner of the 2024 Indy 500. While nothing can change the all-timer of a last lap move Newgarden made, and Penske's transparency in his interview is certainly appreciated by many, you have to believe that his admission will only further fuel the anger that had seemingly already reached its boiling point.
One thing remains the same, however. O'Ward certainly wants to win one properly, and he wants to do it for the first time this Sunday, May 25. Fox is set to provide live coverage of the 109th running of the Indy 500 from Indianapolis Motor Speedway beginning at 10:00 a.m. ET. Begin a free trial of FuboTV now and don't miss any of the action!