Team Penske caught cheating (again)? New scandal infiltrates Indy

Just over one year after being caught cheating in the 2024 IndyCar season opener on the streets of St. Petersburg, Florida, with their three drivers having been given access to use the push-to-pass button on restarts while nobody else was, Team Penske now find themselves embroiled in another scandal that developed just before Sunday's Top 12 Indy 500 qualifying session.

Team Penske pulled both Josef Newgarden and Will Power out of line before their qualifying attempts, as they reportedly both failed pre-qualifying technical inspection.

As for why they were allowed to even get in line after failing inspection, that alone paints a murky picture, and some have speculated that it was another team's observation, and subsequent video, which led to the discovery of the illegal modifications, rather than the official inspection process itself.

The two cars were found to have violated Rule 14.7.8.16, regarding unapproved body fit on the rear crash structure (attenuator). These cars had seams filled to smooth the airflow going over them.

Given the nature of the changes, it seems relatively clear they did what they did to gain an illegal competitive advantage.

And the fact that they might have gotten away with it on Saturday led Pato O'Ward to suggest that they should have had to take part in the Last Chance Qualifier session.

Team Penske president Tim Cindric's response, or lack thereof, to a simple yes or no question about the Saturday question, was also telling.

Per the rules, however, they did pass inspection on Saturday, so officially, they qualified legally. They therefore retained their top 12 starting positions, and they locked out the fourth row with qualifying averages of 0.000 miles per hour.

That said, given the speculation that it was another team that made the discovery on Sunday, there are still those who believe that the same violation simply went undetected on Saturday.

O'Ward is certainly among those.

Penske caught in another cheating scandal?

It's not a good look for a team already known for having a fractured relationship with the rulebook, and it's not a good look for the series.

It's also unfortunately not a good look for the drivers, even though, similar to last year, they obviously aren't the real perpetrators.

Of course, Cindric appeared defiant from the time Fox interviewed him during qualifying, just as he was last year in response to the push-to-pass scandal, for which the punishment included suspension from the Indy 500.

He insisted that Power's No. 12 Chevrolet didn't fail inspection, implying that they pulled him out of line out of the goodness of their hearts because they happened to know that his attenuator was set up the same way as Newgarden's.

The whole thing reeks, especially as Cindric scrambled for words when asked any non-scripted questions about it by Fox, and the fact that he had the audacity to refer to the differences between those two cars and Scott McLaughlin's No. 3 Chevrolet, which was destroyed in a pre-qualifying crash but apparently did not have the same illegal modifications, as "arbitrary" certainly doesn't help Team Penske's case.

If it's so arbitrary, why did we not see literally any of the other 31 cars (from 10 other teams) showing up with smoothed-over seams? The chances of that are, well, nonexistent. This isn't the IKEA IndyCar Series.

And the reason IndyCar "didn't like" what they saw, as Cindric said multiple times, is because it literally was not legal. It's not rocket science, even if it does involve speeds of 230+ miles per hour.

I am convinced that we still don't, and never will, know the full story from the push-to-pass scandal. There is no way on Earth the entire Team Penske team missed the so-called "software" mistake, and Cindric's statement was nothing more than corporate nonsense intended to stop the bleeding, the type of statement you could generate from ChatGPT in a split-second.

Maybe he'll do exactly that next time.

With IndyCar president Doug Boles having not ruled out further penalties for the team, but noting that nothing will happen until after the Indy 500 itself, it appears that this will play out the same way.

They got away with a slap on the wrist last year. Stripping them of a win and a third place finish they never should have had in the first place was not "punishment". If you a rob a bank, your punishment should far exceed simply having to return the money you stole.

And believe me: there are rival teams and team officials still upset with how that situation was handled. The latest shenanigans are only going to further tick off those organizations and key personnel within them. Whatever leeway anybody was willing to give them last year is gone now.

Because all indications are that, yes, it's happened again. Fortunately, it was just caught sooner than 45 days later this time.

All we can say is to be "Penske Perfect", you apparently need to follow a different set of rules. That's the new standard, and it's a standard with which Cindric has apparently made himself very familiar.