Team Penske pulled both Josef Newgarden and Will Power out of line for Sunday's Top 12 qualifying session at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, as both Newgarden's No. 2 Chevrolet and Power's No. 12 Chevrolet failed technical inspection due to the fact that illegal modifications were made to their attenuators.
In addition to not being allowed to make a qualifying run in the Top 12 session after having locked themselves in on Saturday, Newgarden and Power were both later sent to the back of the 33-car field for this coming Sunday's 109th running of the Indy 500.
Newgarden is set to start the 200-lap race around the four-turn, 2.5-mile (4.023-kilometer) Speedway, Indiana oval in 32nd place, ahead of Power in 33rd.
The illegal seam-smoothing on the attenuators was initially thought to have been done to give the team a competitive advantage, and the fact that the scandal emerged on the back of last year's push-to-pass scandal certainly made things worse for the team owned by both the owner of the NTT IndyCar Series and the Speedway itself.
It resulted in the firing of the team's top three executives: Tim Cindric and Ron Ruzewski, who were both suspended for last year's Indy 500 amid the push-to-pass fallout, and Kyle Moyer.
It was later confirmed by Roger Penske himself that Newgarden's 2024 Indy 500-winning car had what was, by definition, an illegal modification to its attenuator, though the official results of that race will not be changed. The car passed inspection, and given how long these attenuator modifications have gone on without being noticed, perhaps the real issue is with the inspection process.
As more and more people dug into the scandal, it was determined that the changes made to the Team Penske attenuators likely would not have actually given them a competitive advantage anyway.
Pato O'Ward, who was passed by Newgarden on the last lap of last year's Indy 500, even admitted that Newgarden beat him straight-up, and he wouldn't want to win the "Greatest Spectacle in Racing" on an overturned result a year later. He made this claim even after noting how fed up he was with Team Penske's antics.
But that realization just raises bigger questions.
Sure, on the surface, it may lessen the impact of the word "cheating" in this particular instance. But as Fox announcer Will Buxton stated during the broadcast in direct response to a wishy-washy statement from Cindric calling the infraction "arbitrary", the rule is indeed black and white.
Why, if no competitive advantage was gained, would Team Penske have hidden something so clearly against the rules, and for so long?
Maybe there really was no competitive advantage gained. But this goes beyond the mere idea that "Penske Perfect" was breached.
The attenuator is largely a safety device, rather than a performance device, and Team Penske saw fit to alter it, against the letter of the law.
So why not bring it up – ever? At all?
There is absolutely no way in the world Team Penske would have made an illegal change to an IndyCar safety device knowing that it would be a performance detriment, all while hiding it from IndyCar and the rest of the paddock, knowing that a discovery could result in a penalty.
Something is missing here, and it stands to reason. I'm still convinced we will never know the full story from the push-to-pass scandal. Ironically, the only logic that actually made sense in the fallout from that was that of the drivers themselves. Next to nothing that came from the team, aside from Penske himself, was remotely believable.
On the safety note, is there perhaps more to the story when it comes to Team Penske's recent seatbelt issues?
I'm not remotely inclined to believe that the word "oversight" should be used in any capacity regarding these attenuator violations. This is a world-class race team at multiple forms of top-level racing, and they hold themselves to an extremely high standard.
Of course, no competitive advantage is no competitive advantage. There are engineers a heck of a lot smarter than anybody in the media pushing the cheating narrative who have confidently determined that to be the case.
But why all the secrecy? Why the changes? Was a so-called aesthetic change worth hiding?
A change we're supposed to believe was minor just cost three of Penske's most trusted men their jobs. That doesn't happen over something "arbitrary", and while the word "optics" has certainly been mentioned more than once in regard to the series owner being the team owner and the decisions that have been made, Penske is the last person in the world who needs anybody bossing him around.
On the surface, it may seem like it makes sense. But in reality, it just doesn't.
The 109th running of the Indy 500 is set to be shown live on Fox from Indianapolis Motor Speedway beginning at 10:00 a.m. ET this Sunday, May 25. Begin a free trial of FuboTV now and don't miss any of the action!