Newgarden Shoulders Blame in Team Penske INDYCAR Push-to-Pass-Gate
Photo Credit: Joe Skibinski, Penske Entertainment
It was an emotional Josef Newgarden who faced the media Friday at Barber Motorsports to make his first public comments after being stripped of his season-opening NTT INDYCAR SERIES win in last month’s Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg for illegal use of the push-to-pass system.
“The facts are extremely clear. There's no doubt that we were in breach of the rules at St. Petersburg.
“I used push to pass at an unauthorized time twice, on two different restarts. There's really nothing else to it other than that. Those are the rules, and we did not adhere to them.
“For me,” added Newgarden, “what's really important about that, too, is there's only one person sitting in the car. It's just me. So that responsibility and the use of the push to pass in the correct manner falls completely on me. It's my responsibility to know the rules and regulations at all points and make sure I get that right. With that regard, I failed my team miserably. A complete failure on my side to get that right.
“It's my job as the leader of the 2 car to not make mistakes like that. You cannot make a mistake at this level in that situation. There's no room for it. There's no room for that type of mistake anywhere, certainly not at the top level of motorsports. I don't want to hide from that.
“For me, it's an embarrassing situation to have to go through,” Newgarden continued, “to see what's transpired. It's demoralizing in a lot of ways. There's nothing that I can say that changes the fact of what happened. I mean, it's pretty clear.
“That's why I say I think the facts are most important right now. I think that's what really matters. I also think the truth is important. There can be space for both of those things.
“I want to deeply apologize to our fans, our partners, my teammates, the competitors that I race against, anybody that's in our community. I've worked my entire career to hold myself to an incredibly high standard. Clearly I've fallen very short of that in this respect.
“I can't overstate, it's a difficult thing to wrestle with. It's a very embarrassing process to go through. I hope we can find a way forward after this. That's really all you can do after the fact.”
Photo Credit: Joe Skibinski, Penske Entertainment
In addition to Newgarden’s disqualification and forfeiture of points and awards, teammate Scott McLaughlin, who finished third in the March 10th event, was also disqualified while the third Penske driver, Will Power, was given a ten-point penalty. All three entries were fined $25,000 and will forfeit all prize money associated with the Streets of St. Petersburg race.
It was only during the warm-up session before last weekend’s Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach that INDYCAR officials discovered the possible rules violation.
According to INDYCAR, an extensive review of data from the race on the Streets of St. Petersburg revealed that Team Penske manipulated the overtake system so that the No. 2 (Newgarden), 3 (McLaughlin) and 12 (Power) cars had the ability to use Push to Pass on starts and restarts. As per the INDYCAR rulebook, use of overtake is not available during championship races until the car reaches the alternate start-finish line.
It was determined that Newgarden and McLaughlin gained a competitive advantage by using Push to Pass on restarts while Power did not.
“The integrity of the INDYCAR SERIES championship is critical to everything we do,” INDYCAR President Jay Frye said. “While the violation went undetected at St. Petersburg, INDYCAR discovered the manipulation during Sunday’s warmup in Long Beach and immediately addressed it ensuring all cars were compliant for the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach. Beginning with this week’s race at Barber Motorsports Park, new technical inspection procedures will be in place to deter this violation.”
In a statement, Team Penske President Tim Cindric gave his account what happened.
“Unfortunately, the push-to-pass software was not removed as it should have been, following recently completed hybrid testing in the Team Penske Indy cars. This software allowed for push-to-pass to be deployed during restarts at the St. Petersburg Grand Prix race, when it should not have been permitted. The No. 2 car driven by Josef Newgarden and the No. 3 car driven by Scott McLaughlin, both deployed push-to-pass on a restart, which violated INDYCAR rules. Team Penske accepts the penalties applied by INDYCAR.”
Photo Credit: James Black, Penske Entertainment
Newgarden claims he didn’t know what he did at St. Pete was wrong.
“The tricky thing about this whole situation is I didn't know I did anything wrong until Monday after Long Beach. It's the first time I heard that I broke rules.
“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.
“I didn't know I did something wrong in St. Pete.”
How didn't Newgarden and the team know they did something wrong?
“The key difference on the 2 car, which is important to understand,” Newgarden explained, “is that somehow, some way, we convinced ourselves that there was a rule change to restarts specifically with overtake usage.
“We genuinely believed and convinced ourselves that at St. Pete, the rule was now you can use it immediately on restarts.”
“You say, How do you come up with this? It's never happened before. The only place that this got introduced was with the Thermal exhibition race. It's the only time, in my time in INDYCAR, where we've actually had a legitimate legal change of the push to pass system, where it's going to be operable at a time other than at the alt start/finish line. It was going to be able to be used in qualifying, too. There was a lot of discussion about it.
We genuinely believed and convinced ourselves that at St. Pete, the rule was now you can use it immediately on restarts, you don't have to wait till the alt start/finish line. It's going to be available immediately.
“I even wanted the team to remind me of this so I didn't forget,” Newgarden said. “Whenever you get something new as a driver, it's like, Please remind me. It's easy for me to forget this stuff with everything going on inside the car. I specifically asked for that, too. We all knew about that.
“The craziest part of the story is, the software issue that no one knew about just perpetuated that belief even further. Then you go through St. Pete, you go through Thermal, where it's an actual change and everybody's using it. Then you go to Long Beach, and it's still in the car.
“The first time that any of us hear about this software issue or mistake is of warm-up. Even the crazier part of that is, even when you learn about the software issue that no one knew about, and it was fixed, I still believed the procedural difference on restarts was applied for Long Beach. I tried to do the exact same thing leading the race at Long Beach.
“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.
Photo credit: Joe Skibinski, Penske Entertainment
“I thought about this a lot,” commented Newgarden. “Two things matter to me: accountability, and we have to be held accountable for any sort of mistake, whether you meant to do it or not; and the truth matters to me.
“Today I want to be held accountable for what I did and the actions I took, and I want to tell people the truth. Those are the two things I wanted to achieve. If I do that, I can leave here and feel good about anything going forward.”
But not everyone in the INDYCAR paddock was buying the explanation.
“I didn't appreciate some of the quotes that were made,” driver Graham Rahal said. “Like, I didn't appreciate some of the excuses that were made because I don't think that they're valid excuses.
“I was kind of okay with, All right, well, this is a penalty, yeah, sure, whatever. But then when the stories kept coming out, I kept reading the quotes, I just thought to myself, Now you're just digging yourself into a hole that's just absolute BS. I just don't appreciate that. In the spirit of sportsmanship, like screw up, you do something, fess up, move on with life.
I'll just leave it at that.”
“I didn’t appreciate some of the excuses that were made because I don’t think that they’re valid excuses.”
Rahal doesn’t believe cheating is as commonplace in INDYCAR as, say, NASCAR, where it’s understood that if you’re not cheating, you’re not trying hard enough.
“I would say everybody's always trying to push the limitations in motorsports in general. But I don't think that cheating is as common in INDYCAR as it may be in NASCAR. I really don’t.
“I think there's a lot of things that you can do. I just think everybody's going to try. Back in the days when they had ride height limitations, there were guys always pushing the limits on how much they could get away with bottoming before wearing the dome skid at Indy or Texas or places before you got busted.
“But I don't think that cheating is as quite as commonplace here as maybe others. But I also think this is a little bit of a shock, too, because, I mean, utilizing overtake is not something I would have ever even thought was generally possible. In fact, I didn't know that that was something a team could have any control over at all. I was very shocked when I read the news.
“Everybody's going to push the limits, push the limits. I’m sure in the past there's been fuel capacity stuff, a variety of different things that people have wondered about, so…
“I don't think it's as common as NASCAR, for sure.”
For Newgarden, the damage to his and Team Penske’s reputation has been done. As far as earning back the trust of his competitors, last year’s Indianapolis 500 winner and two-time series champion isn’t sure how he’s going to do that or how long it will take.
“I don't know. I don't know how you do that. It's important to state, I think it's the truth, I don't know that anybody's going to believe what I've told you here today. That's okay. I mean, I think it's a crazy set of circumstances to try and just reason with.
“Certainly not going to come from words. It's just going to take repetitive action. That's all you can do is just repetitive action and hopefully I can stand on that in the future. However long that takes, how many years, if I'm given the time, I'll just try to earn it through action.”