Grim reality of St Pete penalties laid bare for Team Penske

As it stands, Chip Ganassi Racing’s Alex Palou leads the way on 525 points. Will Power (492) is second and 33 points in arrears as the leading Team Penske pilot while Scott McLaughlin’s (475) latest win at Milwaukee has vaulted him to third, 50 points off the lead.

The championship permutations would be completely different if not for a moment of madness at the start of the season.

The well-documented cheating scandal stripped Josef Newgarden of his St Petersburg win and McLaughlin of third place.

Palou finished that race sixth initially but was promoted to fourth after penalties were handed out. If not for those penalties, McLaughlin would be just 11 points behind Palou with one race to go.

The furore focused on the availability of push-to-pass. Team Penske claimed a quirk in the code of the three engine control units allowed its drivers to use push-to-pass on restarts, which is otherwise unavailable.

Team Penske said the code which was installed for hybrid testing was not removed for the season opener and allowed its drivers to use push-to-pass against the series’ rules.

McLaughlin claimed he only used push-to-pass once out of instinct for all of 1.9 seconds.

Although not disqualified, Power was also implicated. Despite never using push-to-pass on a restart, he was docked 10 points in the standings for having the capacity to.

Instead of a three-way fight for the IndyCar title where the top three would have been covered by 23 points, Palou will head to Nashville Superspeedway with a handy lead.

Power’s title hunt was made harder by his own mistake in the latest IndyCar race at Milwaukee, spinning on a race restart.

Power was projected to take the lead of the points when he led the race and Palou was last after a hybrid issue.

“My bad. I made a mistake. I need to be a bit more cautious,” Power told Frontstretch for Speedcafe.

“I got hammered on the previous restart. I got blown by so I didn’t want to lose another bunch of positions.

“Frustrating just knowing what sort of car we had and where we probably could have finished. That’s racing man, that sort of thing happens.”

Power said he was aware of Palou’s issues.

“I saw it, they (Power’s team) told me it, so then we were like ‘Okay, it’s looking pretty good’ but as per usual, when that happens something else happens. It just does, it just never is straightforward. Like I said, that’s racing,” Power chuckled.

“I was trying to win it. Not once we were back on the [lead lap] on the restart. If I just got a good restart on the first one we would’ve been okay I think.”

Top 10 IndyCar Series points (After Race 16 of 17):