Penske moved to suspend four of its senior personnel over the push-to-pass scandal which saw both Newgarden and Scott McLaughlin disqualified from the St Petersburg IndyCar race, although it is now Newgarden and Will Power paying the price in the two Indianapolis races.
While Australian Mason is assigned to Car #2 specifically, the implication from the team’s statements on the matter is that Cindric has also taken the fall because of his leadership status as President of its entire motorsport operation.
Newgarden confirmed that the bans were unexpected to him.
“I was surprised, but this isn’t my team; it’s Roger’s [Penske] team,” he said.
“Everybody has heard from Roger at this point, what we’ve done, and all I can say is I’m excited to be here.
“I’m so happy to be at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. You have no idea.
“I’m not saying that disingenuously. It just feels good to be here, and we’ve got the team.
“It’s a little different than what it looked like last year but not that different.
“We’re here as a team, and we’re ready to go.”
Raul Prados has been brought in from the Porsche Penske Motorsport sportscar programme to engineer Car #2 while Jon Bouslog has been recalled from the workshop to call strategy.
“We’ve got an amazing team, as everybody knows,” declared Newgarden.
“We’ve got a lot of depth. For us, we pride ourselves in it’s never one person.
“It’s great to plug in some of these other guys that I’ve known for a long time, ever since joining the team, and it’s also been great to work with Raul. He’s on the Porsche side right now, but just a great engineer. I’ve worked with him a lot in the past. Really enjoy him.
“’Myron’ [Bouslog] did a great job calling today.
“It was a little different, just a new voice in my head that I haven’t had in a little while, but they did a great job, and it’s awesome to be here at the speedway.
“I didn’t realise Myron has been here 38 years,” he added.
“He didn’t even look like he’d been here 38 years. I was like, you’ve got to be top of the list as far as current tenure, and he’s not somehow. He’s up there. He’s top five.
“But yeah, he knows what he’s doing, and he’s great to have on the box this weekend. So excited about it.”
As it stands, Penske has only confirmed crews for this weekend’s Indy Grand Prix, for which Newgarden qualified fourth on a busy day which also included two practice sessions.
He remarked, “It’s not crazy different for us. It was funny having different cadence today than I’ve had in the last seven years, but I felt like business as usual.
“We got pretty much our whole team here, and we’ve got a pretty deep group. Everyone is really close together.
“I’ve told this to people before, but I wouldn’t mind plugging into any one of these cars that we have at Team Penske.
“They’re great teams. Everybody is solid. It didn’t feel that different. It was just a different voice.”
On Car #12, David Faustino has added strategy to his Race Engineer role, with Ron Ruzewski suspended given his position as Managing Director of Penske’s IndyCar programme.
Power similarly has a new lead Data Engineer in Paolo Trentino Filho after Robbie Atkinson’s involvement in the illegal software being loaded into race set-ups saw him benched.
He admitted those two absences are “not ideal,” although it was little hindrance if any in qualifying today when he claimed third on the grid.
Warm Up and the Race itself take place tomorrow at The Brickyard.
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