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As it stands, the disqualifications of Josef Newgarden and Scott McLaughlin from Race 1 of the season in St Petersburg remain the greatest penalties arising from the episode, presuming Team Penske has not taken any actions internally.
Andretti, though, whose driver Colton Herta was overtaken by Newgarden on a restart lap during which he used push-to-pass, believes that should not be the extent of the punishments dished out.
The Andretti Global owner voiced his displeasure at the situation when he joined former NASCAR driver Kenny Wallace on the Kenny Conversation vodcast.
“All I can say is if that would happen on our team, [Andretti Chief Operating Officer] Rob Edwards would have been let go immediately, if something was going on that I didn’t know about,” he told Wallace.
“Now do I think that Roger [Penske] didn’t know exactly about it? Yeah. Did he give the permission to do stuff? Maybe, I don’t know; possible. I just don’t know.
“I mean, that’s something that we’ll always speculate on, and we just don’t know for sure.
“I guess I would have handled it a lot different with my employees if somebody did that purposely and didn’t tell me. I wouldn’t be happy about that.
“That’s our reputation, you know? It’s Roger’s reputation. How could they do that, you know?
“And if you’re going to do that, you should have to pay the price.”
It is President Tim Cindric who would probably be on the chopping block if Andretti had his way.
Cindric’s stated explanation for how the Penske cars had an illegal push-to-pass system in the first place is that they manipulated the central logger unit code for the purpose of hybrid testing last August, then mistakenly copied the code into the cars for the opening races of the 2024 season.
Its three drivers then took three different courses of action and gave three different recounts of the situation.
Scott McLaughlin claimed he illegally used push-to-pass at a restart once out of “habit.”
A day later, Will Power, who was only penalised 10 series points (two points in net terms given he gained position due to the disqualifications) because he did not hit the button on a start/restart, stated, “I did nothing wrong and followed the rules.”
Another day later again, Josef Newgarden made the claim that he and his crew on the #2 entry thought the rules had changed, because push-to-pass was allowed on restarts at The Thermal Club exhibition race.
Even he admitted, “The story that I know, which is the truth, is almost too convenient to be believable.”
Not helping his case was that McLaughlin then affirmed that he knew the rules had not changed.
Andretti said, “My opinion is they knew exactly what they had.
“They used this, especially Josef, and it was an advantage. I mean, he blew by Colton at the start of the race and things.
“So, it was noticeable and it may have made a difference in the race.
“It’s disappointing for sure that they went and they did that. I just wish they just would have owned it more and just said, ‘Hey, alright, we got busted. Let’s go on.’
“Instead, the drivers had their story, Cindric had his story, and some of the others had theirs. None of the stories matched up.
“They should have just went with it and been transparent about it.”
While the rule breach was only discovered by accident when IndyCar was unable to enable push-to-pass in the Long Beach Warm Up, yet the Penske cars were somehow using it, that is arguably not the most concerning aspect.
That Roger Penske owns both the IndyCar Series and the team in question adds an edge to the episode.
Andretti, though, had praise for IndyCar President Jay Frye, after the series handed down the maximum penalty to two of the three Penske cars for the established type of breach.
“That was a gutsy move to expose it and go and give Roger that penalty,” he declared.
Andretti is not the only team owner/boss to question the innocent explanation(s) offered from Penske.
McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown said, “A team of that calibre to have an oversight of that magnitude doesn’t seem right.
“The team and the drivers are too good to say we didn’t know the rules, we didn’t know it was there, it was an oversight…
“None of that, I think, stacks up and when something like that happens, I think you just need to own it.”
Herta leads the series by a point from Power, who finished second in recent days at Barber Motorsports Park.
