Penske announces Indy GP fill-ins following P2P suspensions

Four individuals, including its overarching President Tim Cindric, were suspended over the push-to-pass scandal which saw Josef Newgarden and Scott Mclaughlin disqualified from the St Petersburg race.

Newgarden has lost both his Race Engineer, namely Australian Luke Mason, and also his Strategist, a role ordinarily filled by Cindric.

Raul Prados has been brought in from his role as a lead race engineer on the Porsche Penske Motorsport programme, which competes in the World Endurance Championship and IMSA, to fill in for Mason.

Former Scott McLaughlin Strategist Jon Bouslog has been recalled from his workshop role as special projects manager to call the race for the #2 Chevrolet.

While McLaughlin’s crew on Car #3 is unaffected by the suspensions, Power has been caught up with them by virtue of his Strategist being Penske IndyCar Managing Director Ron Ruzewksi and his lead Data Engineer Robbie Atkinson also works across all three entries.

David Faustino is now on double duty as both Race Engineer and Strategist, an unusual but not unprecedented situation in IndyCar, given Will Anderson does likewise on Pato O’Ward’s #5 McLaren entry.

Paolo Trentino Filho has been promoted from a more junior data engineer role to fill the breach left by Atkinson, who has been forced to take the blame for the illegal testing code being installed in Penske’s race set-ups for the St Petersburg and Long Beach events.

The team has advised that “Personnel updates for the Indianapolis 500 will be shared at a later date.”

How the upheaval affects the squad’s performance, of course, remains to be seen.

Power had been talking up Penske’s chances in qualifying for the Indy 500, reiterating as recently as last Saturday at Barber Motorsports Park, before the suspensions were announced, that the team should get onto the front row.

“I’d be shocked if one of our cars isn’t fighting for pole at Indy,” said the 2018 race winner.

“Done a lot of work. We’ve been quick everywhere. But in particular we’ve done a lot of work for that race.

“I think we’d all be a bit disappointed if one of our cars wasn’t on the front row, but I think fighting for pole.”

The suspensions were handed down after an internal review conducted by Penske Corp’s general counsel.

The quartet will neither be allowed to attend the track for the next two events at The Brickyard, nor work from a ‘war room’, or have any contact with the team during on-track sessions.

Cindric has publicly agreed that it is fair that he is suspended given his leadership position at the organisation.