Will Power reacts to “not ideal” suspensions from Indy 500

The 2018 Indy 500 winner was the only Penske driver to not deploy push-to-pass at an illegal time during the St Petersburg race and hence copped a lesser penalty than his disqualified team-mates.

However, he has been forced to pay almost as big a price as Josef Newgarden has, and even bigger price than Scott McLaughlin has, after the team suspended the four individuals whom it deemed culpable for the breach(es).

Newgarden has lost his Race Engineer, Luke Mason, as well as his Strategist, Tim Cindric, the latter of whom has taken the fall for the stated reason that he is President of Team Penske broadly.

McLaughlin keeps all of his staff but Power will tackle the biggest race of the year without his Strategist, Ron Ruzewski, and Data Engineer, Robbie Atkinson, because the former is Managing Director of Penske’s IndyCar programme and the latter has data engineering roles across all three cars.

“It’s not ideal losing someone off your stand,” he said.

“Losing two people is definitely not ideal; we were better off with them.

“But, I sat down with Dave [Faustino, Race Engineer] and we just said we’re going to do absolutely the best we can with what we’ve got.

“We’ve got very good people on the team. It is what it is. That’s the way it is, and we will do our absolute best to make the most of it.”

Power did, however, sidestep the question as to whether he was shocked that he is paying such a price when he personally has been innocent in the saga.

“Yeah, well, Ron is the manager of the IndyCar team, so he just happened to be on my stand,” replied the Queenslander.

“That’s the call that Roger [Penske] made, and nothing I can do about it. It is what it is. Yeah.”

Car #12 is now in an unusual situation for IndyCar, although not unprecedented, where one person will be filling both the Race Engineer and Strategist roles.

“He’s run a lot of tests and been on the radio,” noted Power of Faustino.

“It will be different, yeah. He’s not used to counting me down to the box or sending me, so there will be a few things that we have to really, I guess, practice as much as we can. I think Warm Up is the only time we get to do that.

“But, we’ve raced so long together, and I’ve been at it so long, I can almost do strategy from the car, and he’s the one that basically does the strategy anyway, and Ron sort of calls the races.

“Not a massive change. It will suck not having Ron. I’ve really got used to him. He’s very calming and good on the radio.

“That’s a pity, but that’s the way it is, and we have to do our best.”

The Penske suspensions apply for the next two races of the season, meaning Cindric, Mason, Ruzewski, and Atkinson are out for the whole of the Month of May.

That includes not being able to work from a ‘war room’ at the team’s workshop, nor any contact during on-track sessions, although whether they would be allowed to communicate at other times is not clear.

Practice and Qualifying for the Indianapolis Grand Prix on The Brickyard’s road course take place tomorrow.