St Pete GP Penalties - O'Ward new declared winner for season opener

[theriusDR3]

Read this news!

https://www.indycar.com/news/2024/04/04 ... JkEI1v7XUN

Your thoughts on that?

[CMSMJ1]

Seems to be a fairly large cock up doesn't it?

Do you think there was intent?

[Hoffman900]

Seems to be a fairly large cock up doesn't it?

Do you think there was intent?

Definitely done with intent. This lays out how it all works and what went down.
https://racer.com/2024/04/24/how-team-p ... the-limit/

[Just_a_fan]

Seems to be a fairly large cock up doesn't it?

Do you think there was intent?

It's akin to Benetton's "oh, launch control is in there for testing only, honest..." but here at least Penske admitted the fault when found out.

[Baulz]

It's not good for the series owner to be caught cheating like this.

[Hoffman900]

It's not good for the series owner to be caught cheating like this.

No, but they were treated like every other team would have. Roger’s organization has always flown close to the sun, since day 1 in 1966.

Contrast this to F1 where vague tech memo’s are published and things are hushed hushed and hidden behind NDA’s.

[Chuckjr]

From the article:
“This is a black eye for Roger Penske, Tim Cindric, Josef Newgarden, Scott McLaughlin and the series. Decisions were made to bypass the P2P rules and there were far too many people who plug into the cars and see the data to claim it was a simple software mistake…For those who care about the integrity of the sport, let’s hope Frye’s team looks back a few years to find out, and that no interference from Penske is received. What a sad day for IndyCar.”

This is really bad.

The article also stated other teams had complained about it and presented video of it being used in 2023, and Indycar did nothing. Wow. It was going on in 2023. This has been an ongoing cheating situation for possibly years. So all the team was in on it including the drivers. They had to write special software to bypass the system so it was fully intentional. Indycar missed all the checks to ensure this exact thing didn’t happen. Absolutely shameful behavior for a team, and this one is the series owner. Inexcusable behavior from Indycar for not catching this—for years. Cindric claiming a software mishap just shows how calloused they've become and they are hiding it. Shameful. In the face of it, he dismisses it. He should step down.

If they find it going back years they should dq all the drivers involved for all races. Team Penske should be heavily fined. Put on probation for 5 years. This really brings into question the integrity of the sport. SMH.

[basti313]

It would be interesting to see these videos of the drivers pushing the PTP button. Especially Newgardens for the Indy restarts...or ovals in general last year.
But let us be honest...cheating in US racing is common. These is a nice youtube video about Nascar, where an old technician reveals a bunch of cheats they used like lead in the tire, lead hidden everywhere, moveable aero or cheated restrictors

[continuum16]

If Newgarden's press conference was supposed to clear the air I think it had the opposite effect. Herta has already gone on record as saying "that's a lie" and Brown has also cheekily expressed his displeasure. Personally I find Newgarden's explanation that "he thought it was allowed now" to be incredibly flimsy. He's not stupid, he's a multiple-time series champion. I'm pretty sure they knew what was going on.

The fact that the McLaughlin/Power/Newgarden statements plus those of Cindric aren't 100% consistent falls perfectly in that "could this go deeper" territory of suspicion, although a genuine mistake is still plausible. I feel like the sharks have been circling for a few months now and it seems like things are quickly reaching a point of no return with Honda's issues, the hybrid fiasco, the new car debate, the Nashville blunder, the Thermal flop, and now this.

[Chuckjr]

Here’s the press conference. The guy is full of bs. After the fake cry at 3 min he proceeds to tap dance and claims the team “somehow” came to the conclusion there was a rule change and push to pass could now be used on restarts. Holy….An Oscar winning performance from Joseph.

They knew exactly what they were doing. He even says their response now isn’t believable — likely because there is no way to explain it and remain totally innocent like Joseph desperately tries to act. Smh.

The real question now is if Indycar will man up and check data from last year and do what they need to do to those who cheated. I’m not sure Indycar has that kind of integrity, tbh.