Penske cheating scandal: IndyCar's pre-500 black eye explained

Motor racing's Super Bowl is here. It's race week at the Indianapolis 500, the world's largest single-day sporting event dating back to 1911, and everything leading up to this year's great American race has been unforgettable.

But there's plenty that Roger Penske, owner of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the IndyCar Series, would indeed like to forget. Penske also owns the Team Penske IndyCar team, which competes in the series he owns at the track he owns, and for the second time since April of 2024, his team has been caught cheating. Two of its three cars, including the one driven by back-to-back and defending Indy 500 winner Josef Newgarden, have been booted to the back of the field for the start of Sunday's big race.

So what happened?

Unlike Formula 1, IndyCar's regulations are incredibly strict, as evidenced by its use of a single car supplier for its series. Where McLaren, Red Bull, Ferrari and the rest design and build custom cars each season, IndyCar uses a spec formula in which every team must buy and use the same model made by the Italian constructor Dallara.

Under the tenets of spec racing, the vast majority of the Dallara DW12 is off limits for modification, improvement or beautification. The chassis that arrives from Italy and 90-plus percent of the parts must be installed and left unadulterated for their lifespan in competition.

Penske's team was caught modifying the rear crash structures on two of its three cars, which is isn't permitted. Penske applied filler to seams on the left and right sides of the attenuators, as they're called, and clear-coated over the sides to create perfectly smooth surfaces for the air traveling across them at 230 mph.

According to the rulebook written by Penske's staff at IndyCar, the modification done to the safety devices was not permitted and was identified by employees in Penske's IndyCar Technical Inspection group as being illegal.

After a contretemps on Sunday during Pole Day qualifying, where the inspectors flagged the illegal attenuators in the mandatory pre-run trip through the tech garage and informed Team Penske the cars of Newgarden and 2018 Indy 500 winner Will Power failed the inspection process, the team chose to take the cars to pit lane as the qualifying process was about to begin.

Among the various rules for qualifying, teams are not allowed to work on their cars once the session has started, but as the TV cameras showed, Penske mechanics were busy grinding on the illegal attenuators in an attempt to remove the seam filler, which was another violation. On the hook for the tech failures and the pit lane procedural failures, Team Penske removed the cars of Newgarden and Power from qualifying and returned to their garages without turning laps.

Thanks to an arcane rule that locks those who were among the 12 fastest cars during Saturday's opening stage of qualifying into a run for pole position on Sunday, Newgarden and Power were awarded the 11th and 12th starting positions for the Indy 500.

Is this the first time something like this has happened?

It was not.

In 2024, Penske's team was caught cheating after getting into the software of their cars and turning on the ability for its drivers to have anytime use of IndyCar's 50-horsepower push-to-pass turbo boost, which was illegal. F1's equivalent would be for a team to give its drivers the ability to use DRS outside of the DRS zones to gain a lap time advantage. Penske's team lost the win where the anytime push-to-pass was used and its second-place finish at the race, plus Penske suspended its two seniormost employees, Team Penske president Tim Cindric and managing director Ron Ruzewski, from last year's Indy 500.

What has been the fallout?

New IndyCar president Doug Boles, who also serves as the president of the Speedway, said on Sunday night that potential penalties and fines would be held for after the race, which went over about as well as a fart in church, and by Monday morning, he reversed course. Newgarden's locked-in start from 11th was vacated; he was moved to the last row in 32nd. The same was done for Power who went from 12th to 33rd and last.

Championship points were voided for their top-12 positions and $100,000 in fines for each car were levied. And for the second consecutive year, Cindric and Ruzewski were suspended for the event, with 2024's suspensions being assessed by their team and the 2025 suspensions coming directly from the series.

And then Penske pulled the pin on an employment grenade on Wednesday when he fired Cindric, Ruzewski, and team manager Kyle Moyer.

What is the consensus in the paddock?

Because it's Team Penske, and due to the potential for conflict of interest, and due to the second rules breach in 13 months, there hasn't been a lot of sympathy among Penske's rivals.

Four-time Indy 500 winner Helio Castroneves, six-time IndyCar champion Scott Dixon, and six-time race winner Graham Rahal have been among the most outspoken, but the other 11 team owners have been largely silent. Most have a deep respect for Roger Penske, don't believe he was directly involved in either of the cheating scandals and have taken a "hate the sin, but love the sinner" approach to the latest situation.

How big of a black eye is this for IndyCar ahead of the 500?

ABC's "Good Morning America" went hard on the case during its Thursday segment on the cheating affair and the dark cloud it has cast over the Speedway. It's a rare circumstance where a big race like the Indy 500, which isn't aired on ABC or ESPN, gets this kind of national attention for positive developments, much less the kind of tomfoolery that's been on display since Sunday.

When major competing networks deem a niche series like IndyCar to be deserving of the spotlight, especially in the middle of a storm, it's never good for the series. Within IndyCar, and within the annals of the Indy 500, this won't be forgotten.

But Penske's aggressive firings signal to the members of the series, and its growing fanbase, that he's serious about cleaning up the unserious approach his team has taken to abiding by IndyCar's rules.

The "Greatest Spectacle In Racing" is here. Let's lean in to our shared love for the sport and celebrate IndyCar for what makes it -- on most days -- a wildly entertaining experience.