quote:

McLaughlin responds to St. Petersburg disqualification
Marshall Pruett April 24, 2024 9:12 PM ET

Team Penske’s Scott McLaughlin wants to clear the air after he was disqualified from March’s NTT IndyCar Series season opener in St. Petersburg, where he stood on the podium in third place.

He and his race-winning teammate Josef Newgarden in the No. 2 Chevy were found to have made illegal use of IndyCar’s push-to-pass system when it was deactivated by the series.

What the New Zealander shared in an evening post to social media aligns with what RACER has been told regarding the specific actions with his No. 3 Chevy team.

“First and foremost, I am proud to be a member of Team Penske,” he wrote. “I fully stand with everyone one of my teammates. Simply put, a mistake was made. I have the highest level of integrity and it is important to protect both my own reputation and that of the team.

“I was not aware of the situation with the software. In this instance, I used a single, very brief (1.9-second) deployment of push to pass in a section of the track, (the) exit of Turn 9, where it is typically utilized throughout the race. I hit the button out of habit, but I did not pass any cars, nor did I gain any time advantage.

“The data, which IndyCar has, confirms all of this information. While I accept the penalty, I want to be clear that I did not gain an advantage over my competitors.

“IndyCar’s competition is the best in the world and I would take no pleasure in achieving success in any way other than honestly. We will all press forward from here and focus on the task at hand this weekend at Barber.”

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The how, what and why of the P2P furor, as explained by Team Penske’s Cindric and Ruzewski
Marshall Pruett April 26, 2024 8:09 AM ET

In an intensive 45-minute phone call on Thursday between RACER, Team Penske president Tim Cindric and managing director Ron Ruzewski — the two senior-most leaders of Roger Penske’s IndyCar Series program — explained their side of the push-to-pass (P2P) saga that has brought embarrassment to the team and the series owned by Roger Penske.

Caught by IndyCar during Sunday’s morning warmup at Long Beach, the findings of improper uses of 50hp shots of power from the P2P system when the systems were deactivated led to championship leader Josef Newgarden losing his victory from the opening race of the year at St. Petersburg, teammate Scott McLaughlin being disqualified from his third-place result, and Will Power — whose car was capable of exploiting the system but it went unused — being stripped of 10 championship points.

In the case of Newgarden, who has maintained his silence since the penalties were announced Wednesday morning, the Tennessean is due to speak with the assembled media on Friday morning at Barber Motorsports Park. For McLaughlin, an urgency to protect his reputation led to a social media post on Wednesday night. Power followed suit with his own statement on Thursday.

But Team Penske has not given an in-depth explanation of what happened from a procedural and technical standpoint until now, which Cindric and Ruzewski offer below.

“We want to clear it up to where we’ll put it on a platter and expose it to everybody,” Cindric told RACER. “There’s nothing here to hide. We screwed up a process and it went undetected by us and everyone else, which to me is still surprising. But it did. And thankfully this thing happened in the warmup or we’d be talking about Long Beach.”

THE INFRACTIONS

Before we cover off the operational aspects of how Team Penske says its three cars were erroneously set up to bypass the P2P controls created by IndyCar to disable the system during race starts and restarts, let’s get the instances of illegal P2P use at St. Petersburg out of the way.

“Number one, none of our drivers used it on the start,” Cindric said, which RACER has independently verified. “It would have probably been a lot easier to see because everybody is set at 200 seconds of use or whatever the number is, and if it shows 170 or 180 for us and it shows 200 for everybody else, which is what happened in the warmup, it would be pretty obvious what happened.

“Individually, car 2 (Newgarden) used it three times for a total of nine seconds, all during restarts. There’s three seconds of push-to-pass on the restart on lap 30 on the front straight. There were 2.4 seconds going into Turn 4 (on the same lap), and that’s when the 2 overtook the 26 (Andretti Global’s Colton Herta).

“Josef used the push-to-pass for 3.6 seconds on the restart on lap 72 when he was leading. Scott used it out of Turn 9 on lap 30 for 1.9 seconds.”

Newgarden’s three uses for nine seconds and McLaughlin’s single use for 1.9 seconds were also externally verified to RACER as being accurate.

INVESTIGATION

IndyCar called Team Penske to its operations trailer Sunday morning after the cars were found to be out of compliance in the warmup and began its investigation into the matter. Ruzewski says he led the charge internally to assist the series with the process.

“As soon as we were aware of it at Long Beach, as soon as the race got done, we started going through stuff,” he added. “It was Monday when Tim presented all the information to IndyCar. We were forthcoming and said, ‘Here’s what happened at St. Pete,’ because this (P2P usage) was in there. This has been in there. There was no waiting for accusations or whatever from the series. We were like, ‘Holy s••t, this is bad. This is wrong.’”

HOW THEY SAY IT HAPPENED

The ability to bypass IndyCar’s control of its P2P system is centered on two electronic boxes, the CLU (Central Logger Unit) and the MyLaps timing and scoring transponder, which works together with the CLU in sending on or off instructions to the ECU (engine control module).

A deeper explanation exists in Wednesday’s analysis story for those who are interested, so to avoid repetition, just know that the CLU/MyLaps boxes behave as the gatekeepers to whether the ECU is instructed to give or take P2P away from the drivers.

As some engine technicians and data engineers believe, Team Penske spoofed the “on” signal IndyCar sends remotely and wirelessly through the CLU/MyLaps communications path to trick the ECU to give Penske’s drivers a live button on starts and restarts.

Given an open forum to explain how IndyCar’s P2P controls were circumvented, Cindric says it was a case of shortcuts being taken by the team and a legacy of incorrect settings being carried over from hybrid engine testing in August of 2023 at Sebring.

“From my perspective, it is not any one person,” Cindric said as he started an extended narrative. “The process in which we got there was flawed. But we’re certainly not here to hide anything about what happened, because it’s important for us to be completely transparent with everybody.

“The number one thing I wanted to understand, that Roger [Penske] wanted to understand collectively is, was this done on purpose? And if so, who, what, where and why? Who would think that they would even remotely get away with something like this? And if we did, for how long? You know, people are gonna believe what they want to believe at this point. It’s a sensational story. As you know, in a competitive environment — nobody’s really your friend as far as your competitors.

“We tested at Sebring with a hybrid car. There were multiple iterations of software coming through on a pretty consistent basis. I wasn’t at this test, but one thing I understand is that there was a need to have the (P2P) button operational, independent of the hybrid deployment. And in the (CLU), there’s a way to do that. That’s accessible to all teams. So there’s an equation in there and a line that if you change the value to ‘1’ then push-to-pass is available all the time, provided that the ECU has been loaded with push-to-pass. And we did all the hybrid testing with this.

“And when it came time to run our race cars, there were so many things that had changed with channels, nomenclature, electronics and software, all that stuff. And at that point in time, we loaded the software in, basically the same file that was in the hybrid cars, instead of rewriting all the different nomenclature, labels, and whatever else.

“Somebody made the decision that it was easiest just to cut and paste out of that and load that into the three race cars. So now all the cars are loaded with this same push-to-pass equation, which is a constant. At that point, it’s just simply if you push the button, then you end up with push-to-pass active.”


“The process in which we got there was flawed. But we’re certainly not here to hide anything about what happened, because it’s important for us to be completely transparent with everybody,” Cindric says.

According to Cindric, the team did not do anything that was intentionally devious like setting the CLU/MyLaps gateway to show it had the correct string of P2P code in the software while circumventing the gateway through other means.

In fact, Cindric says that instead of having the proper string of CLE code of “Choose(MYL_Overtake Staus ==3,1,0)” entered which would have given IndyCar full control over the use of P2P, its three cars competed at St. Petersburg through the time it was caught last weekend with that code replaced by the illegal “1” that gave the ECU a constant green light to give their drivers P2P whenever they wanted.

“They called me in and said we were defeating their control and showed me the equation,” Ruzewski said. “They said this (P2P) status equals ‘1’ all the time, which says you can operate it in a way where I was surprised. This is what caught me off guard because I had no idea. So I had to educate myself a little bit on how it was controlled, and once I found out, yep, that’s the case. It was as easy as that.

“We just literally took what we did from the hybrid, because it was so many new data streams, and we finally got to test everything and get everything working. And then it was a cut and paste error. An oversight.”

NEWGARDEN AND McLAUGHLIN

With a single use of the illegally-available P2P on a restart, McLaughlin’s assertion in his statement that it was done without forethought or malice has credible tones since it wasn’t used a second time. The 1.9s burst of extra power was, without question, an unfair advantage from Turn 9 to Turn 11, but did not result in his ability to make a pass.

Newgarden’s repeated use of illegal P2P at St. Petersburg is more complicated.

Some drivers make a habit of pressing the P2P button on starts and restarts in the off chance the system has been mistakenly activated by the series. Newgarden, in particular, is well-known within the driver group for frequently hitting the inactive P2P button on starts and restarts and did so prior to joining Team Penske.

Out of curiosity, Cindric asked his engineering team to create a report that would identify how many times his drivers pressed the P2P button in 2023 while it was disabled — use of the button, whether it’s active or inactive, is logged in the data — and the results were telling.

“I got the answer I expected, to be honest,” Cindric said. “Last year, Newgarden pushed the button 29 times on either starts or restarts. Power did it 12 times. And McLaughlin did it seven times. And the next thing that I wanted to understand is why is one driver doing it more than the others?”

Cindric points to the individual steering wheel dash arrangement preferences of his IndyCar trio as the likely reason why McLaughlin and Power do less of the habitual button pressing.

“In Will and Scott’s case, they asked for gray bars on the right and left side of their dash that are lit when push-to-pass is inactive,” he added. “In other words, on starts or restarts, it basically tells them, ‘Hey, it’s inactive.’ And Newgarden doesn’t want that. He doesn’t want those bars. He’ll probably tell you that he just pushes the button whenever he thinks he can use it, whether it works or doesn’t work.”

Having used the illegal P2P power to pull away from the field at the first restart and again on the final restart, Newgarden’s practice of stabbing away at the button when it shouldn’t be working would fit a long-held pattern of optimism-filled behavior.

Where the pattern is broken is on the first restart, where Newgarden made a second use of P2P, and not entering the front straight as the green flag waved where he’s known to press the button, but later in the lap to pass Herta at Turn 4.

The deployment of P2P power once more after that restart, and while the system had yet to be activated by IndyCar, raises questions of Newgarden’s awareness of the ability to exploit the illegal advantage and willingness to use it twice on lap 30.

He also elected to not use it on the second restart, which raises more questions as to why the advantage was used twice on the first restart for a combined 5.4s, skipped on the second restart, and used for 3.6s on the third and final restart on lap 72 to streak away from Pato O’Ward and eventually win by 7.9121s.

NOBODY KNEW DURING OR AFTER THE RACE?

Among the most critical aspects of this issue to understand is whether Team Penske was alerted to the ability to use P2P when it was meant to be disabled during the St. Petersburg race.

The question itself assumes the team and its drivers were ignorant of the situation before the race, which Cindric, Ruzewski, McLaughlin and Power say is true. Following that line of thinking, it should have come as a surprise to Newgarden and McLaughlin when it did work. McLaughlin, again, says he didn’t know it had been used.

Due to Newgarden’s silence prior to the Friday press conference, his ignorance of or complicity in the ordeal was unknown at the time of writing.

Left to ask if Newgarden, the team’s most active illegal user of P2P at the race, informed Cindric — his race strategist — or anyone else associated with the No. 2 Chevy during or after the race about the button being active, Cindric said, “It never came up in our debrief.”

AND NOBODY CAUGHT IT IN THE MONTH-PLUS LEADING INTO LONG BEACH?

The hardest item to process is notion that Team Penske — North America’s gold standard in motor racing with championships in IndyCar, IMSA, and NASCAR, plus countless wins at all of the country’s biggest events, who abide by the “Penske Perfect” ethos — missed all of the warning signs about its illegal P2P configuration and all of the irregularities captured in the race data of the Nos. 2 and 3 at St. Petersburg.

The same concern applies to Team Chevy and its engine technicians, who were also seemingly unaware of the illegal uses of P2P that were present in their ECU data.

Add up the amount of people on the team and manufacturer side who didn’t see or raise a red flag after St. Petersburg, and it’s easier to understand the reasoning behind IndyCar’s aggressive punishment and the wave of criticism and disbelief aimed at the team.

As well, the fact that all of the team’s systems/data engineers went more than a month with the anytime P2P value of “1” entered into the software on all three cars without noticing is remarkable.

Such a longstanding oversight would be more readily accepted from a smaller and lesser team.

OLD DATA AND VIDEO REVIEW

Since RACER posted its initial analysis of the situation and closed with a question of whether the series will look back to previous years and investigate whether Team Penske has used P2P illegally, RACER has learned this already took place — prior to the current scandal — and the team was cleared of any wrongdoing. It’s unknown whether IndyCar will take a second look in response to this week’s events.

As noted in the first analysis piece, one team told RACER it supplied onboard video clips to IndyCar in 2023 which depicted what it felt was suspicious uses of P2P.

“I definitely want to clear that up,” Cindric said. “If there was anything in 2023, IndyCar has all that data and everything there. There is zero chance that any of this current occurred in 2023. And they can go through all the data and look at it at any point in time.”

According to Cindric, there was another identical allegation leveled against the team in 2022 which he says resulted in the team being cleared by IndyCar.

“We also want to address this 2022 video,” he continued. “There were some questions in the past about whether or not we were using push-to-pass illegally. There was an inquiry in 2022. McLaughlin was moving his thumb at the button in qualifying, but the ECU wouldn’t have had any push-to-pass even loaded in it.

“IndyCar came and looked at our steering wheel because he was moving his finger around, which is something that he does. The wheel was completely disassembled and found to have no issues or infractions. So I just want to clear that up because it was reviewed and IndyCar did come and confiscate our steering wheel and go through all that stuff.”

FINAL

Having consulted with a current championship-winning IndyCar data engineer on the CLU/MyLaps explanation and Penske’s excuse of leaving of a “1” instead of the correct “Choose(MYL_Overtake Staus ==3,1,0)” string in the software that opened the door to anytime P2P, they agreed that it was possible, albeit not something they would expect from Team Penske, and said it could have happened as simply as Cindric and Ruzewski have outlined.

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Newgarden opens up over IndyCar rules breach: “I’m not a liar”
Team Penske’s Josef Newgarden, who was stripped of his IndyCar victory at St. Petersburg, says he is “embarrassed” and “demoralized” for breaching the rules but insists he’s “not a liar”.

Charles Bradley Apr 26, 2024 at 10:08 AM

In a special press conference held at Barber Motorsports Park on Friday morning, an emotional Newgarden – who had to regain his composure several times after his voice broke down – says he didn't know he was doing anything wrong.

He claimed that he misguidedly believed the restart rules had been changed, as per the exhibition race at The Thermal Club that followed the St. Pete season opener. He also admits it's created a "not very believable story" amid a "crazy set of circumstances".

"It's really important to look at the facts of what happened," said Newgarden. "There's no doubt that we were in breach of the rules at St. Petersburg.

"I used push-to-pass twice at an unauthorized time at two different restarts. Those are the rules and we did not adhere to them.

"There's only one person sitting in the car, so the responsibility and use of the push-to-pass falls directly on me. It is my responsibility to know the rules and regulations. With that regard I failed my team miserably, a complete failure from my side to get that right.

"It's demoralizing in a lot of ways and there's nothing that I can say that changes the fact of what happened."

IndyCar officials discovered the transgression, seemingly by accident, during warm-up on Sunday at the Long Beach Grand Prix, realizing that all three Penske cars had access to the push-to-pass overtake system even when race control had not activated it.

This was due to an illegal line of code in its electronic setup files, which had been entered during electrical hybrid testing since last August, and allowed the overtake system to be active on its cars regardless of the race control signal.

IndyCar went back to last month's St. Pete race data from its cars and found that Penske had, in effect, "manipulated the overtake system" so its cars could use push-to-pass at starts and restarts, when it is not meant to be available.

Newgarden and team-mate Scott McLaughlin were both disqualified, as they used the system illegally; Newgarden pressed his overtake boost button three times for 9s and McLaughlin used 1.9s of overtake on one lap following a restart.

But Newgarden says the change to the start and restart rules of the exhibition race at Thermal, which occurred after the St. Pete season opener, coupled with the illegal line of code in his car's electronic system, created the scenario where he was under the misapprehension that it was legal to use push-to-pass.

"The tricky thing about this whole situation is I didn't know I did anything wrong until Monday after Long Beach," he said. "It's the first time I heard that I broke rules.

"You guys can, you can call me every name in the book. You can call me incompetent, call me an idiot, call me an asshole, call me, you know, stupid, whatever you wanna call me.

"But I'm not a liar. I didn't leave St. Pete and thinking we pulled something over on somebody."

Speaking directly about his error, he admitted: "I know why it happened… and I don't think it's very believable. Somehow, some way the [No.] 2 team convinced ourselves that there was a rule change to restart specifically with overtake usage.

"And you say, well, how do you come up with this? This never happened before. The only place that this got introduced was with the Thermal exhibition race.

"It's the only time in my time in IndyCar where we've actually had a legitimate legal change of the push-to-pass system, where it's gonna be operable at the start/finish line. There was a lot of discussion around it and we somehow genuinely believed and convinced ourselves that, at St. Pete, the rule was now you can use it immediately on restarts. It's gonna be available immediately.

"The craziest part of the story is the software issue that no one knew about just perpetuated that belief even further.

"Then you go through St. Pete, you go through Thermal where it's an actual change and everybody's using it, and then you go to Long Beach and it's still in the car.

"I still believed the procedural difference on restarts was applied for Long Beach. I tried to do the exact same thing leading the race at Long Beach. I even pushed the button.

"I came over the radio. I said, 'Hey guys overtake is not working correctly'. I said it throughout the whole first lap. I mean, I don't know how or why in your right mind you would do that.

"Even when I try and tell the story back, I don't think any of us believe it will be believable to somebody, but it's the truth."

Newgarden, who was the overall leader after two points-paying rounds, has now dropped to 11th with 34 points.

He revealed that his legendary team boss Roger Penske "interrogated" him and "didn't take it well".

"I've spoken to him once and he did not take it well whatsoever, as you could imagine," said Newgarden. "You know, I was interrogated at first.

"I don't want to speak on his behalf, but I've not met somebody with higher integrity than that man. And I mean that.

"Yeah, it wasn't taken well."

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Originally posted by 220-9er:
Also the time line of how to software error happened. St. Pete was before the test when it was put in so how did it get there then?
Lot’s of questions still.

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“What still gets me is why IndyCar would leave some piece of code that simple to change or let the teams have access to it instead of requiring an Engine Manufacturer needing to unlock that piece of code.”
^^Agree. That process should never be available to anyone except the officials and a completely separate component of the system.

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IndyCar leadership explains its handling of Penske P2P scandal
Marshall Pruett April 27, 2024 7:55 AM ET

IndyCar president Jay Frye is the commissioner of the series he runs. Penske Entertainment CEO Mark Miles is frequently deployed as voice of the executives, which includes series owner Roger Penske. Together, they met with the press in the Barber Motorsports Park paddock on Friday to share insights and field questions surrounding Team Penske’s push-to-pass (P2P) scandal.

A line of code was altered by the team in the Central Logger Units (CLU) that gave its drivers full-time access to P2P across two events, and in response, IndyCar has locked down open access to the CLUs starting this weekend through the deployment of software patches.

Where the engine control modules (ECU) are only accessible by engine manufacturers and the series, the CLUs are the responsibility of each team and act as the hub that captures all chassis performance data, sets the configuration of the steering-wheel mounted dash, and other functions related to monitoring and analyzing vehicle performance.

With its interconnected link to the MyLaps timing and scoring transponder, the CLU is used to send on/off instructions to the ECU for the P2P button. With this change, IndyCar is taking control of the matter for the first time. If the series used something other than the CLU/MyLaps gateway to communicate P2P instructions to the ECU, there would be no need to restrict or police the CLUs.

The series is also adding the review of CLU P2P software settings to its technical inspections and will review data from the Cosworth-made chassis loggers after each race to look for any P2P usage infractions.

“Before, they were unlocked,” Frye said. “So that’s one way to prevent this, going forward. There’s a couple of things we’re doing from a race control perspective, that will be different that will highlight things like this (and make them) a little bit more obvious.”

As RACER reported on Friday, Frye’s team reviewed Team Penske’s data from 2023 and did not find any P2P irregularities that warranted additional penalties.

Asked if Team Penske will be treated differently by the series — face more intense scrutiny in technical inspections or lose certain perks and priorities given to its most successful teams — Frye answered in the negative.

“We think the penalty was addressed,” he said of the disqualifications, fines, and loss of points. “It was, we think, severe. And it’s been handled and going forward (we’re) treating (them) just like we always treat everybody else.”

Miles handled the last item of interest regarding his boss. Team Penske was caught by IndyCar on Sunday. Team president Tim Cindric and Penske managing director Ron Ruzewski alerted the series to the illegal uses of P2P it found in its data from St. Petersburg on Monday. The team was informed of the penalties on Tuesday. The series announced the infractions and penalties Wednesday morning with a quote from Frye, and a quote from Cindric accepting the decision was issued at the same time. Penske driver Scott McLaughlin was the first to post a mea culpa on social media Wednesday evening and teammate Will Power followed suit on Thursday. Josef Newgarden met with the media Friday morning.

Throughout the entire affair, the one person who hasn’t stepped forward is Penske, which would seem fitting since it was his team, in the series he owns, that was ultimately punished by his commissioner — a scenario unlike any other among major sporting leagues.

According to Miles, Penske will speak if and when he chooses.

“Certainly (it’s) his choice as to when he wants to… where and how to conduct himself and whether he’ll communicate and with whom is on him to decide whether and when,” he said. “I would just say from our perspective — I think Jay feels exactly the same way — what was really important to us was there was never any question of any interference (from Penske). We could be objective and handle the data. In the same way that we would have handled it for any other team.”

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MP: The many beefs with rivals or teammates existed long before we arrived in St. Pete. As I’ve been told repeatedly, it’s had nothing to do with the on-track stuff and everything to do with interpersonal behavior.

I’ve never seen an IndyCar driver change more from the start of their career as Newgarden. I’ve said this before, but I met Helio Castroneves as a Indy Lights rookie in 1996. All these years later, he’s the same guy. Also met Tony Kanaan as a 1996 Lights rookie. Same guy today. They’ve won everything, become heroes and stars and wealthy beyond what any of us will ever know, and yet they are no different than who they were 30ish years ago.

Juan Pablo Montoya was a full-time a-hole. He knew it and owned it. And I love the guy for it — he’s as real as they come, which is why he was such a popular person to interact with and interview. Having an amazing driver who also acts like a jerk is nothing new.

Hard to say what’s changed with Newgarden, but he’s gone from being one of the favorite drivers among drivers to an outcast for most. That’s something that was kept quiet because he’s important to the series and has a solid base of fans. But with this scandal, and the firing of shots his way in public by some drivers, the effort to protect his fans from the reality of the situation behind the scenes was no longer possible.

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Originally posted by DanH:
Hard to say what’s changed with Newgarden, but he’s gone from being one of the favorite drivers among drivers to an outcast for most.

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I would like to say this was just a gross oversight or was it intentional?