Teary Newgarden accepts blame for IndyCar scandal
Reigning Indianapolis 500 champion Josef Newgarden blinked back tears Friday as he accepted blame for manipulating the push-to-pass system in his season-opening IndyCar win that has since been stripped, calling it an embarrassment and acknowledging that he may have a long road ahead in winning back the respect of his peers.
During an emotional 25-minute news conference at Barber Motorsports Park ahead of this weekend's race, the two-time series champion insisted he is “not a liar” and didn't intentionally break the rules. It was his first public comment since IndyCar took away his March 10 victory at St. Petersburg, Florida — the first disqualification by the series in 29 years.
“I want to deeply apologize to our fans, our partners, my teammates, the competitors that I race against,” Newgarden said. “Anybody that's in our community. I've worked my entire career to hold myself to a very high standard and clearly I've fallen very short of that in this respect. It's a difficult thing to wrestle with. It's a very embarrassing thing to go through.”
Newgarden stripping his win was “absolutely” the right decision by the open-wheel series whose owner, Roger Penske, also runs Newgarden's team and is one of the giants in motorsports. The decision has thrown IndyCar into turmoil as it prepares for next month's showcase Indianapolis 500.
“It's crushing. I'm going to look back on it, too, and say I don't want that win on my books, either,” Newgarden said, his voice wavering. “I'm glad they're taking it away. If it was tainted, I don't want to be near it. Unfortunately it is. I can't reverse that in time. It's good what's happened.”
Team Penske teammate Scott McLaughlin, who finished third, also was disqualified while fourth-place finisher Will Power was docked 10 points though he wasn't accused of any wrongdoing. The Penske drivers were fined $25,000 because the manipulated systems were on all three cars.
The team has maintained that the push-to-pass system on its three Chevrolets was used in a test session and then mistakenly not replaced before the season began. It remained on the cars for three races, until it was discovered last weekend just before the race at Long Beach.
IndyCar President Jay Frye said
the series will begin locking a logging unit on cars immediately after qualifying, blocking teams from making any changes in push-to-pass before a race.
Mark Miles, CEO of IndyCar and Penske Entertainment, said there was no conflict with Penske as series boss.
“What was really important to us was there was never any question of any interference,” Miles said. “We could be objective and handle the data in the same way we would have handled it for any other team.”
IndyCar prohibits the use of the system on starts and restarts and the button isn't supposed to work on those occasions. Onboard videos clearly show Newgarden using pushto-pass to gain position on at least one restart at St. Petersburg.
Newgarden said he believed the restart rule implemented with the Thermal race in March extended into the season so push-to-pass could be used “immediately on restarts.”
“You guys can call me every name in the book, you can call me incompetent, call me an idiot ... call me stupid, whatever you want to call me, but I'm not a liar,” Newgarden said. “The story that I know, which is the truth, is almost too convenient to be believable. So to answer your question, no, I didn't leave St. Pete thinking we pulled something over on somebody. I didn't know that we did something wrong until this week.”
The issue was discovered Sunday in California when a glitch knocked push-to-pass out on all cars except the three Penske entries. IndyCar ordered the team to correct the systems before the race.
Andretti Global driver Colton Herta, who moved up to third at St. Pete with the disqualifications, said he isn't buying that Newgarden didn't realize he was breaking the rules.
“That's wrong. If he thought that, why didn't he push it at the start?” Herta asked. “He pushed it on the restarts. You would think when everybody is stacked up the most, you would push it. So that's a lie.”
Gavin Ward, in his first year as team principal for Arrow McLaren, said the team messed up, not just Newgarden. Ward was a race engineer for Team Penske and held that role for Newgarden in the driver's 2019 IndyCar title run and his runner-up finishes in 2020 and 2021.
Ward said team officials know when a driver presses overtake.
“It's a flag on everybody's monitoring,” he said. “Everybody knows when you use the overtake. You telling me none of them realized that was not in the rules? Everybody had the wrong read of it?”
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