Newgarden, Power ‘surprised’ after Penske suspensions
INDIANAPOLIS — Josef Newgarden and Will Power say they were surprised to learn their veteran strategists won’t be there for the biggest couple weeks on the calendar, after team owner Roger Penske doled out four multi-race suspensions Monday in the wake of the team’s push-to-pass scandal that has engulfed the start of its season.
“But this isn’t my team. It’s Roger’s team,” Newgarden said Friday at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway after qualifying 4th for Saturday’s Sonsio Grand Prix that kicks off May festivities at the Racing Capital of the World.
“I didn’t expect it, but it is what it is, and we’re going to do the best we can with the situation,” said Power, who nabbed his third consecutive top-3 start in qualifying Friday. “The team felt they had to do something, and unfortunately, two people on my car were involved with it.
“We’re just trying to focus forward.” The two Team Penske vets, who’ve now won on both tracks at IMS following Newgarden’s maiden 500 victory 12 months ago, showed little loss of form with the pair of new personnel members on their cars Friday during a day jampacked with on-track action that included a pair of practices and a threeround qualifying duel to close. They’ll share the second row for Saturday afternoon’s 85-lap race.
For Power, the change is perhaps less-drastic, as his longtime lead engineer of well over a decade, David Faustino, will add strategist duties on the No. 12 Chevy. On Thursday, Power said the New Jersey native had run plenty of test sessions for the No. 12 crew since they kicked off their full-season Team Penske careers in 2010.
Their time together, which started in 2007 at Walker Racing, has produced all but one of Power’s 41 career wins and all but two of his series-leading 70 poles. The tough moments, Power said, will come in the tiny details, as he also welcomes Paulo Trentini Filho into an elevated data engineer role with the crew, replacing Robbie Atkinson.
“(David’s) not used to counting me down to the (pit box) or sending me, so we’ll have to really practice those things as much as we can,” Power said. “I can almost do strategy from the car, and (David’s) the one that basically does the strategy anyways, while Ron sort of calls the races.
“It’s 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, so that’s a pity, but that’s the way it is, and we have to do our best. This is the call Roger made.”
Newgarden lost strategist (and Team Penske president) Tim Cindric from his timing stand this month, along with race engineer Luke Mason. The defending 500 winner clearly seems to be relying on his newfound love for the location of the biggest victory of his career to center his focus and wishful positivity for the month – in the face of what will likely be some hearty boos from the crowd along the way.
“We’ve got an amazing team, as everybody knows. We’ve got a lot of depth, and for us, we pride ourselves in that it’s never just one person,” said Newgarden, who adds team veteran Jon Bosloug as his strategist this week, along with race engineer Raul Prados, in place of Luke Mason. “It’s great to plug in these guys that I’ve known for a long time. It was funny having a different cadence today than I have the last seven years, but I felt like it was business as usual.”
On Tuesday, Team Penske announced the moves, which came after what Penske called an extensive internal review of his general counsel, which found that there was no “malicious intent” in the illegal manipulation of software on all three cars for the St. Pete season-opener.
Despite widespread paddock insistence otherwise, Penske officials, drivers and crew members have assured the team never knowingly ran afoul of the rules. Though they were not directly implicated in the scandal, Penske told IndyStar during a Tuesday interview that Cindric and team manager Ron Ruzewski (who is also Power’s strategist) agreed to take a two-race leave in solidarity with Mason and Atkinson. Despite their suspensions, where they cannot be at the track or in Indianapolis and cannot communicate with team members while cars are on-track, the four are said to still be allowed to participate in team meetings and debriefs. Additionally, Cindric will continue his traditional non-IndyCar duties as team president.