For IndyCar the hits this week just keep on coming.
It all started OK, with a pretty decent race in Long Beach where Scott Dixon posted the 57th win of his illustrious career. And with another race this weekend at Barber Motorsports Park, there was a lot to get excited about as we head into an exciting few weeks.
Then we got the ratings from Sunday’s race, which were Versus (remember that channel?)-level awful. So bad that the Formula 1 on ESPN drew twice as many people — despite the race being broadcast in the middle of the night.
But today? Today tops it all, as the series announced that, six weeks after the race at St. Pete, it had disqualified race winner Josef Newgarden and runner-up Scott McLaughlin. Both were stripped of all the points they earned at the race (Newgarden did get to keep the point he won for the pole) because they were somehow able to use push-to-pass on starts and restarts — which is both a no-no and should be impossible to do as it is.
From the IndyCar website:
“An extensive review of data from the race on the Streets of St. Petersburg revealed that Team Penske manipulated the overtake system so that the No. 2, 3 and 12 cars had the ability to use Push to Pass on starts and restarts. According to the INDYCAR rulebook, use of overtake is not available during championship races until the car reaches the alternate start-finish line.”
The decision elevates Pato O’Ward to the victory, and Dixon to the top of the season points.
(Editor’s note: In my Fearless Prediction post, I picked Dixon as this season’s champion. Now, he is 11.77% there. In case you were keeping track.)
The DQs also had huge implications on the championship, as Newgarden falls from the top of the table to 11th, while McLaughlin drops all the way to 29th.
Also note that Will Power was fined and docked 10 points because the series determined he received no advantage from using the P2P.
While Team Penske’s Tim Cindric blamed it on a software problem, the word in IndyCar’s statement that drew my attention the most was the team “manipulated” P2P. Sooo, are we saying they deliberately cheated? Because if that’s the case, maybe an audit of all available data should be in order to see how far back this goes.
What also bugs me is that it took six weeks for this to be discovered and acted upon. So everyone was just figuring this out during the morning warm-up at Long Beach? I just can’t buy that.
There is just way too much data out there for anyone to say that no one noticed. I’ve worked with a team in the then-USF2000 series, and I’ve also spent enough IndyCar races in the pits to know that there is a massive amount of information available to the teams.
Of course, lots of that kind of stuff is proprietary and held under lock-and-key, but someone, somewhere it should’ve caught it. Most of all, Team Penske itself.
At no point during the St. Pete race did anyone at Penske notice their drivers were using P2P when they shouldn’t be able to? And no one else noticed it either?
Nobody?
(Editor’s note: I read Marshall Pruett’s fantastic column about all of this after I wrote this post. Follow this link to read the down-and-dirty details.)
This is 2024. If I can see a bunch of real-time data on an app on my iPhone, that information is readily out there for people who do this as their jobs and careers.
The best thing IndyCar can do right now is to be as transparent as possible about this. It doesn’t have to happen this week, or in the next few weeks, but at some point they have got to produce all of the information they have on this. I just cannot be convinced that this was some kind of honest mistake due to a “software glitch.”
Let’s be honest, IndyCar is beginning to have a bit of a credibility problem. While we fans have tried to hold the series up as one of the last bastions of “pure” racing — and the antithesis to the shenanigans that go on over in NASCAR — that’s not what’s really going on.
I could let some of it go, but my skepticism started ramping up last May, when the series all but green/white/checkered the Indianapolis 500.
Yes, it led to an incredible result and the first 500 win for a popular driver, but was it fair? No.
Was it within the spirit of actual competition? Again, no.
Most of all: was it done with the safety of the drivers in mind? Hell no. As in, hell f–king no.
Talk about “manipulation”…the series manipulated the outcome of its biggest race, and the biggest race in the world.
I get the argument to try to have races finish under green. But a one-lap sprint after nearly 500 miles of racing isn’t about competition, it’s not about identifying the best combination of car, driver, and crew, it’s completely and solely all about providing a Game 7 moment.
That’s it. And if that’s how things are going to go in this series, just go all the way with it. Make it so every race ends under green and everyone goes home happy, and while you are at it, admit that in the end that’s what it’s all about.
Look, I grew up playing competitive sports, and I’ve spent the last 25 years writing about them. I’m not naive, any time there is a winner and a loser, people are going to get right up to the redline of the rules in order to get an advantage.
You do what you can until you get caught. Team Penske got caught.
Everyone’s doing what they can to find an edge. Cool. But when the word “manipulation” gets thrown out there, that’s way beyond getting an edge.
I’m not going to go all tinfoil-hat here, but between this kind of stuff, race control being asleep at the wheel half of the time, and no one watching the races, IndyCar is absolutely screwing itself over at a time when they can least afford to, and not being completely truthful about it makes it even worse.
Fix it. Now.
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