The 2024 IndyCar season kicked off on March 10 in St. Petersburg, Florida with a 100-lap race. The race was won by the driver of Team Penske Chevrolet, Josef Newgarden, ahead of Pato O’Ward and his teammate Scott McLaughlin, who started with McLaren. Since then, two more races have been held in this year’s IndyCar season, but on Wednesday a statement appeared on the official website of the series, according to their decision to disqualify the winner of the St. Petersburg race, Newgarden, and his teammate, McLaughlin, so the F1 test driver, O’Ward got first place. Based on the justification, both Penske drivers broke the so-called push-to-pass rule.
Photo: Patrick T. FALLON / AFP
This is how IndyCar justified the exclusion of Newgarden and McLaughlin
IndyCar discovered a possible rule violation by the Penske team during the warm-up practice before the Long Beach race last weekend, after which they began a more thorough investigation, which led to Wednesday’s disqualification. Push-to-pass is an engine power-boosting system that allows drivers to activate a KERS-like hybrid acceleration system previously used in Formula 1 – but only under certain conditions.
“Team Penske did not modify the push-to-pass software on their cars as they should have done following the recently completed hybrid tests. This allowed push-to-pass to be used in the St. Petersburg race during restarts when it should not have been.
The No. 2 car, driven by Josef Newgarden, and the No. 3 car, driven by Scott McLaughlin, both made a push-to-pass on the restart, which violated IndyCar rules, leading to disqualification.
“Team Penske has accepted the penalties applied by IndyCar,” they wrote.
The third driver of the Penske team, Will Power, also broke a similar rule, for which he was already given a 10-second time penalty during the race in St. Petersburg. But while Power didn’t gain an advantage using the push-to-pass, Newgarden and McLaughlin did. IndyCar also fined all three Team Penske drivers $25,000 and took away all of their season-opening prize money.
After the change in the final result of the season opener, Scott Dixon starts the weekend race in Alabama from the top of the overall, while Newgarden slipped back to 11th place in the standings.
