Josef Newgarden did not elicit a great deal of sympathy amongst his peers with an emotional dissertation on Friday over his perspective of the disqualifications that stripped him and teammate Scott McLaughlin of a first and third place finish in the season opening Grand Prix of St. Petersburg.
The short version of the infraction is that Team Penske overrode the overtake assist lock that is released by race control only after drivers pass the alternate start-finish line. IndyCar deemed that Newgarden and McLaughlin both used the horsepower boost before that arbitrary point.
While accepting the penalty, the team claims it accidentally copy and pasted code from an off-season hybrid test that bypassed any locks on the feature, and put into the race program that weekend and then again, when it was legal, for the exhibition race at the Thermal Club.
The driver arguably most disadvantaged by that infraction was Colton Herta of Andretti Autosport, whom got passed by Newgarden while he was on the overtake assist button, and he isn’t buying the explanation whatsoever.
“No, that’s bullshit (and) that’s wrong,” Herta said during media availabilities after the Newgarden press conference. “If he thought that, why didn’t he push it at the start? He didn’t, he did at the restart. You’d think when everybody is stacked up the most you would.
“So that’s a lie.”
The video below shows Newgarden pressing the button on the restart and using it to overtake Herta.
“I was the one that screen recorded and sent it to Kyle (Kirkwood, teammate) and this was right after St. Pete,” Herta said. “I said, ‘Man, look at this. Like, did Chevy really gain this much in the off season? It looks like he’s on push to pass.’
“I get a better exit and he still like closes up to me and you know, you’d have some sort of slip-streaming effect, but not really at St. Pete on the frontstraight, it’s pretty, pretty short. And I sent it to Kyle and he’s like, ‘Dude, it looks like he’s on overtake.’ We’re like, ah, no, couldn’t be that.
“It was that.”
Pato O’Ward of Arrow McLaren was originally scored second and inherited the win over a month afterwards and simultaneously sympathizes with Herta while also not believing what Newgarden said on Friday.
“Colton has been the most vocal because he was the victim of that and lost a position because of that,” O’Ward said. “That doesn’t just happen by accident and if it does, you fix it. Something like that wouldn’t get missed unless it was done for an advantage (and) I think everybody is on that same boat and believes that’s the case.
“They have been in this series for decades. They know the rules. I (and he emphasized the word) know the rules. I’ve been here for five years and I know the rules, so yeah, I’m glad IndyCar did something about it but I don’t think this is all we’re going to learn about it.
“I think there’s a deeper dive into past data and there will be some surprises there.”
The implication is that he suspects Team Penske had been doing this far more often that the opener at St. Petersburg, which is something denied by team president Tim Cindric, whom says IndyCar can vouch for that data too.
The biggest point of contention from O’Ward is the idea that this was just an oversight by Team Penske engineers, who are so thoroughly considered amongst the most thorough in the discipline.
“That doesn’t happen,” O’Ward said. “Look at all the screens we have in engineering trucks. Like, so many engineers looking at what’s going on, you have 10 people looking at what each driver is doing every lap. Do you really think something like that is going to get overlooked?”
He said the engineers know more about their race craft as drivers than they do.
“You can’t buy those excuses because there is so much data now, so much data, these engineers go into every single detail,” he added. “Like if you tell them, ‘I was flat there,’ they can tell you, ‘no you weren’t’ within a couple of minutes.
“So yeah, come on.”
In short, O’Ward said he was thoroughly in the ‘not buying it boat’ and that he believes the vast majority of the garage is with him too.
Herta supports the disqualifications but scoffed at the monetary amount of the $25,000 fine.
“Just moves from savings to checking,” Herta said. “Yeah, but what are you going to do? It is funny, though.”
Ultimately, O’Ward is now the winner of the race, not that he has the trophy, after cheekily tweeting at Newgarden that he can provide a mailing address when he’s ready.
How did he celebrate the win?
“You don’t,” he said. “You focus on Barber Motorsports Park. You take the win and the points and the recognition we got for it but I’d like to now give the people at Arrow McLaren a proper celebration, I would say.”
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.
