Newgarden shoulders blame for DQ over P2P use

26/04/2024 18:49

Josef Newgarden has taken responsibility for the irregular usage of push-to-pass (P2P) at IndyCar's season opener at St. Petersburg last month, which resulted in his victory being disqualified when the issued came to light at Long Beach.

Newgarden was determined to have used the P2P three times during restarts, when it was supposed to have been deactivated. Team Penske teammate Scott McLaughlin, who used it illegally once, was also disqualified from third. Will Power was issued a points deduction for having full-time P2P enabled on his car, although he did not use it.

The ability for the Penske cars to use P2P at times when it should have been inactive has been traced to a software oversight by the team, and McLaughlin is thought to have inadvertently hit the button out of habit. Newgarden's usage was intentional, which he says was due him misunderstanding the rules.

"I think at this point it’s really important to look at the facts of what happened, and the facts are extremely clear. There’s no doubt that we were in breach of the rules at St. Petersburg. I used push to pass at an unauthorized time twice on two different restarts," he said while publicly addressing the issue for the first time on Friday.

"There’s really nothing else to it other than that those are the rules, and we did not adhere to them. For me, what's really important about that is, there’s only one person sitting in the car. It’s just me. And so that responsibility and the use of the push to pass in the correct manner falls completely on me. It is my responsibility to know the rules and the regulations at all points, and to make sure that I get that right. And with that regard, I failed my team miserably. Complete failure from my side to get that right. You know, it’s my job as the leader of the No.2 car to not make mistakes like that. You cannot make a mistake at this level in that situation.

"There’s no room for it. There’s no room for that type of mistake anywhere, certainly not at the top level of motorsports. And I don’t want to hide from that. It’s an embarrassing situation to have to go through, to see what’s transpired. It’s demoralizing in a lot of ways. And there’s nothing that I can say that changes the fact of what happened. I mean, it’s pretty clear. That’s why I say I think the facts are most important right now. That’s what really matters. I also think the truth is important, and I think that there can be space for both of those things. So if there’s anything that I wanted to come say… I want to deeply apologize to our fans, our partners, my teammates, the competitors that I race against, anybody that’s in our community.

"I’ve worked my entire career to hold myself to an incredibly high standard. And clearly I’ve fallen very short of that in this respect. Once again, I can’t overstate, it’s a difficult thing to wrestle with. It’s a very embarrassing process to go through and I hope we can find a way forward after this. I mean, that’s really all you can do, is try and find a way forward after the fact."

Newgarden says he believed until Long Beach that his use of P2P at St. Petersburg had been permissible. Josh Tons/Motorsport Images

Newgarden reiterated that his use of the P2P at St. Pete was deliberate, but said that he remained unaware that he was doing anything wrong until the series brought the issue to the team's attention at Long Beach. Instead, he says he was under the mistaken impression that the series had introduced a change in restart procedures as they relate to P2P.

"The tricky thing about this whole situation is, I didn’t know I did anything wrong until Monday after Long Beach. It’s the first time I heard that I broke the rules," he said.

"You guys call me every name of the book. You can call me incompetent. Call me an idiot, call me an a**hole, call me stupid, whatever you want to call me, but I’m not a liar. And the story, that I know is the truth, is almost too convenient to be believable. So, no, I, 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.

"I know what happened. I know why it happened, and I don’t think it’s very believable. Even when I try and tell the story back, I don’t think any of us believe it’ll be believable to somebody, but it’s the truth. So, no, I didn’t know I did something wrong in St. Pete. The key difference on the No.2 car, which is important to understand, is that somehow, some way, we convinced ourselves that there was a rule change to restart, specifically with overtake usage. And you say, well, how do you come up with this? This never happened before. The only place that this got introduced was with the Thermal exhibition race. It’s the only time in my time in IndyCar where we’ve actually had a legitimate legal change of the push to pass system where it’s going to be operatable at a time, other than at the alt start/finish line. It was going to be usable in qualifying, too.

"There was a lot of discussion around it, and we somehow genuinely believed and convinced ourselves that at St. Pete, the rule was, now you can use it immediately on restarts. You don’t have to wait til the alt start/finish line. It’s going to be available immediately. I even wanted the team to remind me of this so that I didn’t forget."

The problem came to light during Sunday morning's warmup session at Long Beach when it became apparent that Penske's drivers were using P2P at a time when it should have been unavailable to the entire field due to a technical error in race control. This was fixed, but Newgarden still went into the Long Beach race believing that there had been a change to the restart rules. He admits that he actually tried to use the system again during the Long Beach start.

"The craziest part of the story is the software issue that no one knew about. It just perpetuated that belief even further," he said. "So then you go through St. Pete, you go through Thermal, where it’s an actual change and everybody’s using it. And then you go to Long Beach and it’s still in the car. And the first time that any of us hear about this software issue or mistake is the warmup. And the even crazier part of that is, even when you learn about the software issue that no one knew about, and it was fixed, I still believed the procedural difference on restarts applied for Long Beach. I tried to do the exact same thing leading the race at Long Beach. I even pushed the button — I came over the radio; I said, 'Hey, the guys, the overtake's not working correctly.'

"I said it throughout the whole first lap because it wasn’t working. I don’t know why in your right mind you would do that. Did I try and come up with a conspiracy and then cover… it’s not. The truth is, somehow we got that mixed up and it somehow got entangled with a mistake, and it’s created some ridiculously unbelievable storyline. But the facts of the matter are, I used it illegally. I wasn’t allowed to. And I can’t change that. Whatever I say going forward will not change those facts. And it kills me that it doesn’t. I wish I could go back in time and somehow reverse all this, but I can’t."

In addition to Newgarden's confusion about the regulations, the other major failure in the process was the existence of the code in the electronics chain on the Penske cars that allowed P2P to be freely available in the first place.

"On Sunday morning of Long Beach, I was like, 'Oh, well, we had an issue.' I’m learning about this an hour before the race," he said. "No one panicked. There was no deep dive into this. I still didn’t know that there was anything amiss — certainly not from St. Pete. So, you know, we fix all that. We go through the race. When I learned there was a real issue here, I go, 'How is this possible? Who safeguards this stuff?' And then I learn after the fact that this has been possible for anybody at any point. So it’s also not complex. It’s very simple. If you break down exactly what happened, it’s extremely simple. And it kind of baffled me that anybody could have done that. There was no sort of checks and balance in place. And I’m not trying to point the finger at everybody. It doesn’t absolve us from anything. But I was shocked to learn that there was no safeguard in place. It was just that this could have happened at any point, and no one knew about it.

"No one genuinely believed we had done anything wrong. No one was looking for something inaccurate. It’s not something that just jumps out like a silver bullet. It’s easy to, especially now learning how the software piece works, it’s something on the team side where it’s literally built into your preferences on your dash. There’s a digit there that literally sends this signal. I don’t think it’s something that we were looking for."

Newgarden also addressed the question of how the irregularity at St. Pete was not spotted in the data studied by the drivers and engineers.

"That’s not data that you look at after the race," he said. "I didn’t review any of that stuff after the race. I mean, it was a good weekend. I did my notes. I watched the race back. I didn’t assume anything was off, or anything was different. I mean, there’s a reason that Will didn’t use it. The only person in-car that was under the belief that there was a rule change was in the No. 2 car. You know, there’s a reason Scott only used it 1.9 seconds, too. I mean, he truly is just hitting it out of habit, which does happen. I think I hit the thing 29 times (in 2023)."

While Newgarden is keen to make his accountability for the situation clear, he also recognizes that he has some work to do to regain the trust of some of his competitors.

"I don’t know how you do that," he admitted. "It is important to state. I think it’s the truth. I don’t know that anybody’s going to believe what I’ve told you here today. And that’s OK. I mean, it’s a crazy set of circumstances to try and just reason with. It’s certainly not going come from words, you know? It’s just going to take repetitive action. That’s all you can do is just repetitive action, and hopefully I can stand on that in the future. So however long it takes or how many years, if I’m given the time, I’ll just try and earn it through action.

"I saw (IndyCar president ) Jay Frye for the first time yesterday — he asked me to come see him, and I think he was just being nice. I think he wanted to be a friend. And I told Jay the story too, you know — I was like, 'Jay, this is what happened.' The saddest thing about it was, no one did this on purpose. And even me telling Jay the story, I could tell looking at him that even he was having a hard time believing it. I’m like, what are you going to do? If, if this guy has a hard time believing it, how is anybody going to believe it? And I can’t affect that. So after today I’m not going to concern myself with it, because I just can’t control it."

While the St Petersburg disqualification puts Newgarden into an early hole with regard to his championship aspirations, he said that the series was correct to strip him of the win.

"I do believe the integrity of the series is absolutely paramount," he said. "You know, the series has to hold everybody accountable regardless of the circumstance, regardless of the intent, and they’ve done the right thing by trying to throw the book at us. They should. It just doesn’t matter what the intent was. If you broke a rule, you broke a rule, and you should suffer the consequences and this series has to uphold that standard. It makes me proud that I’m a part of this series that does that — that’s a series I want to be a part of. So I think the penalty’s fair. It’s crushing. I mean, I’m going to look back on it too and say, ‘Well, I don’t want that win on my books either.’ I don’t want it. I’m glad they’re taking it away. If it was tainted, then I don’t want to be near it. And unfortunately it is.

"We hold ourselves to a really high standard. I mean, everybody knows that. And we have no room to deviate from that. So whether you meant to make a mistake or, you just did, it doesn’t matter, you know? If it’s by accident or by design, it’s not acceptable. And so it’s hard to wrestle with it when it happens, regardless of the circumstances. I can’t speak on Roger 's behalf, but just from my side, I think we hold ourselves to a really high standard, and certainly, I fell short of it, and I just apologize to anybody that we’ve offended with it. I can’t say much more than that. I’m sorry it happened."