Welcome to the RACER Mailbag. Questions for any of RACER’s writers can be sent to mailbag@racer.com. We can’t guarantee that every letter will be published, but we’ll answer as many as we can. Published questions may be edited for length and clarity. Questions received after 3pm ET each Monday will appear the following week.
Q: I see Roger Penske just suspended some crew and Tim Cindric for two races. Sort of a day late and a dollar short on integrity. I re-read the B.S. comments from Newgarden, acting so naive. I still can’t fathom that Power had same software settings and yet did not cheat. If Penske was a leader he would clean house and fire these clowns. It stinks that the 500 is coming, but it is now clouded. If the series wanted attention they sure got real fans stirred up. Guess even bad press is better than no press.
Craig B. Leland, NC
MARSHALL PRUETT: I’ve never agreed with the ‘all press is good press’ deal. We look like idiots. Based on the TV audience size at Barber just days after the scandal broke, it did nothing to put more eyeballs on the series and the race; the audience actually shrunk by 12.5 percent from the Barber race in 2023. Scandal… drama… and nobody seemed to care.
Q: How much of an impact are the Penske suspensions really going to be on the team for the month of May? In NASCAR, for example, the crew chief gets suspended (usually multiple racers for an infraction), and you get the impression that’s significant to the competition of the team at a race event. I’m sure for someone like (senior data engineer) Robbie Atkinson, the suspension is going to have an impact, given the publicity. But, in general the suspension seemed superficial and more a PR move, given that it was self-imposed and not handed down from IndyCar. That actually seems to be the worst part of it.
Matthew
MP: If Penske was serious about sending a message, he would have actually suspended them. Turning off their access cards. Taking their laptops and phones. Sending them home for the rest of the month like they are on four separate islands where no contact with the race team at Indy is allowed and no work product can be done.
You’re ‘suspended’ but can still do your full jobs before and after cars are on track at the Speedway each day? That’s not a suspension; that’s a time-out.
Q: So, at the Indy GP, Rahal and Armstrong both had brand new engines let go before they even ran two laps at speed. Since they’re only allowed four engines for the season, they will probably suffer penalties later in the year for exceeding the engine allotment.
When Honda takes them back and if it finds that there was a manufacturing or assembly defect that was Honda’s fault and they find it is through that whole series of engines, is there any kind of provision that would allow IndyCar to waive the penalty for using an extra engine? Say Honda built 12 engines that had the same defect, they had two fail, found the cause and pulled back the other 10 before they were used, could the two teams that had failures be given a pass?
Michael Pennington
MP: Due to higher usage of engines in pre-season testing than was forecasted, Honda chose to start changing motors after Barber instead of after the Indy GP, and they had the two failures with Marcus Armstrong and Graham with the new motors which were sent back for inspection and fixing. On the Chevy side, Pato O’Ward and Alexander Rossi also had motor issues at the GP.