By Austin Lawton, Staff Writer
The fallout from the Team Penske attenuator situation continues to unravel as the team has released three members of personnel on Wednesday morning: IndyCar Team President Tim Cindric , IndyCar Managing Director Ron Ruzewksi and IndyCar General Manager Kyle Moyer.
“Nothing is more important than the integrity of our sport and our race teams,” Roger Penske said in a public statement. “We have had organizational failures during the last two years, and we had to make necessary changes. I apologize to our fans, our partners and our organization for letting them down.”
The team also announced that further announcements regarding personnel and replacements for the Indianapolis 500 will be revealed this week.
This announcement comes after the crews of the No.2 of Josef Newgarden and the No.12 of Will Power were found modifying the rear attenuator of the race car by putting a bond-like material over a tiny gap. The attenuator, per the IndyCar rulebook, is a spec part provided by Dallara and cannot be modified.
IndyCar penalized the two cars by moving them to the rear of the Indy 500 field, awarded them the last two pit selections and both cars fined $100,000. Ruzewksi and Cindric were then removed from the team for the rest of the “500”, at the time, on Monday morning. This left the bumped, legal car in the No.51 Miller High Life Honda piloted by Jacob Abel for Dale Coyne Racing, on the outside looking in.
Commendably, IndyCar and IMS President rightfully explained why Abel was not let back into the race, in addition to not throwing out the No.’s 2 and 12, per the rules, as the No.’s 2 and 12 made official qualifying attempts on Saturday to lock them into the field.
“When we left here on Saturday, we left here with the 30 fastest cars locked in,” Boles said. “Some folks have asked me, ‘Why would you not remove the two cars?’ Those two cars, the No. 2 and the No.12, qualified on Saturday. They had passed tech. We did not see anything illegal with those cars in tech. So, therefore, we are starting the 33 fastest cars in the Indianapolis 500. The No. 2 and the No. 12 just happen to start at the back.”
This also marks the second time in just over one year that Team Penske has breached the rule book after using the push-to-pass system during race restarts in the 2024 race in St. Petersburg, Florida. When penalties were levied, almost two months removed from the incident, crew members were not penalized but the win for Newgarden and the No. 3 of Scott McLaughlin were disqualified from the race and Power was hit with a 10-point penalty.
All three men have become stalwarts of the modern era of Roger Penske’s race team but none more than Cindric Once the president of all of Team Penske’s racing endeavors, took a scaled back roll over recent years to be the head of the IndyCar side.
Cindric saved the team after a low period in the late 1990’s. Team Penske had Al Unser Jr, a fading star at the time, paired along numerous teammates. When Cindric was hired, he slated the pair of Gil De Ferran and a young, rising star in Greg Moore, to drive for Penske Racing in the 2000 season.
Moore would tragically lose his life in a crash at the 1999 season finale in Fontana, California, prompting Cindric to bring in a young Brazilian by the name of Helio Castroneves. Team Penske then morphed into the organization that is seen today, due to Cindric being at the helm.
The firing of all three men comes as a shock to the IndyCar world as Penske did not make internal changes in the race team after St. Pete, an action that realistically should have happened. Now, after breaking the rulebook during the biggest race in the world, changes were necessary as Penske looks to keep the integrity of the series, not to mention a tense paddock full of drivers and owners, intact.
IndyCar and Indianapolis Motor Speedway President, Doug Boles, held a press conference on Monday discussing the attenuator situation and mentioned that, at the time, Penske did not know what had happened initially.
“I don’t think Roger Penske understands some of the things that might be going on. I get the optics challenge, and it’s definitely something we should think about. I mean, how do you manage the optics challenge? A lot of these challenges I think are — while they roll up to Roger at the end of the day, I think they are certainly below him,” Boles told RACER’s Marshall Pruett in the press conference. “There are things that happen that don’t ever get to Roger. I can tell you that Roger Penske would not condone this. In fact, I had a chance to talk to Roger, and I can tell that this is devastating to him. Nothing means more to Roger Penske than the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the Indianapolis 500. He certainly loves racing across the board. This is something that I think he’s going to have to address at some point in time.”
It is not a secret that since Penske acquired the IndyCar series and IMS, that he has lessened his involvement with the race team, delegating the day-to-day operations to trusted individuals below him. Speculation has spread that Penske himself had a hand in the attenuator situation, but that is not true as it seems clear that the focus of Roger Penske are the things that got him into racing: the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the Indianapolis 500 and IndyCar.
Now that penalties and action has been taken by Penske, this situation is far from over as questions and criticism will take place as the season goes regarding the inspection and race control processes, with some calling for an outside party to govern the races, like USAC had done with the Indy 500 from 1956 to 1997.
As the situation develops and the cloud looms over IndyCar, the series will look forward to a sold-out crowd for the 109th Indianapolis 500, the first since 2016.