It seems like Team Penske can’t seem to learn from their past mistakes. After facing the ire of the entire IndyCar community over the Push-to-Pass controversy last year, Team Penske has done it again. This time at the biggest stage, that has once again raised questions over the integrity of the team, as it is owned by Roger Penske, who happens to own the Indy 500 and IndyCar Series. His star drivers, Josef Newgarden and Will Power, got the boot from Top 12 qualifying because of a little thing called a body-fit violation on the rear attenuator. Now, for those of you who aren’t gearheads, the rear attenuator is a safety bumper that’s supposed to stay exactly as IndyCar designed it—no tweaks, no tweaks at all.

But guess what? Team Penske decided to play a little game of “let’s see if we can sneak this past the inspectors” by filling a seam to close off airflow and reduce drag. Smart move, right? Wrong. It was an attempt to gain an aerodynamic advantage, and IndyCar wasn’t having any of it. The result? Newgarden and Power are starting the race in the rear, and Scott McLaughlin, who crashed earlier, is stuck in 12th. It’s like Penske’s team went from front-row royalty to the nosebleed section overnight. What followed next was questions over the integrity of the sport, and demands to have a fair and independent body that operates without Roger Penske’s direct involvement.

“What a shame this cloud will continue to hover over our great race until everything is fully resolved,” McLaren boss Zack Brown stated. Now it is a tough position to operate a race team in a series you own, very few in the auto racing business have to deal with such a situation. But, Kevin Harvick, who is the co-owner of the CARS Tour Series, has a fair share of experience in dealing with such situations, and Roger Penske should take note to avoid further embarrassment.

“Here’s what I tell my guys. Look, we’ve been thrown out of the CARS tour before. We got thrown out of the first race that we won so that tells you my expectations from team owner, series owner as to how mine and Dale’s car should be under more scrutiny than everybody else’s, if you’re gonna do an hour’s worth of tech you should do two hours on our car and take more parts, because expectation is exactly that, you should hold the highest standard to the car and if my guys don’t do a good job, they should suffer more than everybody else.” Harvick explained on the Happy Hour Podcast. 

The CARS Tour, co-owned by Harvick, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Jeff Burton, and Justin Marks, is his baby, and his team, Kevin Harvick Incorporated, is part of that family. When they got disqualified from their first win, Harvick didn’t throw a tantrum instead, he took it on his chin. “I’ve been very clear with my team after we had that first problem, to understand the rules. We didn’t read the current year’s rule book and didn’t do our due diligence. That’s how most of this stuff goes down.” The 2023 penalty incident perfectly sums up Harvick’s rhetoric.

KHI’s No. 62 car and the driver, Layne Riggs, were disqualified, and they had to give away their win to Jared Fryar after the post-race inspection at Caraway Speedway. The rule book stated that the sway bar end should be within the permitted length of 1-3/4”. This was Riggs’ first start with KHI, but it ended in heartbreak. The team wasn’t trying to bend the rules, and this was evident from Rodney Childers’ statement. “I know everyone will say it’s cheating and pushing the limits, but hand on my heart, I had no idea you couldn’t run big end sway bars in the CARS Tour.”

Although KHI addressed the issue and has learned their lesson, the heat on the Team Penske camp is only going to intensify. Especially with the rival team owners, like Chip Ganassi.

Team Penske needs to protect the sport, says Chip Ganassi

Chip Ganassi was one of the many who complained to the IndyCar inspectors about irregularities on the Penske cars on Sunday. Although IndyCar did send both Newgarden and Power to the back of the field to start the 109th running of the Indy 500, Ganassi wasn’t satisfied with the band-aid mechanism.

“I think all teams have a certain responsibility to uphold the integrity of the sport, in any series, and no team more than Team Penske. They’ve had so much success over the years, and it’s a team that everybody has heard of… So they need to be held to a higher standard to protect the sport, especially with the investment Roger Penske has at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the IndyCar Series, for that matter.” Ganassi said in a clip shared by  Harvick’s Happy Hour on X.

To add to this controversy, there are images of Newgarden’s 2024 Indy 500 winning car doing round on social media. The issue was that rear attenuator on the car that sits in the IMS museum seems to have similar adjustments on it. Now the question is, will IndyCar go back and take a win away from Newgarden, or will they duck this storm out? The only possible way to shut this noise down is if Newgarden bags his third Indy 500 win in a row, but that is almost an impossible task, starting the race from the back.