INDIANAPOLIS — Instead of locking up the front row for the Indianapolis 500 as it did last year, Team Penske’s three cars will share row four after they did not complete qualifications attempts.
One of the favorites for the pole, Team Penske’s Scott McLaughlin, had a hard crash in Turn 2 in the Fast 12 practice session, destroying his ride. Team Penske prepared Josef Newgarden’s backup Speedway car for McLaughlin but chose not to compete in the Fast 12. He will start 12th.
The team will have the car ready in time for Monday’s full-field practice session.
The other two Team Penske entries driven by two-time and back-to-back Indianapolis 500 winning driver Josef Newgarden and 2018 Indy 500 winner Will Power, were pulled out of the qualifying line by IndyCar for modifications to the rear attenuator after going through technical inspection.
Indianapolis Motor Speedway and IndyCar President Doug Boles addressed the situation on Sunday evening.
“The 12 car did go through tech, and as it was in tech ‘Rocket’ Kevin Blanch, who leads our tech team, did notice something on the 12 car, on the attenuator that they weren’t sure about,” Doug Boles said. “Rocket believed that it was likely an issue, but because we were trying to get everybody out and get them going, he allowed them to go ahead and go on out. There were two or three cars that came through in between the 12 and the 2. When the 2 came through, the attenuator on the 2 was identical to the 12. And at that point in time, Rocket knew that we had something we had to we had to adjust to, or at least address.
“He did say to the crew chief of the 2 car at that point in time to please call Kyle Moyer right now, who was with the 12 car, and tell him to hold the 12 car, because we were going to take a look at the attenuator.
“Want to back up a minute before I go farther. I did ask Rocket. I said, so is it a unique situation, or can it happen where you send a car through and later see a teammate’s car with something on it that you believe is not in consistent with the rules and then go back out and see them on pit lane and actually do something.
“And from the moment you get in, and he said, ‘yes, absolutely, that does happen,’” Boles continued. “So from the moment you get to tech, and anytime after tech, even if you pass tech, scrutineering can come you still have to follow the rules. So that is not unusual. It doesn’t happen often, but it’s not unusual for that to happen. So, at that point in time, Rocket was 95% sure that we had a rule that said you cannot modify the attenuator. We do have a rule, rule 14, dot 7.8, dot 16, which actually tells you which parts in the car you can modify, which body parts you can modify.
“Then taking a look at underneath that rule, it says that if it’s not listed here, you cannot modify that rule. So, the rule so that the attenuator falls under that rule, that it cannot be modified. So at that point in time, as Rocket is on pit lane, he did say to Kyle Moyer at that point, ‘look, you’ve already presented. You’re here. You’ve got two options. The first option is you can go ahead and qualify, and in post. I’m going to impound eight cars if your two cars are in the top six, because in post post-qualification technical inspection, you will fail.’
“Or you can withdraw the car right now, the team chose to withdraw the car and not qualify the cars, which then only meant we had to impound this the six cars at that point in time. So from the point I’ve been here, as I’ve really been trying to understand exactly where we got to that point, both were found in tech by our tech team.”
