BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — An emotional Josef Newgarden took the heat Friday morning at Barber Motorsports Park as he discussed the controversy surrounding IndyCar taking away his March 10 victory in the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg.
IndyCar disqualified Newgarden and Team Penske teammate Scott McLaughlin, and penalized teammate Will Power, when it was discovered, the team had manipulated the push-to-pass system. It allowed Newgarden to use push-to-pass on starts and restarts on the streets of St. Petersburg — an advantage their competitors didn’t have.
Newgarden is the first IndyCar Series race winner to be disqualified since Al Unser Jr. at Portland (Ore.) Int’l Raceway on June 26, 1995. Unser later had his victory returned after appeal.
Team Penske is not appealing the penalties.
“I thought it was really important to do this in person and be able to do that in this type of forum,” Newgarden said to the extra-large group of media in attendance at the media center Friday morning. “I didn’t want to put out a statement or try and do an interview over the phone or something like that. I thought it was really important to get in front of everybody and have an opportunity to chat.”
Newgarden was visibly shaken, his eyes red and moist with tears. He broke down a few times trying to describe the situation that resulted in IndyCar’s disqualification announcement on Wednesday — six weeks after the infraction in the season-opening race.
“The facts are extremely clear,” Newgarden said. “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. 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, too, is there’s only one person sitting in the car. It’s just me. So that responsibility and the use of the push to pass in the correct manner falls completely on me. It’s my responsibility to know the rules and regulations at all points and make sure I get that right. With that regard, I failed my team miserably. A complete failure on my side to get that right.
“It’s my job as the leader of the 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. I don’t want to hide from that.”
The pain was evident on Newgarden’s face, who had scored his 30th career victory at St. Petersburg. But on Friday, he was working to salvage his reputation, his credibility and Team Penske’s integrity.
“For me, it’s an embarrassing situation to have to go through, to see what’s transpired,” he said. “It’s demoralizing in a lot of ways. 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. I think that’s what really matters. I also think the truth is important. There can be space for both of those things.
“If there’s anything I wanted to come say, too, 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. Clearly, I’ve fallen very short of that in this respect.
“Once again, I mean, I can’t overstate, it’s a difficult thing to wrestle with. It’s a very embarrassing process to go through. I hope we can find a way forward after this.
“That’s really all you can do after the fact.”
The Facts
The facts are Newgarden used three pushes of push to pass on restarts at St. Petersburg, lasting 3 seconds, 2.4-seconds and 3.6 seconds.
He admitted he did it intentionally, believing it was within the rules. Of course, it wasn’t. The only time push-to-pass have been allowed on restarts was in the March 24 $1 Million Challenge at The Thermal Club in Thermal, Calif.
“I purposely was hitting the button,” Newgarden admitted. “The tough part is the intent. I don’t think that intent matters at this point. The facts are, when are you allowed to use push to pass? The rules state you’re not allowed to use it until the alt start/finish line, and I didn’t.
“It’s very easy to tell when you’re using the button. I know when I pushed the button. It’s not anything I would try to hide behind. It’s also very obvious when you’re using the button. It comes up on my dash, there’s onboard cameras, people see the telemetry updates.
“It’s nothing you’re trying to hide from. I’m not trying to hide from it. I know exactly when I pushed the button. I feel it every time.
“It’s a very obvious thing.”
What was most surprising about Newgarden’s soul-cleansing admission is he didn’t realize he had committed an infraction until this past Monday after the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach.
“I knew if getting to this part was going to be difficult for me,” Newgarden said. “You guys can call me every name in the book. You can call me incompetent, call me an idiot, call me an asshole, call me stupid, whatever you want to call me, but I’m not a liar.
“The story that I know, which is the truth, is almost too convenient to be believable. So, to answer your question, no, 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.
“Then I’ve had to wrestle with the fact that, how do you explain a situation to people? I know what happened. I know why it happened. I don’t think it’s very believable, even when I try to tell the story back. I don’t think any of us believe it will be believable to somebody. But it’s the truth.
“So, no, to answer your question, I didn’t know I did something wrong in St. Pete. Maybe to elaborate on that, because there would be a follow-up: How didn’t you know you did something wrong?
“The key difference on the 2 car, which is important to understand, is that somehow, some way, we convinced ourselves that there was a rule change to restarts specifically with overtake usage.
“You say, ‘How do you come up with this? It’s 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 operable at a time other than at the alt start/finish line. It was going to be able to be used in qualifying, too. There was a lot of discussion about it.
“We 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 till the alt start/finish line. It’s going to be available immediately.
“I even wanted the team to remind me of this, so I didn’t forget. Whenever you get something new as a driver, it’s like, please remind me. It’s easy for me to forget this stuff with everything going on inside the car. I specifically asked for that, too. We all knew about that.”
Then there was the software issue that was apparently left installed in the electronics of the car from recent Hybrid Assist testing where IndyCar has had its test teams try the new package with a variety of different systems, including push to pass.
“The craziest part of the story is, the software issue that no one knew about just perpetuated that belief even further,” Newgarden explained. “Then you go through St. Pete, you go through Thermal, where it’s an actual change and everybody’s using it. Then you go to Long Beach, and it’s still in the car.
“The first time that any of us hear about this software issue or mistake is of warm-up. Even the 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 was 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, ‘Hey, guys, the overtake isn’t working correctly. I said it throughout the whole first lap because it wasn’t working right.’
“I don’t know how or in your right mind you would do that. Did I try to come up with a conspiracy and then cover? It’s not.
“The truth is, somehow, we got that mixed up, it got entangled with the mistake. It’s created some ridiculously unbelievable storyline now.
“The facts are that I used it illegally, I wasn’t allowed to. I can’t change that. Whatever I say going forward will not change those facts. It kills me that it doesn’t. I wish I could go back in time and somehow reverse all this, but I can’t.”
One Solution
Team owner Roger Penske also owns IndyCar, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the Indianapolis 500.
“I’ve spoken to him once,” Newgarden said of the 87-year-old Penske. “He did not take it well, whatsoever, as you can imagine.
“I was interrogated at first.
“I don’t want to speak on his behalf, but I’ve not met somebody with higher integrity than that man. I mean that.
“Yeah, it wasn’t taken well.”
Newgarden believes a disqualification was the only penalty that could be assessed considering the situation.
“Absolutely,” he said. “It is important for me to also say, is I do believe the integrity of the series is absolutely paramount. The series has to hold everybody accountable regardless of the circumstance, regardless of the intent. They’ve done the right thing by trying to throw the book at us, and 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. The series has to uphold that standard.
“It makes me proud that I’m part of a series that does that. That’s a series I want to be a part of. I think the penalty is fair.
“It’s crushing. I’m going to look back on it, too, and say 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, I don’t want to be near it.
“Unfortunately, it is. I can’t reverse that in time. I can’t say much more than that. I’m sorry it happened.
“It’s embarrassing. It’s an embarrassing thing to get wrong.”