Cause for concern? Penske’s tricky start to the IndyCar season

Written by Archie O’Reilly

By their lofty standards, it has been an unusual start to the IndyCar season for Team Penske.

Each of the team’s three drivers has a minimum-points finish to their name inside the opening three rounds. The only podium has been Josef Newgarden’s third-place finish to kick the season off in St. Petersburg.

Will Power, the all-time pole position record holder in IndyCar, has not yet made it out of the first round of qualifying. Newgarden’s best start has been 10th, followed by successive opening-round exits.

Scott McLaughlin is the only Penske driver to make the Fast Six - including taking pole in St. Pete - either side of also exiting in Round One at the Thermal Club. The speed has been there but the usual Penske Perfect execution has lacked.

The team is by no means in the sort of crisis it felt it was in exiting Long Beach last year, after which - six weeks removed from the event - St. Pete disqualifications were announced for Newgarden (winner) and McLaughlin (third-place finisher). This placed McLaughlin rock bottom of the standings having suffered a mechanical failure at Long Beach.

But after three rounds in 2025, they still find themselves in a position where they are chasing already again.

Split by 11 points, the drivers are placed eighth, ninth and 10th in the championship; McLaughlin leads the way, with Power six points back and Newgarden a further five. But even McLaughlin - best-placed Penske in points in the last two seasons - is already 73 points behind championship leader Álex Palou.

To be considerably over a maximum-points weekend’s worth of points adrift of the championship lead so early in the campaign is worrying. And not just for Penske.

Even fourth-place driver Felix Rosenqvist is 54 points - the most that can be obtained on a single race weekend - behind Palou. Only Kyle Kirkwood has beaten the three-time champion, who is bidding for a third consecutive crown, yet he still sits 34 points behind.

Outside of Palou’s stunning start, few have been able to maintain much consistency. Only five drivers in the field - the top five in points - still maintain a 100 percent record of top-10 results in 2025.

The field is finding itself reliant on errant results from Palou already, but those are few and far between. And given Palou has few chinks in his armour, the likes of Penske have a lot of clawing back to do to outduel the Chip Ganassi Racing (CGR) driver.

The only way for them to get back on terms with CGR and not allow the season to snowball is for Penske to rediscover their trademark execution pronto. But is there a fundamental issue behind the tricky start to the season or have they more so been victims of circumstance?

For a start, St. Pete was stark evidence of the pace Penske possess. Fresh off an off-season contract extension and despite a crash in opening practice, McLaughlin seized pole position.

He was quick in the race too. But the strategy choice proved to be wrong.

Starting on primary tyres, as McLaughlin did, felt like a gamble - at least in retrospect - given the likelihood of an early caution on a street course, allowing a free pit stop for drivers starting on the barely-raceable alternate tyres. But along with all bar Colton Herta inside the top five, the No.3 team decided against starting on the high-degrading compound.

By contrast, from sixth to 16th only one driver opted against the alternates. And when a caution fell immediately, it played perfectly into these drivers’ hands.

Typical of how Penske’s start to the season has panned out, the caution which undid their pole-sitting driver’s race was triggered - albeit without particular fault - by contact involving teammate Power. The Australian was taught the threat of qualifying mid-pack, running into Nolan Siegel as those ahead checked up.

There was nowhere for Power to go as Siegel careered into the wall. His day was over after three corners - a far from ideal start to a season where the narrative is centred around the fact the two-time champion is in a contract year with young David Malukas waiting in the wings.

It was a DNF for Power. And McLaughlin, despite quite possibly having been the quickest car, was left fighting back on the unfavourable strategy. His fourth-place finish was as good as he could have hoped for with the race running green to the finish.

Newgarden, starting 10th, was among those who chose wisely and started on the alternate compound. He was able to cycle his way up to the podium after a strong showing, but even then there were some mishaps.

Newgarden had been running second before a short-fuel sent him into an ‘emergency mode’ last-lap fuel save, forcing him to cede second place to Scott Dixon on the final tour. There was previously a point where he had surged onto the back of a traffic-impacted race-leading Palou but was unable to make the decisive pass, ultimately having to settle for third.

“A podium is always solid,” Newgarden said in the aftermath. “We needed a good day just to get points on the board so we accomplished that. We had some miscues in the race for sure - just a couple fuelling-wise. But the team still did a stellar job.

“It starts with the foundation of a fast car and we certainly had that all weekend. Very solid overall - just wish we could have capitalised on the positioning. We were in a good position to challenge for the win and misstepped a little bit.”

A pole, then third and fourth in the race, even with Power’s DNF, was not a bad start to the season. But it was not necessarily the maximum. And every driver knows that the key to winning titles is more or less achieving the maximum every weekend.

In the face of such tight competition in IndyCar, you can scarcely afford more than one or two off-weekends across the 17-race season. And in Power’s case, he was immediately placed in a position of having to catch the pack.

There were at least glimmers in St. Pete. But that more or less dissipated three weeks later at the Thermal Club. It was more of a genuine nightmare by Penske’s high bar.

None of their drivers progressing through the first round of qualifying marked a first all-Q1 elimination since Portland in 2021 and worst qualifying result overall since the Indianapolis 500 that year, when the best-placed car was 17th.

A spin on his banker lap put McLaughlin out of kilter and left him last in his group and starting a lowly 25th. Newgarden matched the May 2021 result of 17th, while Power started four places back in 21st.

And come the race, disaster struck even before the drop of the green flag. When getting into their pre-race two-wide formation, McLaughlin was hit by Devlin DeFrancesco in the final sequence of corners, causing both to spin.

This led to a heated altercation of explicit words post-race. It was ironed out in the aftermath but was the start of a calamitous day for McLaughlin.

All three Penske cars found themselves sat in the twenties early on. And having already been detached at the rear of the field by the collision, McLaughin’s day only got worse as an overheating hybrid system forced him several laps down.

The New Zealander became the second Penske driver to suffer a DNF in as many races after opting to retire on Lap 53 after initially returning to the race in hope of attrition.

The day did improve for the other two Penske cars - both into the top 10 at points - but Newgarden was ultimately confined to a disappointing 13th place. Power delivered a stellar recovery drive, though, with an inspired, field-high 15-place surge from 21st to sixth.

Power managed to get every ounce of pace from the car for a team that appeared to struggle all weekend long in the Coachella Valley. Newgarden put it down to being an anomaly and was confident that the rest of the season would be better.

“Thermal was a disaster,” he said ahead of the Long Beach weekend. “We had an excellent St. Pete - our cars were in a good window, team did a great job. Thermal was the complete opposite.

“We were just nowhere. We found our way towards the end. We diverged between the race cars and I think we found a direction. Going back in the future, I think we have a direction to come back with.

“We can’t erase what happened. We can’t go back. It was a tough weekend. Just did not go very well. But I don’t think it’s an indicator of the rest of the year.”

Still, Long Beach was not completely smooth. Execution lacked in qualifying again, with Power and Newgarden only marginally missing the cut - Power one position off advancing and Newgarden one further back in the group having caught traffic between laps - but nonetheless falling short.

As in St. Pete, McLaughlin was the sole Fast Six representative. But even then, his lap in the final round was eight-tenths of a second off Kyle Kirkwood’s pole time as Andretti Global locked out the front row.

For McLaughlin and Power, the race was steady - not a win-contending level but solid. McLaughlin was in the top five for most of the race until Power passed him in the final stint, albeit sixth is respectable for McLaughlin at a track he has traditionally struggled at.

Power showed yet more meticulous progress through the race - this time gaining eight positions from his starting spot. His pace has appeared the class of the Penske drivers at Thermal and Long Beach, but given his qualifying shortcomings, he has not been in the position to convert this pace to podiums, instead finding himself in recovery mode.

This time around, it was Newgarden’s turn to fall into the serious strife that struck his teammates in the opening two rounds.

It was a proactive start from the No.2 team, triggering the early round of pit stops after bailing off the alternates at the earliest opportunity after only two laps. This put Newgarden on the front foot and immediately placed him in the mix with those who made the Fast Six.

He had looked in a position to finish in the same ballpark as his teammates, but frantic gesticulations during his final pit stop signalled an issue with his seatbelts. This was not resolved at the first attempt and Newgarden returned to the pits one lap later, falling off the lead lap as his undone belts were rectified.

As with Power in St. Pete and McLaughlin at Thermal, it was a five-point finish for Newgarden, who was classified last.

It was a supposedly unrelated issue to that which saw Power’s belts fail and ultimately eliminate him from championship contention in the Nashville Superspeedway season finale at last year. The pair reportedly use different belt manufacturers so it was a cruelly unfortunate coincidence.

Despite a rocky start to the season, alarm bells should not quite yet be ringing for Penske. At this point, there does not feel a major cause for concern beyond the field-wide alarm at Palou’s juggernaut-like start to 2025.

The team has shown speed but just not knitted it together across a weekend on a regular enough basis. The raft of minimum-points finishes have been largely out of their control, spanning a first-lap racing incident, hybrid problem and a freak belt undoing.

There are strong tracks ahead for Penske at which they desperately need to capitalise to claw back the deficit to Palou. But the problem is these are all tracks at which Palou is also strong - a winner at Barber, the Indy GP and Detroit, as well as a runner-up and pole-sitter at the Indy 500.

Barber has been a Penske track; McLaughlin is the two-time defending winner, Newgarden a three-time victory (twice for Penske) and Power also a two-time winner.

Beyond that, Penske dominated much of the Month of May last year, locking out the front row and Newgarden winning again. Power sensed from very early on in 2024 - staking a claim at Long Beach - that Penske would be the eminent force.

“I know what I feel but I got in trouble last time I said it,” Power said at Long Beach this year, before last week’s Indy 500 Open Test. “It’s no different.”

There is work to do to catch Palou and there is a long way to go in the season, though the likes of Penske will be keen to stop the charge as soon as possible. Palou has proven excellent at drawing out insurmountable gaps in seamless fashion.

But it cannot keep being quite so smooth-sailing for him… can it?