IndyCar exploring third-party governance amid Penske “miss”

Credit: Chris Jones

IndyCar is working on creating an external officiating entity amid the ongoing optics challenge surrounding Roger Penske’s ownership of the IndyCar Series and Team Penske.

Concern around a conflict of interest was reignited after qualifying for the 109th Running of the Indianapolis 500 last weekend. The No.2 and No.12 Penske cars of Josef Newgarden and Will Power both failed technical inspection for the Fast 12 session due to illegal modifications made to the car’s attenuators. 

Initially slated to start 11th and 12th, penalties were escalated to back-row starts for the pair. It is the second time in 15 months that Penske have been handed competition penalties after Newgarden and Scott McLaughlin were disqualified from last year’s season-opening race for a push-to-pass violation. 

But since much before the latest penalty drama, there have been efforts behind the scenes to try and establish third-party governance for IndyCar. 

“For the last six months, I’ve been involved in a conversation on the periphery - and certainly more so in the last three months,” said Doug Boles, who was appointed president of IndyCar in February alongside his role as president of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

“Our organisation has continued to grapple with the optics issue and how we can remove conversations like the ones we’ve been having for the last 72 hours so that they know it is absolutely clear that there are not any optics challenges. 

“We have been working very, very hard to create an entity, an officiating entity - and by officiating I mean race control and tech inspection - and an entity that is completely removed from anything that has to do with [IndyCar ownership group] Penske Entertainment or Roger Penske or the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the IndyCar Series.”

As well as the offending cars being moved to the rear of the field for Sunday’s Indy 500, the No.2 and No.12 teams were fined $100,000 and Newgarden and Power’s strategists Tim Cindric and Ron Ruzewski were suspended by the series. The same pair were sidelined last May after sanctions made internally by Penske following the push-to-pass saga.

Credit: Paul Hurley

But Penske has gone one further this year, with the stunning news emerging on Wednesday that team president Cindric, managing director Ruzewski and general manager Kyle Moyer have all been fired in the wake of the latest scandal. 

Amid waning trust from the paddock, the series owner has given a significant statement by essentially eliminating the entire core of the leadership group inside his IndyCar team a matter of days before the biggest race of the year.

Speaking to FOX Sports in the wake of the incident, Penske also came out in support of the idea of an external officiating group.

“We’ve talked internally as IndyCar - [Penske Entertainment CEO] Mark Miles and now Doug Boles - and some outside impact on how we can become more independent from the operational side of the racing: inspection, race control, et cetera,” Penske said

“So we certainly expect and I would expect that the team at IndyCar and Penske Entertainment will take a look at that and will take some action as we move forward.”

Penske is aware of the concerns surrounding his ownership of both the series and one of the series’ leading teams. But he insists there is sufficient separation between his team and the league.

“I’ve heard the word used, optics,” Penske said. “As I look at what my MO has been over the past four-and-a-half years, I’ve not been on a pit box, I’ve not been in race control, I’m not in inspection. I have nothing to do with officiating and especially the rules. I can look myself in the mirror and say: ’I’ve done the right thing.’ 

“Obviously we have not done a good job in the optics for people outside this. And these two violations certainly show the fact I need to be more diligent in where we’re going as a team. I think this independence is very important as we go forward for the credibility of our series, the teams and everybody else.”

Credit: Chris Owens

While he realises the need to remove the idea that Penske may have influence over certain IndyCar-based decisions involving his team, Boles has given assurances that the series owner had no impact on decisions made.

“We want to ensure that we have an officiating entity that has no ability for folks to say it’s got influence from Roger Penske,” Boles said. “Am I saying that the last 72 hours had influence from Roger Penske? I’m telling you it absolutely did not.

“If it did, I probably would have left those cars exactly where they were in [11th and] 12th place. But I believe that because of the timing of that violation and the fact that that violation would have left them essentially where they could have qualified anyway, the penalty needed to be much more severe. That was not a fun phone call to the owner of that team.”

With the same illegal modification found on Penske cars in previous years, including Newgarden’s Indy 500-winning car from 2024, Boles has confirmed that the results of all past races will not be changed.

“It won the Indianapolis 500,” he said.

Boles also shed light on the fact that the modification to the attenuator is viewed as a safety infringement rather than a performative gain. Situated on the rear of the car, the attenuator is intended to take the impact and prevent back injuries during rearward impacts.

As a result, Boles sees no reason why any past results should be changed or why the two offending Penske cars should be penalised even more harshly.

“The penalty that we imposed is a pretty steep penalty for what happened,” Boles said. “It was a safety violation. If you ask most in the paddock, even publicly people have said this had a 0.0 mph impact on that car. 

“There’s not anyone that will tell you that that car really was not going to make the race. I feel very comfortable that the 30 fastest cars are the cars that actually had an opportunity to be locked in as we left Saturday. We’ve done the investigation with that and we’re moving on.”

Credit: Paul Hurley

Boles raised the point that two cars failed technical inspection for safety-related violations - with negligible, if any, performative influence - earlier in the season and were fined $25,000 and docked entrant points. 

If Penske’s offence occurred on Saturday’s opening day of qualifying, they would have been able to simply pull out of the qualifying line, rectify the misdemeanour and run again. 

“We probably treated [other safety violators] better than we treated Team Penske,” Boles said. “We did not change the results of the race.”

In his sit-down with FOX, Penske explained that the team had nine attenuators in circulation from the start of 2024 after improvements made by Dallara, including the modified part on Newgarden’s Indy 500 car. McLaughlin escaped penalty last weekend because his attenuator was unmodified as it was from a newer batch.

Given there is not supposedly any performance gain from the part, it has been suggested that the alterations made to the attenuators may have purely been for aesthetic purposes. But performance-gaining or not, Penske still broke the rules.

Boles acknowledges shortcomings in the technical inspection process that have allegedly allowed the illegal attenuator to have been continually passed through without being spotted.

He admits technical director Kevin Blanch “doesn’t know” why he looked at the attenuator on Sunday after noticing a smoothness initially on the No.12 car pre-qualifying. He was unable to immediately verify the rule about what parts amendments could be made to but noticed an inconsistency between the No.12 and, later, No.2 and other cars.

“Why did it happen on Sunday? I don’t know,” said Boles, who continues to insist the illegality was simply stumbled upon and not raised by a competitor. “I’m just glad that it was found on Sunday. This is an opportunity for us to understand how we can get better in tech.”

Since the weekend, Boles has been on a mission to uncover how the technical team operates, including their processes and what their particular focuses are.

“One of the things or the most important thing that our tech team does is focus on ensuring the playing field is as level as possible,” he said. “When cars go through tech, the place where our tech team focuses is they focus on the elements of the race car that impact the performance the most.”

Credit: James Black

There were 30 minutes for all of the cars competing in the Fast 12 to pass through two stages of technical inspection; the first in the ‘tech tent’ and second in a garage setting on a tech pad which is entirely level to gain more accurate measurements. 

Inside the tent, correct installation of safety elements such as belts and headrests is checked, as well as some measurements not requiring level ground. The second stage is the tech pad, measuring performance-based aspects such as ride height.

“I can tell you after the last 48 hours that I feel 100 percent confident that the tech team has not failed in ensuring that all of those elements that cause a car to be faster or slower have been followed,” Boles said. 

“The elephant in the room is: why did the tech team find on Sunday the attenuator on the back of the No.12 and the No.2 car that was not in the state as supplied by Dallara? First of all, I want to know what does the tech team do and why was that piece not found?”

Boles has had numerous conversations with internal engineers, team engineers and Dallara engineers to understand the importance of the attenuator. His findings: the sole purpose is safety. 

In light of crash testing to ensure the attenuator crushes at the right rate in order to make cars safer in a rearward impact, it is a part that has been modified multiple times by Dallara in recent years. Being a safety part, teams themselves are not allowed to modify anything.

“In January of 2024, that [current] attenuator was homologated,” Boles said. “That means when it comes from Dallara you cannot change it at all. The reason we do that is a safety reason. [It] could change the real purpose of that piece of the car - to create an energy absorption when that part of the car hits the wall backwards.”

Credit: Matt Fraver

But Boles’ findings led to one particularly alarming admission in his latest press conference.

“On parts that are specifically designed for safety, our team and tech does not, on a regular basis, look at those,” he said. “This is one of those parts that was not looked at until it was seen on Sunday. 

“Is that a miss? Absolutely it’s a miss. Is it a part that everybody should be exposed to at every event [and] if they’ve changed it they’re outside of the rules? One hundred percent.”

Essentially, given nothing surrounding the attenuator is believed to offer a performance gain, it has been a part of the car neglected in technical inspection. Given its integral nature as a safety mechanism, it is a glaring oversight. 

Boles knows this has to lead to changes in the inspection process.

“The reason it hasn’t been looked at over the last several years as much is we scrutinise the things that we do know have a performance impact,” Boles said. “Coming out of qualifying, do I feel like tech did their job? One hundred percent. Do I feel like we have a lot of opportunity to be better in tech? One hundred percent.

“I’m not making excuses. We made a mistake. We missed something that is crucial to the way that we go through tech and that is a tech element that’s related to safety. And frankly, nothing is more important than safety on those cars - even more so important than what’s happening on the race track because we do not want to have our drivers injured.”

Only three months into his role as series president, Boles is already throwing himself in the deep end to try and solve the problems. He is working closely with the tech team in order to find solutions for the final 11 events of the season following the Indy 500.

“We must ensure that our tech is able to get through all of these pieces,” Boles said. “Whether that means we have to extend the amount of time to tech cars, whether we need to add more resources in terms of personnel or equipment to go through the tech, we will do that between now and the end of this year.”

Credit: Chris Jones

There is not enough time for any changes to be enacted ahead of the Indy 500. But with a lot of the tech team part-time workers, there is scope to try and add personnel - including more on a full-time basis.

“We could probably use some more full-time people,” Boles said. “But some of the part-time personnel that we have are as bright as they are in the business and understand what they do. They just happen to have other full-time jobs.

“The problem is making sure we have enough of those people and the smartest people. We have really great people. Could we use more resources? That’s one of the things we’re looking at and, right now, I’d probably tell you that we could.”

In a bid to improve efficiency and accuracy of technical inspection, it has been raised that other racing series such as the IMSA SportsCar Championship and NASCAR use scanners. But Boles suggests a ‘reference point’ built into the car is lacking.

Even still, given the attenuator is not considered a performance-benefiting part, last weekend’s issue was bigger than possible improved technology.

“This is definitely something that we’re already looking into as we think about the next generation of car [intended for 2027],” Boles said. “The challenge we have with it right now is our cars have been built over a wide spectrum of time.

“Even though they’re supposed to be the same tub, the way that those tubs are built, because moulds change over time, it makes it really hard for scanning technology to be implemented as we stand today.”

Boles is continuing to ask questions and try to find ways to improve processes throughout the organisation and eradicate underlying perception issues.

“We’re going to focus on how we make ourselves better over the next 11 races and how we make ourselves completely better and removed from anything that could challenge the optics of the officiating of IndyCar and the Indianapolis 500.”