Josef Newgarden explains IndyCar rules violation but admits it's 'not very believable'
LEEDS, Ala. — Josef Newgarden spoke for 25 emotional minutes in a jam-packed media center at Barber Motorsports Park exactly 48 hours after his season-opening win at the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg had been stripped. The Team Penske driver said he believed IndyCar made the use of push-to-pass legal during starts and restarts this offseason, along with the usual moments in green flag racing that drivers can hit the button and get an extra boost of 50 horsepower.
“I know what happened. I know why it happened, and 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,” Newgarden said. “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."
The series had made the switch only for its non-points-paying exhibition at The Thermal Club and it's never been legal on restarts in his 13-year career.
Team Penske’s Nos. 2, 3 and 12 Chevys contained an illegal line of code in the software that gave them access to push-to-pass whenever an allotment of time was loaded onto the ECU. According to Team Penske president Tim Cindric, that line can be traced back to tinkering done during the early days of testing for IndyCar’s soon-to-debut hybrid system, which was then incorrectly copy-and-pasted into software the team plugged into its cars this season.
The combination – the software oversight, and Newgarden’s misunderstanding of the rules – created IndyCar’s biggest cheating scandal in recent memory and its first disqualified race-winner since 1995.
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As Newgarden reflected on it all this week – in an ‘interrogation’ over the phone with Roger Penske, in heart-to-hearts with his family out West, and in a friendly fireside chat of sorts with series president Jay Frye – the story sounds less and less believable each time he recounts it.
“It kills me that it doesn’t," Newgarden said. "I wish I could go back in time and somehow reverse all this, but I can’t. I don’t know that anybody’s going to believe what I’ve told you here today, and that’s okay. I think it’s a crazy set of circumstances to try and just reason with.”
'I failed my team miserably'
Newgarden had no issue with the strict penalty levied by Frye – disqualifying Newgarden and Scott McLaughlin (he also used overtake at St. Pete when it shouldn’t have been active), docking Will Power 10 points (though he never used push to pass) and fining the team $75,000, on top of a loss of race winnings.
In fact, the two-time champion almost seemed pleased by the penalties. That St. Pete victory marked No. 30 for the 33-year-old veteran, breaking a tie with Penske legend Rick Mears and a victory shy of joining Paul Tracy, Dario Franchitti and Helio Castroneves for 10th all-time.
Newgarden said – multiple times – that “the facts are extremely clear” and that “there’s no doubt we were in breach of the rules at St. Pete.” He used push-to-pass three separate times (for a total of 9 seconds) when 24 of his 26 competitors didn't have access.
“The responsibility and the use of 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,” he said. “With that regard, I failed my team miserably. A complete failure on my side to get that right.”
Where Newgarden’s voice began to crack was in a deep anger and disappointment in himself. In what he characterized as a “difficult,” “embarrassing” and “demoralizing” introspective few days this week, Newgarden said he first dealt with a wave of disbelief Monday. He couldn’t fully process – and maybe in part, believe – that he had been so completely wrong, never mind the team-related software infraction.
Tuesday, reality began to settle in, and by Wednesday, the intensity of it all hit him. This will forever be towards the top of his racing biography.
“I told Jay (Frye) the story, too," Newgarden said Friday. "I was like, ‘Jay, this is what happened,’ and the sad thing about it was that no one did this on purpose. But ... I could tell looking at him that even he was having a hard time believing it.
“But what are you going to do? If this guy has a hard time believing it, how is anybody going to believe it? I can’t affect that. I can’t affect that, so after today, I’m not going to concern myself with it because I just can’t control it.”
'I know how people feel'
Newgarden didn’t say why he first believed IndyCar had instituted a rule change that would’ve been headline news.
“Somehow, some way,” he said, “we convinced ourselves that there was a rule change to (starts and) restarts, specifically with overtake usage.
“How do you come up with this? It’s never happened before. The only place this got introduced was the Thermal exhibition race. It’s the only time in my IndyCar career where we’ve actually had a legitimate legal change of the push-to-pass system. But we genuinely believed and convinced ourselves that, at St. Pete, the rule (had changed)."
Many questions remain even after Newgarden’s 25-minute presser Friday, Cindric’s 30-minute phone call to IndyStar and countless other phone calls and texts. There are parts of it all that seem plausible. Possible, even. But that they all happened independent of each other – the rules confusion, the software glitch and a complete lack of oversight or review – still seems hard to fathom.
And Newgarden – seemingly as much as any – knows this. He was eager to tell his story, however much it pained him. But now that the story is out there, Newgarden knows the questions will continue. There will be whispers. There will be jeers from fans at IMS, disappointed in the stain he’s brought to the role of defending his 500 win next month. And there will be a general, unrelenting noise that follows him for days, weeks, months, and even years, all stemming from a massive failure from IndyCar’s perfectionist.
“None of us can control this. None of us can change it. I don’t know how to describe it other than that,” he said. “I’ve looked at everything. I don’t know how you can’t. I know what’s been said. I know how people feel, but, I mean, what are you going to do? You just have to live with it.”