On the eve of the meeting in Alabama, with a press release NTT IndyCar Series announced the disqualification of Josef Newgarden and Scott McLaughlin from the St. Petersburg GP which opened the season on March 10th.
THE DISPUTED VIOLATION
Following a check carried out in the warmup of last weekend’s Long Beach GP, the two Team Penske cars were found to have manipulated the push to pass system which would have allowed the two drivers to activate it before the deadlines established by the regulations. . In this case, Roger Penske’s team would have violated the following articles relating to Push to Pass:
Rule 14.19.15. An indicator to enable Push to Pass will be sent via CAN communication from the timing and scoring indicator on board the car to the team data recorder. This signal must be transmitted to the ECU unchanged and without interruption during all road events and road courses.
Rule 14.19.16. Race starts and any race restarts that occur before the lap before the white flag or before three minutes remaining in a timed race event will have the Push to Pass system disabled and will be enabled for a given car once that car reaches the alternative start/finish line.
CHECKS AT LONG BEACH
As mentioned, the violation was found during the warm up of the Long Beach GP and forced IndyCar to carry out an in-depth analysis of the data from the St. Petersburg race. Analysis that would have revealed the manipulation of the push to pass system by the Penske team, in order to allow the cars to use the system well before the established deadlines. Following the results that emerged, cars number 2 and 3 (those of Josef Newgarden and Scott McLaughlin) were excluded from the race standings, while the number 12 (Will Power) had 10 points removed from the championship standings.
VICTORY FOR PATO O’WARD
The rewritten GP ranking sees Pato O’Ward as the winner ahead of Will Power and Colton Herta, with the Mexican rising to 64 points in the standings, just 15 points behind the current leader Alex Palou.
Vincenzo Buonpane
