Josef Newgarden Stripped Of His Win In The IndyCar Season Opener A Month And A Half Later

Josef Newgarden crossed took the checkered flag at the NTT IndyCar Series season-opener, the Grand Prix of St. Petersburg. However, a month and a half later, he's no longer the winner after he and teammate Scott McLaughlin — who finished in P3 — were disqualified effectively handing the win to McLaren's Pato O'Ward.

In the lead-up to this past weekend's Grand Prix of Long Beach is when officials started noticing something was up with the push-to-pass system in the Team Penske Chevrolets of Newgarden, McLaughlin and Will Power.

The push-to-pass system is what IndyCar uses on road and street circuits to help drivers complete passes. There are regulations regarding how many seconds drivers are given as well as when it can be deployed.

So, officials took a look through the data and found that the Team Penske cars were using push-to-pass on restarts in St. Petersburg. IndyCar found that "Team Penske manipulated the overtake system" which allowed them to do this.

Newgarden and McLaughlin were found to have gained an advantage this way which led to the DQ. Power did not, and was simply docked 10 points in the standings. He had finished P4 on track but moved up to P2 after this decision.

All three were fined $25,000 and forfeited prize money from the race.

"The integrity of the IndyCar Series championship is critical to everything we do," IndyCar President Jay Frye said in a statement. "While the violation went undetected at St. Petersburg, IndyCar discovered the manipulation during Sunday’s warmup in Long Beach and immediately addressed it ensuring all cars were compliant for the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach. Beginning with this week’s race at Barber Motorsports Park, new technical inspection procedures will be in place to deter this violation."

Team Penske says software leftover from a test of the series still-in-development hybrid system was to blame for the disqualifications. (© Peter Casey-USA TODAY Sports)

Team Penske Chalked This Up To Software Leftover From Hybrid Testing

Team Penske President Tim Cindric said in the same statement that the problem stemmed from software used to test IndyCar's long-awaited hybrid system had not been removed from the car as it should've been.

"Unfortunately, the Push to Pass software was not removed as it should have been, following recently completed hybrid testing in the Team Penske Indy cars," Tim Cindric said. "This software allowed for Push to Pass to be deployed during restarts at the St. Petersburg Grand Prix race, when it should not have been permitted. The No. 2 car driven by Josef Newgarden and the No. 3 car driven by Scott McLaughlin both deployed Push to Pass on a restart, which violated IndyCar rules. Team Penske accepts the penalties applied by INDYCAR."

As you can see, Team Penske — which is owned by Roger Penske who also owns the entire IndyCar Series — doesn't seem like they're going to appeal this punishment.

So… what the hell took so long?

This season, the IndyCar schedule was weird. It got started with the Grand Prix of St. Petersburg on March 10, then there was a week off before the next race at the Thermal Club in California. 

But that race wasn't even for points, so the next race that mattered (from a point perspective, the million-dollar prize at the Thermal Club still mattered) was the Grand Prix of Long Beach just this past weekend.

So there was about a month and a half between points races.

It's an odd way for the IndyCar season to start, and it will be interesting what effect, if any, this has on the championship at the end of the season.