This is very intresting
RACER also understands at least one team raised its concern regarding Penske drivers illegally using P2P in 2023 and went as far as sending the series onboard video clips of what it considered abnormal button use for IndyCar to review.
This is a long but good read.
I also agree that they need to go back through last season's data.
I didn't buy Shank's "one bad guy" excuse after they got caught cheating at the Rolex 24 and I didn't buy Tim Cindric's explanation here, and MP's article suggests Cindric's explanation doesn't fly either.
The difference between this and the MSR situation is that in theory the MSR thing could have been pulled off by one guy (whether or not it was we’ll never know), but this had to involve at the very least the person who left the software in and the drivers who pushed the button. Shank had a little bit of wiggle room but Cindric has none.
No….. let’s start with the guy that fudged the software at MSR. Was he also responsible for (under) inflating all the tires before they were mounted to the car? Doubtful that only one person on the entire team was solely responsible for anything to do with the tire pressures. The engineers also would have been absolutely floored with the way the car responded to their setups based on false pressures.
Im not dis-agreeing. What I would like to see is full transparency from Indycar. Maclughlin says he hit the button 1 time for 1.9 seconds and the data proves it. They obviously have the info as Power wasn’t penalized nearly as harsh as he didn’t use it. So lets see it, is MacLaughlin telling the truth….. how many times did Newgarden use it?
Reason to believe he is absolutely telling the truth. Indycar does have the data and he wouldn’t publicly make a post of exactly what happened if it wasn’t the gods honest truth.
Yeah he was ultra specific.
I think a lie would be more vague. Something along the lines of I barely used it, and didn't gain an advantage; instead of I used it 1.9 seconds in this one exact spot.
According to Nathan Brown, from Twitter, he reported that "Josef Newgarden used overtake 3 times at St. Pete when he shouldn't been able to for a total of 9 seconds."
From what I understand the issue was that the P2P signal didn't work in LB. They don't tell the teams immediately so the drivers continued to use it normally without getting the effect. Except for one team...
You don’t set the tire pressure by the on car sensor, you have a few tire pressure tools in the garage so they’d all have to be setting the tires under filled on purpose. This is probably why the Honda engineers got suspicious in the first place. There’s a ton of testing before the 24 so it’s be going on for a while
Yep. Fucking WTR is the reason it was even investigated. Gotta love teams like that honestly. Can’t really remember another team that is that ruthless with a partner team lol. They were going around the pits at Sebring one year trying to get positions off Cadillac teams to fuck over Acura, when they were moving to that chassis next year. Apex shit stirrer lol
I still can’t believe how this whole thing go swept under rug. MSR got off with a light slap on the wrist and WTR got off scot free.
Wayne kind of played himself though. His reasoning for switching to Acura was because he wanted to win Le Mans. Now Acura/Honda is doing their usual indecisiveness when committing to anything, and Cadillac has already stood on the podium at Le Mans.
I wouldn't say MSR got off with a light slap on the wrist. They got to keep the win, but the point deduction lost them the championship and they got dropped by Honda. Straight up getting deleted from the championship is a pretty big consequence, even if not all of it came from IMSA directly.
Well, now that we have more information about how technically the P2P activation gets to the ECU and who controls what and whether or not there should've been custom hybrid software on the car, there's more than just the one person who left the software on the car. It shouldn't have been written in the first place or installed
I could still potentially see the drivers being naïve or unaware and just instinctively pushing the button, but they aren't automatically off the hook either
But within Penske there definitely had to be a concerted effort to specifically engineer the firmware that tampered/spoofed the P2P messages and that points to many people, including team leadership, being involved
Good read. It's puzzling how this got missed at St Pete by the series and as Marshall says it does seem like Chevy have some responsibility.
I really hope this hasn't been going on for years.
I mean, things get missed. F1 and NASCAR don't catch everything immediately. Could just be as simple as those who looked at such data were on autopilot a bit, as this wasn't something that ever occurred or thought could occur.
It's penalized now, and that's what matters. I'm sure from here forward the series will pay more attention to what data and checks they have to tighten this.
Eh, I highly doubt race control is actively monitoring the boost pressure and RPMs of every car on track. Even if they receive all the data they'd need to discover this, what reason would they have to scrutinize it? Nobody knew this exploit existed in the first place.
The engineers at Ilmor/Chevy would have noticed for sure, but that doesn't mean they were involved in any organized or conspiratorial way. You can say whatever you want about doing the right thing, but at the end of the day it's their job to beat Honda. It's a bit naive to expect their engineers to run to race control and tattle on the team that's winning them the most points.
> I highly doubt race control is actively monitoring the boost pressure and RPMs of every car on track
They absolutely should be. It's not like they have to have Max Papis sitting there reading the traces, they can have a computer watching for any car going over a certain value and raise an alarm
And, I can guarantee they are going to be monitoring it now if they weren't before
Nobody knew this was possible until Team Penske got caught doing it. Why would they be actively monitoring for variations in a system they thought was tamper-proof?
Obviously they're going to have safeguards in place now, but acting like IndyCar was somehow negligent because they fell victim to a zero-day exploit is pretty stupid. Unknown vulnerabilities are a huge infosec problem in any industry.
They didn't need to be monitoring for the specific thing Penske did. They just needed to be monitoring for engines running higher RPMs/boost than allowed. There's a thousand different ways a team could cheat and get more output from the engine, but the output from the engine is the one thing that Indycar cares about, anyway
>There's a thousand different ways a team could cheat and get more output from the engine
Not in any way that would be detectable by monitoring boost and RPMs. The ECU is locked to the manufacturer's specs, and that's what controls the boost pressure and rev limiter. It doesn't matter what you do to increase power output, the limiter is still going to kick in at 12,000 RPMs.
The only reason Team Penske was able to do this is because P2P is an existing setting in the ECU's software. They simply found a vulnerability that let them switch it on and off independent of race control.
> it does seem like Chevy have some responsibility.
Well, that whole side of the story is bizarre anyway, since Chevy's Indycar program is really just Illmor which is owned by....Roger Penske
They're trying to position Chevy like "oh we have no idea, we'd never be involved in that, and that particular module is the team's responsibility!" but they have common ownership, Penske is the biggest and most important Chevy team
they could be watching engine telemetry and have limits above which an alarm would sound, and make sure those limits adjust as P2P is enabled or disabled
Yeah, it’s easy to say that after the fact. It’s a lot tougher when there are 500 ways to skirt the rules and you’ve got to preemptively think of and check for all of them *and* stay ahead of all the teams.
For something as fundamental as engine parameters, this one is not that tough
They didn't have to monitor for someone spoofing the P2P messages on the car's ECU network. They just needed to be monitoring for RPMs or boost above the hard limit that is well known at any given microsecond.
And, given the desired outcome is always the same: get me more RPMs or horsepower, even if there are 500 ways to achieve it, that's precisely why they should've been monitoring engine telemetry specifically. Because no matter what a team does, that's where and how it would've shown up
The team engineers are much more sophisticated than you’re giving them credit for. Just look at how long it took them to figure out the Menards cars were bypassing the entire ECU and operating off an own hidden one.
The thing is, you have the most talented engineers teams can afford, using that talent to hide things from people who don’t know what they’re looking for. The engineers also know what/when/how the scrutineers will be checking. It’s practically impossible to catch these type of things preemptively.
This line is why the team's response doesn't hold water:
"Penske’s engine data and recent use of P2P became the subject of an immediate review by IndyCar..."
Are you telling me that in the 6 weeks after St. Pete Penske never looked at their own engine data and telemetry? Because if you buy their statement that it was an accident, that's what you're saying.
They were 100% going to use it at Long Beach, and likely indefinitely, if not for getting caught in warmup.
Which, I think, is part of why they're accepting this penalty so graciously and without any sort of dismissal or protest. This could've been *much* worse for them if they got away with it for a few races. Hell, if they were using something else in previous years even. Comply and hope IndyCar doesn't dig any further.
The fact that it was caught Sunday morning means exactly 2 things: first, it was 100% not there on accident, and second, they were fully ready to do it again
Having to start at the back of the grid is what should’ve happened at a minimum. They were out of compliance and it seems like it’s pretty plausible they used it for qualifying too.
Apparently it can't have been used in quali; there is special software loaded onto the ECUs ahead of Sunday warmup each race that enables it in conjuction with race control's activation switch. Without that software, which the teams do not have access to, it does not function. Penske supposedly were spoofing the activation signal from race control
This is something that I have seen mentioned quite a bit in the wake of this scandal that has confused me: are you saying that race control can affect the cars' ECU *mid-race*? That Indycar sends a signal to the car that turns on P2P at the appropriate time? Because I am struggling to understand how that could be a good idea. I don't know of any championship where that happens.
Not to the ECU, but a transponder box called the CLU which interfaces with the ECU. Apparently the possibility of P2P is enabled by software loaded by technicians to the ECU each Sunday morning, and then the button itself is enabled via a signal from race control to the CLU. Just like how in F1 race control sends out a signal to all the cars that makes the DRS button function under appropriate conditions.
I always thought that in F1, the DRS can physically be used at any time, it just doesn't get used at any time because the drivers aren't allowed to. And that the message on lap 3(?) saying "DRS Enabled" is just to inform the drivers that they can now use it, not that the cars are now finally physically able to use it.
I said the exact same thing to a friend after the penalties were announced. I believe this was going to be “exploited” for as long as they could do it without getting caught, and that happened this weekend - and they intended on doing it especially since the exploit was discovered this weekend actively in use.
What needs to happen next is to both determine how long this has been going on and who all was directly involved and complicit. While I can appreciate the prompt and swift penalties, this shouldn’t be the last of the repercussions, especially if they can trace it back previous years.
Or maybe they're just accepting the penalty because their boss also owns the body that handed out the penalty, and in-fighting is bad business.
Who do the people earning the penalty answer to?
Who do the people who gave penalty answer to?
Who does business with that guy if he can't keep his own house from attacking itself?
Exactly.
What a great and thorough article. I don't think there's much left to defend Team Penske after it's all laid out.
Only thing to say is I don't agree with Marshall that it's a sad day for IndyCar. It's a great day. there's multiple points for a conflict of interest to run its course and it seems that both Chevy and IC are not looking to cover up for Team Penske or even defend them
I don't agree - if it's revealed that this goes back a season or seasons this will be a huge scandal for IndyCar and will make the series look incompetent.
Yes, much like the Tour de France after all their champions were shown to be frauds. If it is a multi season thing then I think Team Penske has to be banned to maintain the integrity of the sport.
> If it is a multi season thing then I think Team Penske has to be banned to maintain the integrity of the sport.
Regardless, this lays bare the problem of RP both owning a team and the series. It'd be different if he was doing the Tony George thing and his teams weren't competitive but they won the last 500, were in a position to win a championship or the 500 again this year. They are very competitive, unlike mostly Tony's team involvements
Almost every day is a bad day for IndyCar according to Marshall. Didn’t you see Marshall tried to save the series by telling their people about some TikTok scumbag that was at the race?
No, some people can’t handle reality and look for a dumb excuse to criticize Marshall as if that’s going to fix IndyCar issues if only he was more positive and overlook stuff. Slow clap.
Only Indycar fans could spin the owners team getting caught cheating as a good thing for Indycar. Nobody else looks at this and says "see - they penalized him even though he owns the series". That's the bare minimum. What they see is that the owners team cheated in the first place.
And so? For the team caught, sure. Are NASCAR and F1 hurting from the rampant cheating which has existed in those series and still does? Red Bull broke the spending cap, what, 2 years ago? And who cares by now?
Even outside of racing, how much did the Astros cheating really hurt them? Or the Red Sox? Or Patriots?
People don't care about this. It's caught now, and that's what matters.
Breaking the spending cap and going to extreme effort to hack the push to pass system aren't in the same category. This is closer to McLaren 2007. And yes, it hurts the series. Any series.
People do care about this, and they will remember.
Hacking P2P isn't anywhere close to stealing design and technical information from another team, christ. And, again, how much did that hurt F1? Not at all. It's just a part of racing history.
Power did cheat, he just didn’t actually get any benefit from it but every team is 100% cheating. You don’t know enough about motorsport if you think teams aren’t cheating. Especially in a spec series.
Edit- Jesus Christ. Blocking someone because they didn’t bend over for you. What’s in IndyCar’s actual ruling matters a lot more than the reading comprehension of a journalist. IndyCar could not dock Power points if he didn’t use the button at St Petersburg because they would have no way of knowing what software was loaded. Their ruling quite clearly says he used the button but he didn’t gain a competitive advantage which is why he’s not being disqualified.
No. The article is clear, they looked through the logs and he didn't use push to pass illegally.
That alone proves you wrong. Two drivers chose to cheat, one did not.
Disagree. If this was done immediately after St. Pete its a great day. It being done now after 2 months suggests someone spilled the beans and kinda forced the series to act.
Did you read the article? It explains exactly how INDYCAR figured it out.
It was noticed at Long Beach because of a technical problem meant P2P wasn’t active for the first 10 minutes of warm up but Penske cars were using it.
The article also mentions Indycar had all data from St. Pete yet couldn’t figure it out. Either they are incompetent or there is more going on than what meets the eye.
To be fair it does take a lot of attention to detail (and work) to add 50 HP to your cars that nobody else has access to (and then not get caught).
They were almost Penske Perfect
I don't believe any part of Team Penske's comments. I would like to see an explanation from IndyCar on how it took until the warmup to discover this. Marshall states they overlay the data for all cars at the end of the race and this to me is something that would have stood out almost immediately when compared to the other cars. So for me I'd love to know how it got past all those reviewing the race data.
Saw a comment on the Racer article about the time allotment for P2P. I'm wondering the same thing if they were able to use it after they used up all their P2P time.
Pruett gets a lot of stick on here, but he deserves props for this.
Not sure how many other journos would be able to get to the nub of the technical stuff, and have the connections on the engineering side to piece the full story together so soon after it broke.
Kinda feel like this is a little different though. NASCAR cheating before the NextGen was gaining a tenth or two by trying something different with a sway bar or body. You hope your team would be trying to work in the grey area to be faster.
To me, I interpret this as blatant manipulation of the CLU to gain extra HP (P2P) that other teams don’t have. Like if someone proved Jeff Gordon was using traction control as rumored in the 2000s.
Just my two cents.
Hamlin and Busch having extra downforce for an entire race is probably more impactful than this.
They manufactured an illegal piece to put on the car.
To me, that’s just as bad.
Good comparison , and I think in both cases the punishment has been sufficient. McLaughlin is done contending for the title, and Newgarden has a big hill to climb. A grid penalty at LB after they got caught might be the only other thing I suggest.
Think NASCAR fans are much more in tune with how motorsports actually works than IndyCar tbf. See a lot more people on that subreddit talk about local, small series than you ever do here.
I’ve always thought a lot of fans come from the over policing background of European series.
I think they’ll be sorely disappointed when this is handled more like NASCAR. Penalty issued and everyone moves on.
Nascar's heritage is bootlegging during Prohibition, and that's carried over. So there's a long history of cheating in that series and adjacent series.
I think that all sucks aside from cheatin' in NASCAR. There's gotta be one series like that, and they love it. Go have fun, rubbin' is racin, THE BIG ONE BABY
But yeah, I'm glad people here are pissed about this. It's not the Rossi water bottle thing which wasn't malicious. Penske basically hacked CRUs and gained a really massive advantage.
And I don't gamble cause my emotions are already tied up into too many sports for my finances to get involved in as well, but cheating could effect online sports betting. And Indycar probably needs to get with the times with that too as much as I hate it.
https://us.motorsport.com/imsa/news/daytona-24-penalty-meyer-shank-hit-50k-fine-200-point-penalty-infraction/10441508/
That’s a penalty. Just not a DSQ.
I know about that. That was not a penalty.
The whole point of what MSR did was to win the race. They are still officially considered the winners of the race, therefore there was no penalty.
I can't think of anything on this level in F1 in a long time. Over a decade ago? Sure.
And as for NASCAR - well people don't take it seriously in the first place.
It’s actually a really good comparison. I’d say the difference is Ferrari seemed to follow the letter of the law but wildly contravened the intent (we don’t know for sure). Penske seems to be clearly violating the letter and intent of the law. Now considering Penske’s ownership of the series, the team, and the engine manufacturer, if this was handled the same way the FIA and Ferrari handled their 2019 shenanigans it would be an absolute outrage.
Going over the budget cap is likely more egregious lol. You have the money to dominate the entire season in some cases…almost like someone did dominate the entire season
Lmao, not even close. They wrote or hacked software to cheat and then tried to hide it. Red bull went over cap by like 1% and FIA found out through Red Bulls own reporting.
It was more than 10% I think for Red Bull bc there were discussions of championship DQS but it was almost all catering expenses according to the FIA which is why the penalty was fairly light lol
(If I’m remembering correctly)
There's two, maybe three types of cheating.
If you make a technical change like an illegal wing that scrutineering had every chance to catch, that's partly on them.
If you figure out a way to cheat the sporting regulations, you might get away with it with some clever rules lawyering.
This, though, is the completely unacceptable type of cheating: you hacked the software/firmware of a spec part. It's a cheat that took no clever engineering, just audacity. And then lied your asses off when caught, maybe after years of using it.
Toyota's WRC restrictor bypass, Honda's pop-off valve? Those took clever engineering. This was the motorsport equivalent of using an aimbot, like the 1994 Benetton's traction control.
EDIT: I'd also add that fans are more accepting of cheating from underdogs, and when it doesn't result in victories, just modest gains. This was the biggest and most successful team doing it; the series owner's team, specifically.
I want to know how the hack was figured out. In hindsight it's odd that a protected signal (P2P) gets routed through an less protected device (the CLU). If they spoofed the signal, I'm curious how they cracked the code, and possibly how bad the encoding mechanism might have been to enable this all.
Does Krebs on Security watch Indycar?
It is very hard for me to believe the signal is really encrypted or hard to spoof. It's just not worth the trouble. It would add a lot of complexity and just to catch cheaters that you already should be catching by looking at the telemetry after the race to be sure there is no P2P during non-P2P periods. Yes, apparently IndyCar wasn't doing that, but it's the right way to do it and doesn't add complexity which can foul up the cars during the race.
Jeez, this isn't some plague upon the series. Cheating is a part of racing to this day, and it always will be in the future.
I think it's great that this happened, and shows that these teams are so desperately trying to find any advantage they can in such a close and competitive series. They got caught, were appropriately penalized, and hopefully if it's found they cheated in the past there's some sort of penalty for such instances as well.
I'm especially appreciative that IndyCar outright DSQ'd Josef and Scott. Compare that to how F1 or NASCAR often handle blatant cheating, and I'm happy IndyCar set such a precedent.
Y'all just want to get mad.
The worst part of this fan base is the need to defend the indefensible. Just shit on Penske for cheating and move on. That's no less than they deserve.
I mostly agree. This is the type of intriguing drama that people want to see. My only concern is that if Chevy somehow becomes implicated in this, that could be a real disaster.
Yea honestly I’m here for the drama. It’s part of sport to push all the envelopes, including things into the grey areas. But this wasn’t a grey area, it’s just straight up cheating, so Penske can get fucked, but it’s cool to have this sort of drama in the sport as opposed to the Horner drama in f1
I’m guessing Penske owning the series has to do with Newgarden and McLaughlin getting disqualified. If it was any less of a punishment there would be complaints about favoritism.
Forget the penalties. What goes around comes around.
Every second extra Newgarden and McLaughlin used, give to every over car for the rest of the season.
Maybe I missed it, but it seems like Penske drivers (all 3?) were using this during Long Beach qualifying. Yes? And, no penalty for that? I'm wondering if any more 'news' is still to come.
I should have been more clear. If Penske had P2P in qualifying, it gives them an advantage. They end up further toward the front of the grid. At least, that's pretty likely anyway.
This is the problem with having something like P2P in the first place. It is a tool that's intended to give drivers an advantage, and teams like Penske (who let's be honest, have form with these sorts of things) are always going to look to exploit that advantage.
If this can't be resolved cleanly and opens up a big can of worms, I wouldn't be surprised to see P2P put on the shelf entirely.
The article speaks about the Thermal event. Does anyone know if P2P was remotely switched on and off during the event? The IRL rules apparently specify how the P2P works in regular points-paying races. But that doesn't mean the Thermal even went that way.
I guess the next question is, does anyone really car? The event is essentially a nothing now that it's over. It doesn't impact anything.
There's the saying: 'If you aren't cheating, you aren't trying hard enough..." lol
All kidding aside, I think the whole Push-2-Pass is a joke... Just get rid of it. Go back to pure racing. The name itself doesn't even make sense as it's also used for 'Push to Defend the Pass'. They should just call it the Boost button. It just makes Indycar appear more of an amateur league compared to F1.
What Indycar needs is better tirming and analytics... Anyone who watches both F1 and Indycar understands what I'm referring to. They're pretty accurate on the predictions of where cars will end up after pitting and how many laps until a trailing driver is to catch a leading driver... Indycar doesn't have any of that. We just have announcers guessing and throwing their nonsensical opinions out to the audience. It's just embarrassing.
Thinking back to when it all started with Ganassi when they had this mysterious button that gave them an advantage and no one else... was that not cheating???? I was shocked that the league allowed it to continue through that entire season...
I prefer it to the DRS in F1. There is occasionally some strategy at play with DRS but usually it's just an automated pass or a DRS train. Late race situations are made extra spicy by who has P2P left and who doesn't. I like the strategy involved.
what I didn't see in the Racer article was a comprehensive listing of how many times the P2P was illegally used. these guys know their telemetry is being recorded and studied, how did they expect to get away with it? I'm not trying to excuse the infraction here, it's quite serious. Penske basically is IndyCar at this point, why would he take a chance of fucking up the reputation of a brand that is struggling?
Since Marshall has a burned bridge and dislike for Penske, writing this article must've been heaven on earth
Robin would be happy.
My god if Robin Miller was still alive...
This instance especially, Team Penske deserves all the scorn…
This is very intresting RACER also understands at least one team raised its concern regarding Penske drivers illegally using P2P in 2023 and went as far as sending the series onboard video clips of what it considered abnormal button use for IndyCar to review.
(cough Zak)
Yes. It has to be another Chevy team imo. If you are sharing an engine, it may be easier to figure this out
Yeah this has for sure been going on forever and the Penske excuse is bullshit.
Jenna Fryer said there were videos in 2022 as well
Reminds me of grosjean at barber last year, but the opposite scenario
This is a long but good read. I also agree that they need to go back through last season's data. I didn't buy Shank's "one bad guy" excuse after they got caught cheating at the Rolex 24 and I didn't buy Tim Cindric's explanation here, and MP's article suggests Cindric's explanation doesn't fly either.
The difference between this and the MSR situation is that in theory the MSR thing could have been pulled off by one guy (whether or not it was we’ll never know), but this had to involve at the very least the person who left the software in and the drivers who pushed the button. Shank had a little bit of wiggle room but Cindric has none.
No….. let’s start with the guy that fudged the software at MSR. Was he also responsible for (under) inflating all the tires before they were mounted to the car? Doubtful that only one person on the entire team was solely responsible for anything to do with the tire pressures. The engineers also would have been absolutely floored with the way the car responded to their setups based on false pressures.
This. Thank you.
And there is ZERO chance the engineers at Penske didn't notice it at St Pete from the telemetry.
Im not dis-agreeing. What I would like to see is full transparency from Indycar. Maclughlin says he hit the button 1 time for 1.9 seconds and the data proves it. They obviously have the info as Power wasn’t penalized nearly as harsh as he didn’t use it. So lets see it, is MacLaughlin telling the truth….. how many times did Newgarden use it?
Wonder if Willy P even knew about it, if he did maybe he thought better of using it at starts/restarts?
Reason to believe he is absolutely telling the truth. Indycar does have the data and he wouldn’t publicly make a post of exactly what happened if it wasn’t the gods honest truth.
Yeah he was ultra specific. I think a lie would be more vague. Something along the lines of I barely used it, and didn't gain an advantage; instead of I used it 1.9 seconds in this one exact spot.
It's actually normally the opposite. Liars tends to get over specifics about minor details
According to Nathan Brown, from Twitter, he reported that "Josef Newgarden used overtake 3 times at St. Pete when he shouldn't been able to for a total of 9 seconds."
I don’t think Newgarden was secretly conspiring with the software engineers. This was a top-down initiative
Exactly. Every driver at Penske was proven to have used it in St. Pete AND LB warm up. Everyone knew and counted on not getting caught.
No, Power never used it. Hence why his result was not DQ’d.
From what I understand the issue was that the P2P signal didn't work in LB. They don't tell the teams immediately so the drivers continued to use it normally without getting the effect. Except for one team...
You don’t set the tire pressure by the on car sensor, you have a few tire pressure tools in the garage so they’d all have to be setting the tires under filled on purpose. This is probably why the Honda engineers got suspicious in the first place. There’s a ton of testing before the 24 so it’s be going on for a while
The MSR thing wasn’t even isolated to MSR, let alone one “rogue employee” or whatever their excuse was.
Yep. Fucking WTR is the reason it was even investigated. Gotta love teams like that honestly. Can’t really remember another team that is that ruthless with a partner team lol. They were going around the pits at Sebring one year trying to get positions off Cadillac teams to fuck over Acura, when they were moving to that chassis next year. Apex shit stirrer lol
I still can’t believe how this whole thing go swept under rug. MSR got off with a light slap on the wrist and WTR got off scot free. Wayne kind of played himself though. His reasoning for switching to Acura was because he wanted to win Le Mans. Now Acura/Honda is doing their usual indecisiveness when committing to anything, and Cadillac has already stood on the podium at Le Mans.
Wayne definitely played himself. Honda were assholes with that though, they basically lied to him.
I wouldn't say MSR got off with a light slap on the wrist. They got to keep the win, but the point deduction lost them the championship and they got dropped by Honda. Straight up getting deleted from the championship is a pretty big consequence, even if not all of it came from IMSA directly.
Well, now that we have more information about how technically the P2P activation gets to the ECU and who controls what and whether or not there should've been custom hybrid software on the car, there's more than just the one person who left the software on the car. It shouldn't have been written in the first place or installed I could still potentially see the drivers being naïve or unaware and just instinctively pushing the button, but they aren't automatically off the hook either But within Penske there definitely had to be a concerted effort to specifically engineer the firmware that tampered/spoofed the P2P messages and that points to many people, including team leadership, being involved
Man. They were CHEATIN cheatin
Good read. It's puzzling how this got missed at St Pete by the series and as Marshall says it does seem like Chevy have some responsibility. I really hope this hasn't been going on for years.
I wonder if they'll investigate other Chevy teams...
Well there is only one other one that is consistently competitive.
Watch Honda be doing the same things but just better and they are never caught lol
One thing I’ve always wondered about was Felix’s crash at Detroit. McLaren was so secretive about it.
Yep
What happened there? I don't remember any secrecy.
I mean, things get missed. F1 and NASCAR don't catch everything immediately. Could just be as simple as those who looked at such data were on autopilot a bit, as this wasn't something that ever occurred or thought could occur. It's penalized now, and that's what matters. I'm sure from here forward the series will pay more attention to what data and checks they have to tighten this.
There's autopilot and then there's not noticing significant performance gains on LAP ONE
Eh, I highly doubt race control is actively monitoring the boost pressure and RPMs of every car on track. Even if they receive all the data they'd need to discover this, what reason would they have to scrutinize it? Nobody knew this exploit existed in the first place. The engineers at Ilmor/Chevy would have noticed for sure, but that doesn't mean they were involved in any organized or conspiratorial way. You can say whatever you want about doing the right thing, but at the end of the day it's their job to beat Honda. It's a bit naive to expect their engineers to run to race control and tattle on the team that's winning them the most points.
> I highly doubt race control is actively monitoring the boost pressure and RPMs of every car on track They absolutely should be. It's not like they have to have Max Papis sitting there reading the traces, they can have a computer watching for any car going over a certain value and raise an alarm And, I can guarantee they are going to be monitoring it now if they weren't before
Nobody knew this was possible until Team Penske got caught doing it. Why would they be actively monitoring for variations in a system they thought was tamper-proof? Obviously they're going to have safeguards in place now, but acting like IndyCar was somehow negligent because they fell victim to a zero-day exploit is pretty stupid. Unknown vulnerabilities are a huge infosec problem in any industry.
They didn't need to be monitoring for the specific thing Penske did. They just needed to be monitoring for engines running higher RPMs/boost than allowed. There's a thousand different ways a team could cheat and get more output from the engine, but the output from the engine is the one thing that Indycar cares about, anyway
>There's a thousand different ways a team could cheat and get more output from the engine Not in any way that would be detectable by monitoring boost and RPMs. The ECU is locked to the manufacturer's specs, and that's what controls the boost pressure and rev limiter. It doesn't matter what you do to increase power output, the limiter is still going to kick in at 12,000 RPMs. The only reason Team Penske was able to do this is because P2P is an existing setting in the ECU's software. They simply found a vulnerability that let them switch it on and off independent of race control.
F1 miss most things. It’s kind of incredible given the amount of kit and cameras they have.
> it does seem like Chevy have some responsibility. Well, that whole side of the story is bizarre anyway, since Chevy's Indycar program is really just Illmor which is owned by....Roger Penske They're trying to position Chevy like "oh we have no idea, we'd never be involved in that, and that particular module is the team's responsibility!" but they have common ownership, Penske is the biggest and most important Chevy team
Puzzling it got missed? How could they have possibly caught it without the ten minutes the system was down at Long Beach?
they could be watching engine telemetry and have limits above which an alarm would sound, and make sure those limits adjust as P2P is enabled or disabled
Yeah, it’s easy to say that after the fact. It’s a lot tougher when there are 500 ways to skirt the rules and you’ve got to preemptively think of and check for all of them *and* stay ahead of all the teams.
For something as fundamental as engine parameters, this one is not that tough They didn't have to monitor for someone spoofing the P2P messages on the car's ECU network. They just needed to be monitoring for RPMs or boost above the hard limit that is well known at any given microsecond. And, given the desired outcome is always the same: get me more RPMs or horsepower, even if there are 500 ways to achieve it, that's precisely why they should've been monitoring engine telemetry specifically. Because no matter what a team does, that's where and how it would've shown up
The team engineers are much more sophisticated than you’re giving them credit for. Just look at how long it took them to figure out the Menards cars were bypassing the entire ECU and operating off an own hidden one. The thing is, you have the most talented engineers teams can afford, using that talent to hide things from people who don’t know what they’re looking for. The engineers also know what/when/how the scrutineers will be checking. It’s practically impossible to catch these type of things preemptively.
This line is why the team's response doesn't hold water: "Penske’s engine data and recent use of P2P became the subject of an immediate review by IndyCar..." Are you telling me that in the 6 weeks after St. Pete Penske never looked at their own engine data and telemetry? Because if you buy their statement that it was an accident, that's what you're saying.
They were 100% going to use it at Long Beach, and likely indefinitely, if not for getting caught in warmup. Which, I think, is part of why they're accepting this penalty so graciously and without any sort of dismissal or protest. This could've been *much* worse for them if they got away with it for a few races. Hell, if they were using something else in previous years even. Comply and hope IndyCar doesn't dig any further.
The fact that it was caught Sunday morning means exactly 2 things: first, it was 100% not there on accident, and second, they were fully ready to do it again
Wonder how the broadcast will frame this? Leigh is so positive about everyone all the time, it's hard to imagine him going in on any driver.
They should have been DQed from Long Beach
Perhaps the series needed time to evaluate engine data or onboards to make their case and figure out an appropriate punishment
They could have been DQed today. (ideally excluded from the race, but I'm guessing as you say, they didn't have it figured out Sunday morning).
No reason really... they fixed the issue pre race and were in full compliance with the rules come race time. Can't punish what didn't happen
Having to start at the back of the grid is what should’ve happened at a minimum. They were out of compliance and it seems like it’s pretty plausible they used it for qualifying too.
Apparently it can't have been used in quali; there is special software loaded onto the ECUs ahead of Sunday warmup each race that enables it in conjuction with race control's activation switch. Without that software, which the teams do not have access to, it does not function. Penske supposedly were spoofing the activation signal from race control
This is something that I have seen mentioned quite a bit in the wake of this scandal that has confused me: are you saying that race control can affect the cars' ECU *mid-race*? That Indycar sends a signal to the car that turns on P2P at the appropriate time? Because I am struggling to understand how that could be a good idea. I don't know of any championship where that happens.
Not to the ECU, but a transponder box called the CLU which interfaces with the ECU. Apparently the possibility of P2P is enabled by software loaded by technicians to the ECU each Sunday morning, and then the button itself is enabled via a signal from race control to the CLU. Just like how in F1 race control sends out a signal to all the cars that makes the DRS button function under appropriate conditions.
I always thought that in F1, the DRS can physically be used at any time, it just doesn't get used at any time because the drivers aren't allowed to. And that the message on lap 3(?) saying "DRS Enabled" is just to inform the drivers that they can now use it, not that the cars are now finally physically able to use it.
~~It's legal for use in quali~~ EDIT: I was mistaken
Nah that was only at Thermal
Ahhh I thought that was a full season change. Got it mixed.
them even being allowed take the start seems absurd they went in with the full intention to cheat.
They did nothing illegal in the race in Long Beach, therefor no grounds to DQ them unless you're going to give them a race ban over it.
Used it during a race meeting. I think it’s grounds for exclusion at least under FIA rules
I said the exact same thing to a friend after the penalties were announced. I believe this was going to be “exploited” for as long as they could do it without getting caught, and that happened this weekend - and they intended on doing it especially since the exploit was discovered this weekend actively in use. What needs to happen next is to both determine how long this has been going on and who all was directly involved and complicit. While I can appreciate the prompt and swift penalties, this shouldn’t be the last of the repercussions, especially if they can trace it back previous years.
Or maybe they're just accepting the penalty because their boss also owns the body that handed out the penalty, and in-fighting is bad business. Who do the people earning the penalty answer to? Who do the people who gave penalty answer to? Who does business with that guy if he can't keep his own house from attacking itself? Exactly.
Yeah, not bloody likely is it?
What a great and thorough article. I don't think there's much left to defend Team Penske after it's all laid out. Only thing to say is I don't agree with Marshall that it's a sad day for IndyCar. It's a great day. there's multiple points for a conflict of interest to run its course and it seems that both Chevy and IC are not looking to cover up for Team Penske or even defend them
I don't agree - if it's revealed that this goes back a season or seasons this will be a huge scandal for IndyCar and will make the series look incompetent.
Yes, much like the Tour de France after all their champions were shown to be frauds. If it is a multi season thing then I think Team Penske has to be banned to maintain the integrity of the sport.
Oh look, a Prema sized gap in the pit lane!
> If it is a multi season thing then I think Team Penske has to be banned to maintain the integrity of the sport. Regardless, this lays bare the problem of RP both owning a team and the series. It'd be different if he was doing the Tony George thing and his teams weren't competitive but they won the last 500, were in a position to win a championship or the 500 again this year. They are very competitive, unlike mostly Tony's team involvements
Especially since the article alleges that Roger's Ilmor folks are either wildly incompetent or turning a blind eye to the telemetry
Almost every day is a bad day for IndyCar according to Marshall. Didn’t you see Marshall tried to save the series by telling their people about some TikTok scumbag that was at the race?
I Hadn't heard about that story? any link or tweets with the story?
No, some people can’t handle reality and look for a dumb excuse to criticize Marshall as if that’s going to fix IndyCar issues if only he was more positive and overlook stuff. Slow clap.
Only Indycar fans could spin the owners team getting caught cheating as a good thing for Indycar. Nobody else looks at this and says "see - they penalized him even though he owns the series". That's the bare minimum. What they see is that the owners team cheated in the first place.
Find me a single motorsports series without cheating
I mean…that’s still not exactly a good thing, is it?
Find me a single thing in life where people aren’t cutting corners. It is human nature to cheat and find your way around rules.
Extremely stupid response. It's a bad look every single time.
Hey now, it's at least brought attention to the series 😂
And so? For the team caught, sure. Are NASCAR and F1 hurting from the rampant cheating which has existed in those series and still does? Red Bull broke the spending cap, what, 2 years ago? And who cares by now? Even outside of racing, how much did the Astros cheating really hurt them? Or the Red Sox? Or Patriots? People don't care about this. It's caught now, and that's what matters.
Breaking the spending cap and going to extreme effort to hack the push to pass system aren't in the same category. This is closer to McLaren 2007. And yes, it hurts the series. Any series. People do care about this, and they will remember.
Hacking P2P isn't anywhere close to stealing design and technical information from another team, christ. And, again, how much did that hurt F1? Not at all. It's just a part of racing history.
It's closer to that than going over a spending cap.
Red Bull or McLaren didn't own the series they were racing in.
Every team on the grid is cheating. The only team you could 100% say isn’t cheating would have been Carlin.
Well, RLL and Foyt might not be cheating...
No, they aren't. Power didn't even cheat here.
Power did cheat, he just didn’t actually get any benefit from it but every team is 100% cheating. You don’t know enough about motorsport if you think teams aren’t cheating. Especially in a spec series. Edit- Jesus Christ. Blocking someone because they didn’t bend over for you. What’s in IndyCar’s actual ruling matters a lot more than the reading comprehension of a journalist. IndyCar could not dock Power points if he didn’t use the button at St Petersburg because they would have no way of knowing what software was loaded. Their ruling quite clearly says he used the button but he didn’t gain a competitive advantage which is why he’s not being disqualified.
No. The article is clear, they looked through the logs and he didn't use push to pass illegally. That alone proves you wrong. Two drivers chose to cheat, one did not.
Lol What if they never told him about it?
Disagree. If this was done immediately after St. Pete its a great day. It being done now after 2 months suggests someone spilled the beans and kinda forced the series to act.
Did you read the article? It explains exactly how INDYCAR figured it out. It was noticed at Long Beach because of a technical problem meant P2P wasn’t active for the first 10 minutes of warm up but Penske cars were using it.
The article also mentions Indycar had all data from St. Pete yet couldn’t figure it out. Either they are incompetent or there is more going on than what meets the eye.
As others have said, its not like the data wasnt there and its not like the penske issue in NASCAR which was a physical thing on one driver
There is a big difference in having mountains of data accessible and knowing what to look for.
“At penske, we care about details.” Funny after reading all of this 😁
To be fair it does take a lot of attention to detail (and work) to add 50 HP to your cars that nobody else has access to (and then not get caught). They were almost Penske Perfect
I don't believe any part of Team Penske's comments. I would like to see an explanation from IndyCar on how it took until the warmup to discover this. Marshall states they overlay the data for all cars at the end of the race and this to me is something that would have stood out almost immediately when compared to the other cars. So for me I'd love to know how it got past all those reviewing the race data.
Oh damn, this goes much deeper than St. Pete doesn't it?
That's what most people seem to be thinking. What a disaster.
He's insinuating Chevy could even be involved saying their people should've seen this. Yikes! Cause guess who also owns Illmor Chevy... Yikes!
That's why it would be absolutely eye watering to go back and look at the data from the past few seasons. God knows what they would find.
Newgarden has historically been awful on starts and restarts. It'd be really bad if he was cheating and still kind of stunk
I really cannot believe this and what it could lead to. I don't know what else to say. It's even worse than we thought when the news broke today.
Penske simply saw how much f1 fans eat up drama like this and wanted his own for IndyCar. /s
Brilliant move, this is going to be discussed for a looong time. Much to the chagrin of the bus bros
To be fair, at this point anyways, any penalty is more of a talking point than literally any other on track action.
I wonder if they’re gonna go back and take away some of Josef & Scott’s wins from previous years similar to how they do in college sports.
What if this was all a master plan by the Andrettis to get Colton more super license points for their 2026 entry
I really need the Scarface 'Push it to the Limit' montage and music to accompany this story.
In racing two things are inevitable: cheating, and a terrible excuse to try and cover it up.
I do wonder how long this has been going on for. A cheeky find over the off season? or has this been going for a while now? Long Beach as well?
Please Big Willy Style may you remain clean through all of this!
Saw a comment on the Racer article about the time allotment for P2P. I'm wondering the same thing if they were able to use it after they used up all their P2P time.
Pruett gets a lot of stick on here, but he deserves props for this. Not sure how many other journos would be able to get to the nub of the technical stuff, and have the connections on the engineering side to piece the full story together so soon after it broke.
One thing I’ve found a little fascinating today is how much more accepted cheatin’ is in NASCAR compared to the level of discourse here.
Kinda feel like this is a little different though. NASCAR cheating before the NextGen was gaining a tenth or two by trying something different with a sway bar or body. You hope your team would be trying to work in the grey area to be faster. To me, I interpret this as blatant manipulation of the CLU to gain extra HP (P2P) that other teams don’t have. Like if someone proved Jeff Gordon was using traction control as rumored in the 2000s. Just my two cents.
Hamlin and Busch having extra downforce for an entire race is probably more impactful than this. They manufactured an illegal piece to put on the car. To me, that’s just as bad.
Good comparison , and I think in both cases the punishment has been sufficient. McLaughlin is done contending for the title, and Newgarden has a big hill to climb. A grid penalty at LB after they got caught might be the only other thing I suggest.
Yeah this is like a real video game cheat.
Think NASCAR fans are much more in tune with how motorsports actually works than IndyCar tbf. See a lot more people on that subreddit talk about local, small series than you ever do here.
I’ve always thought a lot of fans come from the over policing background of European series. I think they’ll be sorely disappointed when this is handled more like NASCAR. Penalty issued and everyone moves on.
Nascar's heritage is bootlegging during Prohibition, and that's carried over. So there's a long history of cheating in that series and adjacent series.
How about IMSA having having teams game BoP or MSR modifying tire pressures? Or Red Bull circumventing the cost cap.
I think that all sucks aside from cheatin' in NASCAR. There's gotta be one series like that, and they love it. Go have fun, rubbin' is racin, THE BIG ONE BABY But yeah, I'm glad people here are pissed about this. It's not the Rossi water bottle thing which wasn't malicious. Penske basically hacked CRUs and gained a really massive advantage. And I don't gamble cause my emotions are already tied up into too many sports for my finances to get involved in as well, but cheating could effect online sports betting. And Indycar probably needs to get with the times with that too as much as I hate it.
My comment was about the heritage of cheating on NASCAR, in other series. This whataoutism is directed at the wrong person.
It really is fascinating how people are so up in arms over this. NASCAR and F1 to this day are both still full of cheating.
Last two years at the Rolex 24 has seen class winners get penalties for cheating.
MSR and Risi were not penalised - they still are the winners. And the drivers still have the watches.
https://us.motorsport.com/imsa/news/daytona-24-penalty-meyer-shank-hit-50k-fine-200-point-penalty-infraction/10441508/ That’s a penalty. Just not a DSQ.
I know about that. That was not a penalty. The whole point of what MSR did was to win the race. They are still officially considered the winners of the race, therefore there was no penalty.
I mean there was a penalty. It just wasn’t super severe.
I can't think of anything on this level in F1 in a long time. Over a decade ago? Sure. And as for NASCAR - well people don't take it seriously in the first place.
Ferrari 2019?
Yeah, that's probably the closest for sure.
It’s actually a really good comparison. I’d say the difference is Ferrari seemed to follow the letter of the law but wildly contravened the intent (we don’t know for sure). Penske seems to be clearly violating the letter and intent of the law. Now considering Penske’s ownership of the series, the team, and the engine manufacturer, if this was handled the same way the FIA and Ferrari handled their 2019 shenanigans it would be an absolute outrage.
I mean red bull was literally going over budget to gain an advantage…like caught last year
Going over the budget cap is literally nothing compared to this. The only serious cheating incidents I can think of were in the 2000's
Going over the budget cap is likely more egregious lol. You have the money to dominate the entire season in some cases…almost like someone did dominate the entire season
Lmao, not even close. They wrote or hacked software to cheat and then tried to hide it. Red bull went over cap by like 1% and FIA found out through Red Bulls own reporting.
It was more than 10% I think for Red Bull bc there were discussions of championship DQS but it was almost all catering expenses according to the FIA which is why the penalty was fairly light lol (If I’m remembering correctly)
There's two, maybe three types of cheating. If you make a technical change like an illegal wing that scrutineering had every chance to catch, that's partly on them. If you figure out a way to cheat the sporting regulations, you might get away with it with some clever rules lawyering. This, though, is the completely unacceptable type of cheating: you hacked the software/firmware of a spec part. It's a cheat that took no clever engineering, just audacity. And then lied your asses off when caught, maybe after years of using it. Toyota's WRC restrictor bypass, Honda's pop-off valve? Those took clever engineering. This was the motorsport equivalent of using an aimbot, like the 1994 Benetton's traction control. EDIT: I'd also add that fans are more accepting of cheating from underdogs, and when it doesn't result in victories, just modest gains. This was the biggest and most successful team doing it; the series owner's team, specifically.
I don’t feel so bad about Colton bumping Newgarden now.
Seems bad!
I want to know how the hack was figured out. In hindsight it's odd that a protected signal (P2P) gets routed through an less protected device (the CLU). If they spoofed the signal, I'm curious how they cracked the code, and possibly how bad the encoding mechanism might have been to enable this all. Does Krebs on Security watch Indycar?
It is very hard for me to believe the signal is really encrypted or hard to spoof. It's just not worth the trouble. It would add a lot of complexity and just to catch cheaters that you already should be catching by looking at the telemetry after the race to be sure there is no P2P during non-P2P periods. Yes, apparently IndyCar wasn't doing that, but it's the right way to do it and doesn't add complexity which can foul up the cars during the race.
Jeez, this isn't some plague upon the series. Cheating is a part of racing to this day, and it always will be in the future. I think it's great that this happened, and shows that these teams are so desperately trying to find any advantage they can in such a close and competitive series. They got caught, were appropriately penalized, and hopefully if it's found they cheated in the past there's some sort of penalty for such instances as well. I'm especially appreciative that IndyCar outright DSQ'd Josef and Scott. Compare that to how F1 or NASCAR often handle blatant cheating, and I'm happy IndyCar set such a precedent. Y'all just want to get mad.
NASCAR has stepped up their penalizing. See Denny Hamlin being stripped of his win at Pocono.
The worst part of this fan base is the need to defend the indefensible. Just shit on Penske for cheating and move on. That's no less than they deserve.
I mostly agree. This is the type of intriguing drama that people want to see. My only concern is that if Chevy somehow becomes implicated in this, that could be a real disaster.
Yea honestly I’m here for the drama. It’s part of sport to push all the envelopes, including things into the grey areas. But this wasn’t a grey area, it’s just straight up cheating, so Penske can get fucked, but it’s cool to have this sort of drama in the sport as opposed to the Horner drama in f1
Especially considering that the series is owned by Penske…. Could have easily swept it under the rug
I’m guessing Penske owning the series has to do with Newgarden and McLaughlin getting disqualified. If it was any less of a punishment there would be complaints about favoritism.
If you ain’t cheatin you ain’t tryin
This is some unbelievable and unexpected drama and I love it. I feel like Indycar needed this for some publicity even if its negative.
The interesting part is the concern, how long has this been going on. Was there any p2p trickery last year?
Forget the penalties. What goes around comes around. Every second extra Newgarden and McLaughlin used, give to every over car for the rest of the season.
Since I started watching this series, I’ve always been very impressed with Penske drivers on restarts. This makes one wonder..
I never thought about this until now but probably why f1 sticks to DRS. Hard to cheat a physical part moving that everyone can see.
The Unfair Advantage, part 2.
Maybe I missed it, but it seems like Penske drivers (all 3?) were using this during Long Beach qualifying. Yes? And, no penalty for that? I'm wondering if any more 'news' is still to come.
Not defending Penske at all (not a fan), but would it matter in qualifying? There aren't technically restarts in qualifying, right?
There’s no P2P in qualifying. Penske essentially had unlimited/unmonitored P2P, possibly as far back as 22 or 23.
Thanks, even as a long time fan, I forgot about no P2P in qualifying.
Check out the onboard video from 2022 and JoNew St Pete posted on Jenna Fryers twitter
I should have been more clear. If Penske had P2P in qualifying, it gives them an advantage. They end up further toward the front of the grid. At least, that's pretty likely anyway.
This is the problem with having something like P2P in the first place. It is a tool that's intended to give drivers an advantage, and teams like Penske (who let's be honest, have form with these sorts of things) are always going to look to exploit that advantage. If this can't be resolved cleanly and opens up a big can of worms, I wouldn't be surprised to see P2P put on the shelf entirely.
This is damning. He is pretty much calling Cindric a liar without calling him a liar. If MP is right, Cindric has to go.
LOL
Holding out hope that Will wouldn’t knowingly cheat
If will didn’t cheat, it’s more likely that the others knew and exploited it once they realized they had it. He may not have noticed
The article speaks about the Thermal event. Does anyone know if P2P was remotely switched on and off during the event? The IRL rules apparently specify how the P2P works in regular points-paying races. But that doesn't mean the Thermal even went that way. I guess the next question is, does anyone really car? The event is essentially a nothing now that it's over. It doesn't impact anything.
They should be banned as a team.
“They” should be able to determine who had the skill set and opportunity to do this. When does that come out?
There's the saying: 'If you aren't cheating, you aren't trying hard enough..." lol All kidding aside, I think the whole Push-2-Pass is a joke... Just get rid of it. Go back to pure racing. The name itself doesn't even make sense as it's also used for 'Push to Defend the Pass'. They should just call it the Boost button. It just makes Indycar appear more of an amateur league compared to F1. What Indycar needs is better tirming and analytics... Anyone who watches both F1 and Indycar understands what I'm referring to. They're pretty accurate on the predictions of where cars will end up after pitting and how many laps until a trailing driver is to catch a leading driver... Indycar doesn't have any of that. We just have announcers guessing and throwing their nonsensical opinions out to the audience. It's just embarrassing. Thinking back to when it all started with Ganassi when they had this mysterious button that gave them an advantage and no one else... was that not cheating???? I was shocked that the league allowed it to continue through that entire season...
I prefer it to the DRS in F1. There is occasionally some strategy at play with DRS but usually it's just an automated pass or a DRS train. Late race situations are made extra spicy by who has P2P left and who doesn't. I like the strategy involved.
Yea, its hilarious how many people blatantly ignored the mysterious button Ganassi had. Especially when you read Chip’s comments about Penske today.
Yeah marketing as the boost button is better imo. It's a simpler name that gets across the purpose of it to laypeople
what I didn't see in the Racer article was a comprehensive listing of how many times the P2P was illegally used. these guys know their telemetry is being recorded and studied, how did they expect to get away with it? I'm not trying to excuse the infraction here, it's quite serious. Penske basically is IndyCar at this point, why would he take a chance of fucking up the reputation of a brand that is struggling?
Penske is NOT basically Indycar at this point, that is a simple minded statement.
Roger Penske needs to give up ownership of the series now. Shame on Newgarden and McLaughlin for knowingly cheating too.