Newgarden’s usual strategy expert Tim Cindric and race engineer Luke Mason were both stopped from working in IndyCar by team owner Roger Penske because of the scandal about breaking the rules that happened at the beginning of the season.
Newgarden’s first win of the season at St. Petersburg was cancelled because he used a feature called “push-to-pass” illegally during restarts. Penske’s team mistakenly used software that let him do this.
Tom Diuguid, who has a lot of experience in IndyCar, worked with Helio Castroneves for four years. Then he came back to work with Scott McLaughlin in 2021 after working with Penske’s Acura sportscar team.
Newgarden said, “I think a lot of it will be the same. It’s definitely different for me without Tim. I like having him in my ear, but we have a great team with the two car. A lot of it’s the same, we’re going through the same process we always do. It’s great to be back here. I’m glad we had that test last month, that always helps things. I’m feeling excited to be here because it’s difficult to not get excited about this place when you roll in the front gates and it’s a beautiful track. I think we’re going to have some fast cars at Team Penske this month. And we’re really very, very focused on trying to get through qualifying and then having a good race. I just don’t think you can beat the history, and when you win the race, it just completely changes your perspective. So, it’s been very cool to win it and to be here with this group trying to defend our title.”
Newgarden had a problem with his car during his first lap of practice, which meant he couldn’t drive while other cars got to practice for just over 20 minutes before it started raining.
He said, “We got an issue, we’re diagnosing. We just got a sensor that’s off right now. We’re just trying to take our time and we don’t want to run the car without everything fully going, and just wanna be safe.”
While Team Penske’s president Cindric was not allowed to be at the Indy Grand Prix, he was at Laguna Seca to watch Mathieu Jaminet and Nick Tandy win for Porsche. Raul Prados, who was the engineer for the winning car at the Daytona 24 Hours, will work with Newgarden’s No. 2 car now. Jon Bouslog, who was Newgarden’s strategy expert last weekend, will work with Will Power now because Power’s regular expert Ron Ruzewski can’t work. Power also has Paulo Trentini as a data engineer instead of Robbie Atkinson, who can’t work.
